From Yum to Yuck and Back Again

Gretchen has a lot of saying she uses in class. “I’m here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” is one she spouts from time to time, but my favorite is, “Don’t yuck my yum!” To be fair, these are not sayings of her own making. Rather she “borrowed” them from others. The first comes from one of her favorite plays (and a movie) “Inherit the Wind” and the other comes from a teacher she once worked with who often talked about students yucky up someone else’s yum.

I thought about this phrase a lot today, especially when we headed out this morning for school. It rained like the dickens last night and on the way to school we both got a little wet. “Yuck,” I moaned and then thought, “I wonder if anyone finds the rain a yum?”

I guess I do from time to time. Like in the summer when we’ve had days and days (perhaps even weeks) of hot weather and all I can think about is going swimming in the lake. But it’s not the summer and the weather we’re having of late is really hard to figure out. I mean, it rained this morning on our walk to school and then again on the way to Monty’s house. Monty didn’t care about the wet, but I was getting kind of tired of it. It made our morning walk a little yucky.

We stayed at home while Gretchen walked in the rain and I spent the entire time sitting at the back window watching the gray clouds mist their misty mist upon the ground. Gretchen walked Gemma, who could care less about the rain and doesn’t give a hoot that she has to wear a raincoat, and then the two of them picked up the boys next door, Oshi and Perrito.

Now those two kind of care about the rain. Well, at first they did. Perrito was kind of upset that he had to get wet, but he quickly got over it after chasing Gemma at the tennis courts.

Oshi, on the other hand, was upset about the rain from start to finish and then when Perrito ran into him knocking him down onto the wet court, he was really miffed. He just kept following Gretchen around saying, “I think it’s time to go home now. Really. Seriously. Do. You. Hear. Me?”

Meanwhile, Gemma is racing around oblivious to the wet weather and can’t imagine why anyone might find it yucky. I guess to her it’s not exactly yummy, but it’s not yucky either.

Next up was Saber, who like his girlfriend Gemma, is oblivious to the weather. Gemma’s Dad calls Saber a walrus and I suppose, like a walrus, he has that kind of coat that protects him from the elements. So despite the rain, he was happy to go on a long walk in a completely different direction up to Woobie’s house.

Along the way, Gretchen tried to take photos of Saber but with his nose collar on, he’s not very cooperative. This was the only good one she could get because in all the others he kept lying down, rolling around, and doing whatever he could to take off the collar.

I don’t blame him. I’m not sure I could handle wearing that thing on my nose either, but once he gets lumbering along on the walk, he forgets about it and is his happy-go-lucky self again.

So up through the neighborhoods they walked feeling the mist on their respective rain gear with the Walrus, I mean Saber, not feeling any yuck whatsoever!

He was even more happy (yummy?) when he got to walk with Woobie who has an equally protective raincoat. But Woobie doesn’t much like the rain and Saber, well, he doesn’t much like his nose collar, but we all have to endure some irritations, don’t we.

After Saber was dropped off at home, Woobie came by our house so we could all go on a walk together. But first, some fetch, which I will play in any kind of weather. Yum, yum, yum! Monty agrees.

Woobie? Well, she’s not that fond of fetch, at least not today, but she was thankful that by the time we made it to the little field, the rain had stopped and she could watch us from the sidelines (or sit with us as she did with Monty) and not get soaked.

It even got nice enough that Monty and I could do what we love to do almost as much as we love playing fetch.

YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYY to see my TUMMMMMMMYYYYYY!

Monty and I walked Woobie home the long way and all of us were happy that the gray misty clouds had finally passed. Blue sky even popped out on occasion and that, my friends, is a definite yum.

Until tomorrow,

Rubin