The Birds, the Bees and Dr.Pepper

 

Love is in the air.

I can smell it.

The cedar chipped, dry hay pellet, and wet rodent hair odor of ardent affection.

Why, you might want to ask, would I willingly become a landlord to a 2-lb, 12-week-old guinea pig with a bald spot and a serious bladder control issue? 

I’m a sucker for my ten-year-old’s dark lash-lined baby blues.

It’s important to note here, that people have told me they notice I write about my oldest daughter Liv, way more than I do about my youngest, Margot.  There is a very simple and perfectly sane reason for this.  Because Margot would kill me.  Well, not kill me, but I would most certainly never hear the end of it and we spend a lot of time together so I try and stay on her good side.  But for this one time, and one time only, she has given me permission- albeit written and signed by two witnesses and sealed with Super Glue- that I may type her name into my lap top and tell her story.  The story of how she came to love a little cutie named Dr.Pepper.

Here goes:

Margot never asks for anything. When you ask her, let’s say, what she wants for Christmas, she’ll say “nothing” because “I already have everything I need, I have all of you.”  Seriously, y’all.  She is my giver, my dish washer, my clothes folder, my bruised knee kisser.

She just gives and gives and gives without prompt or expectation of reward.

She’s an old soul.

I look up to her.

So, when she came up to me batting those big blue eyes, a fist of dollars in one hand and a flow chart in the other, asking me for a guinea pig, how could I say no?

But what I should have said no to was the guinea pig “sleep-over” the very next Friday.

Talk about a restless night.

Having four pre-teen girls over for a spend the night pales in comparison to the stress, gray hair, panic attacks, and reflux that creeps up while trying to keep two smelly rats from getting down to business, sneaking some nooky, playing chutes and ladders, mixing some Travolta with some Newton-John- you get the picture- while trying to have a glass of wine and catch up on TiVo.

See, as soon as our bald little fur ball came home, pooping and nibbling all the way, Margot promptly dubbed him Dr. Pepper, then picked up my cell and invited her friend Gloria and her guinea, Gucci, over right away for popcorn, kibble, lettuce remnants, carrot shavings, and a marathon movie showing of Eddie Murphy as Dr. Doolittle.

At first, I wasn’t really worried about Gucci.  At all. For one thing, Dr. P was only 3 months old, and from looks of it, a little wet behind the ears.  Meanwhile, Gucci was a well seasoned veteran of rodent life, a Barbara Walters of guinea pigdom, if you will, to our little own Tom Sawyer.  And let’s just say what Gucci lacked in manners and personal hygiene, she made up for in fur, fat, and lethargy -while Pepper, poor thing, was a mere hyper shrimp of a tiny thing.  It would be like Richard Simmons and Roseanne Barr were to take roll in the wood shavings; it just didn’t seem all that likely.

But what have we learned about the re-birth of jelly shoes, pasta makers, and shoulder pads?  Well, absolutely anything is possible.

Now, I don’t know about y’all but I learned about the birds and the bees at the middle school lunch table and watching after-school specials.  These days, we have doctors, nurses, and mental health professionals who start coming to school during 5^th grade PE to explain to our kids all about the birds and the bees.

Me, it doesn’t matter if they were a Harvard grad and a fellow at John-Hopkins, my kids come home and the same thing happens when I try and explain the ins and outs, the ying and the yang’s , the bow-chica-bow-wows of adulthood. They still look at me with a blank stare and say “I just don’t get it.”

So my expectations were not exactly high when I held my breath and entered the guinea pig concubine with a stick of incense and a few printed downloads from National Geographic for Kids.

“Girls,” I gasp for clean air, not finding any. “It’s really important Gucci and Dr. P keep a reasonable- I mean large, really, really large- distance between them.  Separate them with a blanket a pillow, a My Little Pony, a stick of gum.  Just whatever you do, don’t leave them alone, unsupervised…together.  You understand?

“10-4, Ms. Laura,” Gloria tells me, as she pulls Gucci out from under the covers- Dr. P nowhere to be found. “Is it okay though that we already used them to make a guinea pig tower and make  a run for the Gold at the 2013 Guinea Pig Olympics in wrestling?  I think Dr. Pepper won.”

My guess was Dr. P was already burrowed back in his pig pen liar enjoying a good cedar cigar.

I shred up my print outs into teeny tiny pieces and toss them into Gucci’s overnight travel case.   At least the newlyweds will have something to pee on.

Oh well, I tried. 

I called Rachel with the news.  Looks like we have 63 days to wait and see.  At least we both agree we are way too young to be great-grandmothers. 

Looking back, I also learned a whole heck of a lot that night.

I learned knowledge is power.  Ignorance is not always bliss and love means sometimes- well, a lot of times- having to say no.

But for now, old soul or not, I want my baby to hang on tight to these precious moments of childhood where a little, balding pint size fellow can still be a girl’s best friend.