"BARK, BARK, BARK!"

For Christmas this year we went to my cousin's house.

"I'm not sleeping here," says Gio immediately referring to how we usually dump the kids off and flee for our sanity. Sometimes even for a few nights.

"Why?" I ask concerned for the life of our infrequent desperately needed escapades away from our kids.

"Because her dog is always yelling," he says. "BARK, BARK, BARK!" he explains.

My cousin had another dog, Shannon, for years, who if I described her as the best dog in the world ever, would be an understatement tantamount to calling Mount Everest a hill.

The kicker is Shannon the Better than the Most Perfect Dog in the World Could Ever Hope To Be, never even came in the house. No. She sat right outside the kitchen door in the laundry room, her living and sleeping quarters, watching her people with contentment.

My cousin likes a nice neat and tidy house. In fact, we think she got all the clean and tidy genes for the entire family. Or that she was switched in the hospital at birth. In one morning she achieves more than I ever will in my entire life.

So it's ironic that the new dog, a lap dog I should say, owns the house and my cousin.

My cousin also has a cat, but we didn't see her very much, because she is not the favorite child. The favorite child is the yelling dog. Even if the cat thought about trying to work her way up the love pole, the dog would knock her off, literally. He is a very jealous, yelling dog.

Although I think the cat is plotting her revenge because every time anyone gets near the cat she "hisses and pops." She got my husband, first. She was hidden in the bathroom as he was about to sit down on the porcelain throne when he heard her menacing hissing and popping, pulled up his pants, and ran for his life.

She's a pretty cat. Maybe she sensed my husband's dogness, so I gave her another chance, which was met by hissing, but no popping.

"She just hisses," my cousin assures me. But when I reached in to pet her, her paw reached out swatting. I immediately knew my cousin was living in a place, I refer to as, "Da Nial." Yes, I frequent that place too. Don't all parents?

Next day, Vinny asks, "Mommy are you going to put the butt attack video on the blog?"

"Well, I don't know", I say. "Oh yeah, I guess."

Just so you know, right before I started filming my cousin's cat and dog, the cat was sleeping peacefully on the bed. The same bed, as I recall, my cousin used to instruct us, "not to lay on during the day because the bed will get messed up." The same bed the cat and dog now play on.

Glad her cat and dog got her over that issue. Kids do that for parents, get them over issues. Unfortunately, they also wake us up, like shrieking alarm clocks, to new issues we didn't even know we had, like insomnia. Oh well, guess I sort of knew about that one. But I had no idea about my extreme aversion to shrieking, screaming and squawking.

Although I have to credit our messy family for getting my cousin over many of her neat freak issues. She never complains while we are there making messes, and quietly cleans up after we leave.

Although she does say, "don't leave your stuff here. You people always forget to take all of your stuff."

But that's what relationships are for, right? People trigger our issues and it's up to us to get over them. Usually by accepting other peoples quirky faults, that frequently mirror our own.

Yes, it's all very interesting isn't it? I mean I'm sitting here blogging that my cousin's dog is out of control, but what does she think of my kids. Or worse, what does she think of my dog? I know my kids aren't angels, well not perfect angels, anyways.

Oh and I almost for forgot, my cousin said, "No, the cat doesn't smell like the dog's butt."

I couldn't verify that for myself however, because I couldn't get close enough to the cat.