My dog is driving me crazy. She sheds so much fur that I don’t know how she can bear the cool evenings we’ve been having. I half expect to roll over in bed and see her snuggled up beside me saying, “Hey! Quit taking all the covers already!” Her fur comes off in such quantities that I never want to pet her, or let anyone else pet her. I find myself yelling at guests, “Stay above the collar! Stay above the collar!” so as not to find a pile of yellow fluff floating around the room, inevitably landing on someone’s black pants.

Secondly, she has some serious odor lately. Flat out STANK. I think it’s part dog breath, part stagnant pond water. We do our best to keep her from it, but she can occasionally stray and manage a dip in the park’s green water with a film on top. Not to mention her gas, which is so bad that it’s become audible in her old age. It used to be that if we saw her get up and sneak slyly away, an aroma like no other would follow. It was so bad that she would actually leave the room. But now she’s old, and she simply lays there and lets the dog vapor linger around her…and all around the room. If only people could see us watching TV in the evening with our shirts pulled up to cover our mouths and noses. We don’t dare breathe that toxic air.

But, what I find most disgusting is that whenever I let her outside, she delights in eating squirrel poop, or rabbit poop, or whatever animal leaves those tiny turds in our yard. She will meander over to the ivy under our tree, find a spot and literally dig in. She will bury her teeth in the dirt, get a mouthful, and begin to chomp, chomp, chomp. I can’t even bear to watch without gagging.

The last dog I had not only ate other animal’s waste, but she rolled in it. She once squirmed around in fresh dog poo and was completely covered from the tip of her nose to her shoulders. Because it was a frigid winter day, and because I was a moron, I decided to put her in the bathtub to rinse her off. I pulled the curtain shut and turned on the shower full blast. I then opened the curtain to pull the removable shower head off so I could get under her neck. But when I did that, she did the soaked-dog-shake and wet poo was flung to the walls, floor, ceiling…everywhere. Crevices I didn’t even know existed were speckled with dripping feces.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should be grateful for what I have now.

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I have been living somewhere in the Twilight Zone the last few days. Mostly foggy, kinda teary, sometimes sleepy, and always off balance. The symptoms of my concussion worsened on Sunday evening. After hearing ringing in my ears, I got this head-rush sensation where I feel like I’m about to fall over and black out…and it won’t go away.

But, amidst this haze I have one thing I can clearly see, that I have friends, family and neighbors who are there when I need them. My husband is away and it has been impossible for me to run this house in my condition. So the people in my life have stepped up and helped me muddle through.

I’ve had two kids shuttled to two different schools by three different people, and a best friend who had just gotten dinner ready for her family, then dropped everything to take me to the hospital last night. My neighbor brought me groceries, and Mom’s from my daughter’s school have offered to bring us dinner. Oh, and I can’t forget my RN friend, who nursed me and woke me during the night after my head was hit to ask me if I knew where I was. My sister has sat with me, my Mom has sat with me, my niece and her roommate took turns watching my kids, then spent the night here in case anything happened, my daughter took over some household duties, and lots of friends have called to check in. What’s comforting is that I’ve barely skimmed the surface of the friends and family pool.

So, despite the pain, nausea and dizziness, I’m feeling pretty good. Having a support system like mine takes some of the pain away. My thanks go out to all of you.

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If this post begins to ramble and make no sense, it’s because I am recovering from a concussion. I won’t go into the embarrassing details of what happened. However, I will say it had something to do with my annual girl’s weekend, a hammock, and some vodka.

Although this incident was not really my fault, you will never hear me say that I am, in any way, graceful. As a kid, I was famous for spilling, dropping, breaking, tripping and falling…and not much has changed. I am a klutz. I am a gargantuan doofus. I am a clumsy, butter-fingered, fumbling oaf.

It’s partly because I’m quite tall and have feet so big that I envision getting a call from the circus telling me the clowns want their shoes back. I also have limbs so long that a teacher once dubbed me orangutan arms, and my brain is pulled in so many directions at once that sometimes I just can’t concentrate. Put these together, and you have the perfect storm.

So, it shouldn’t have been any surprise that I single-handedly put a halt to this weekend’s festivities. In a matter of hours we went from having a party, to something resembling a knitting group. No lie. As we debated whether or not I needed to go to the hospital, we slowly went from drinking beer to making pot holders, from happy to glum, from laughter to yawns. All while I held a bag of ice to a knot on my head, which was so big my friends could’ve cut it out and played volleyball with it.

I didn’t know it when I named this blog, but Urban Dictionary lists synonyms of “Momo” as dolt, blockhead, and numskull. How fitting is that? I unknowingly created a blog name which refers to my true nature. Coincidence? I think not.

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Near our back door, we have a rather large basket full of shoes. Lots and lots of shoes. All of which belong to the two kids. Yesterday, I told my son to go get a pair out of the basket and put them on for school. I was folding laundry in the other room, and kept yelling, “Did you put your shoes on?” He would reply, “Not yet!” And, I would say, “Well, hurry up! It’s time for school.” We did this over and over before I finally went to check on him.

I found him in the back hallway, completely surrounded by shoes. He had dumped the entire basket onto the floor. But, that wasn’t what surprised me. He often dumps all of his trains, cars, and books all over the house, so why would shoes be any different?

I stood there silently and watched him hold a shoe up to his face and smell it, then put it down, pick up another shoe and do the same thing. After he did this a few times, I asked, “What are you doing? Why haven’t you put your shoes on yet?”

He looked up at me with a disgusted look and said, “These shoes all smell like Michigan.”

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