Today I'm celebrating my 4th trip around the sun. That's right - today's my birthday! Go ahead, you can say it - Go, Gus! Go, Gus! It's your birthday! It's your birthday!
What am I doing to celebrate my birthday, you ask? I'm thinking a lot about how boring and predictable my humans are. This was especially relevant over the recent holidays, which I guess is why their boring-ness is on my mind.
Mom took offense to my summary of their holidays as them just doing all the same things they did last year. "That's not boring!" she said. "We have traditions, that's all."
"Tra - what?" I asked.
"Traditions. Those same things we do every year are special to us. That's why we make sure to do them each time Christmas rolls around, and that makes them traditions."
Mom went on to explain that being predictable is something they look forward to. The fact that I don't look forward to it is apparently immaterial.
"Didn't you enjoy all the stuff we did for Christmas?" Mom asked.
"Well, let's see," I thought out loud. "Christmas cookie baking smelled just as glorious as it did last year, but I guess only giving me a few morsels of a broken sugar cookie is part of the tradition. And if I thought watching every single version of A Christmas Carol with Dad last year was arduous, doing it this year knowing exactly how many I had to make it through before we even started was torture. The other Christmas movies were all the same ones we watched last year and the year before and in practically the exact same order! Big Brother got to eat all the Advent calendar candy yet again, no one asked me to participate in the family Christmas concert, and I got the exact same squeaky tennis balls as a gift!"
"Alright," Mom said, giving me the literal hand. "Let me stop you right there. If you didn't eat every, single, blessed thing from lovies to socks to sticks to toys, we could get you a different present! And do you play a musical instrument? No, you do not. Neither do I. That's why Dad and Big Brother do the concert at the Christmas party. There's a goal for this year for you - take up the tambourine or something, and maybe you can join in next Christmas."
"The movies . . ." Oh, boy. Mom was really rolling now. ". . . are in the same order with intent. The closer we get to Christmas, the more Christmasy they get - on our family's scale of Christmas-ness."
Now she was really making things up. Christmas-ness? I rolled my eyes and walked away from her as she got started on how chocolate will kill me and that's why Big Brother gets the Advent calendar treats. I guess she never heard of hard candies or even little Milk Bones for little brother dogs. She was sure fired up about my attack on their predictability - excuse me . . . traditions - but she did have a valid point on why it's tradition to give me tennis balls.
There was definitely a chill in the air between me and Mom, so I switched on the gas fireplace and hopped into my beanbag. I was mentally running through all the other Christmas stuff they do, when I got to the light show. Every year, they drive almost an hour to the state fairgrounds, in the middle of the week, after dinner, to do a drive-through light show. This year, I got to go. I was just happy to be tagging along and had no idea where we were headed. It was raining pretty hard, and this seemed to dismay the family, but because of the weather, the line was pretty short. Dad paid a hefty fee to drive the truck through the gate, Big Brother tuned the radio to the station listed on a sign at the ticket window, and Mom put the back windows down so she could see better. I wanted to point out that the rain was coming in, and it was cold, but she was so pumped, I'm not sure she cared. Once we got rolling, I noticed the lights blinked off and on to the holiday music, and it was actually pretty cool.
They knew what was coming obviously, because they kept shouting out their favorite decorations - "There's the toy soldiers!" or "There's the singing Christmas lights!" or "I love this tunnel!" I got the feeling it was the same dang show they drove through every year, and I wasn't at all surprised at the time. But looking back on it, it was pretty fun, and I have to admit, I hope they take me with them next year. Incidentally, the singing Christmas trees were my favorite.
The smell of freshly cooked chicken wafting my direction shook me from my thoughts, and I knew what that meant - birthday dinner! My special meal is freshly cooked chicken with some of Mom's famous dog ice cream for dessert!
"You don't get bored of this do you?" Mom asked in a smart-warty tone, as I came into the kitchen to supervise Dad's cooking of my dinner. "Same special meal every year, but you eat it right up. Maybe this is another tradition you'd like us to get rid of?"
Ah, well played, Mom, well played. I guess I can finally see their point on the predictability. I do look forward to this treatment, and it never gets old. I guess when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. All I can say is, Ebenezer Scrooge here I come!
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