Roll With It

Geez, the sun's been around the corner of the house for at least a minute now. Why isn't that fat ass getting ready to walk me? Look at him, sitting in that big chair, stuffing his face with those salty, crunchy, delicious things from that bag. I'll just stand here drooling on his foot until he gives me one or takes me for my afternoon walk, or better yet, does both.
"What's the matter Chandler? Are you ready to go walkies?"
Walkies, walk-walk, whatever. I have to poop damn it. I'll dance around in front of the chair and make a few whimpering noises. That always seems to get my point across.
"You do? Okay big boy, let me put my shoes on."
Oh joy! He's putting those things on his feet. We're going walkies! Quick, quick, put that harness on me, open the damn door. Wheeeee! I'm free...  Okay not free. Open the gate, quick open the gate. Wheeeee! I'm fre... gackkkkk! Damn, I forget that leash every time.
"Calm down Chandler. Walk like a good dog."
I am a good dog, not like that evil dog Brody over there. He is such an asshole that Brody. He stole my girlfriend Cammie. She is such a hot looking bitch, and she was all mine until Brody came along.
"Grrrr... Arf, arf, grrr."
"Stop it Chandler. Sorry Ralph. I just don't know why he hates Brody so much."
I'll show that Brody who owns this street.
"No Chandler. No peeing on the neighbor's car."
Okay no peeing, but oh my god, what is that delicious smell? It's over there, in that grass. Come on big guy, let's go.
"Quit pulling me Chandler."
Oh yeah, this is so fine. What a bouquet, what aroma. This is like heaven.
"Chandler! Quit rolling around in that dog shit!"

Orange Crush

"Whoa, I need my sunglasses."
"Say, are you a human traffic cone?"
"Oh geez, that reminds me. I have to clean up that vomit I left on the bathroom floor."
All weekend long and during the week, I have been hearing those kind of comments. It has happened every time I've gone out with Mark. I don't know what's got into him. First it was the bed spread, now it's his shoes. Early last week, he came through the front door and lit up the living room.
"Do you like my new shoes."
"Uh, um, sure. They're very nice." I lied.
He was wearing the brightest orange shoes I have ever seen. Actually the only orange shoes I have ever seen, not counting Ronald McDonald's. The most embarrassing encounter was last night when we went out to an Irish pub/restaurant. The Irish don't look kindly on people wearing orange. Actually nobody said anything, they just burned his fish and chips, and spit in his Guinness.

I don't know why Mark bought those shoes. He draws enough attention to himself without flaming orange feet. Whatever the reason, I like them. I like the fact that a glow appears in the room moments before Mark does. That way he can't catch me off guard, like when I'm going through the pockets of his pants.

I Should be Dead

I have been bitten by dogs three times. The first two times I put some disinfectant on the bite, bandaged it, and went on with things. Eight days ago was the third time I got bit. I'm not saying what dog, or where the dog was that bit me because of the fact there is some asshole stalker who reads my blog, and seems to have a grudge against dogs. So it is enough to say that I got bit. Again, I put disinfectant on the bite, bandaged it, and continued on with my life. That is until later that evening when my upper arm started twitching. 

I decided to go to WebMD, an internet site where you enter your symptoms and they give you a quick diagnosis. I entered "twitching upper arm" and "dog bite", and WebMD told me that I had rabies. Not only did I have rabies, but it was terminal, there was nothing I could do about it once the symptoms started, and I had seven days left to live. So for seven days I worried. I told Mark that I had to go to the doctor, and then decided that it was too late for the doctor to save me, so why go. Back and forth in my mind I went, go to the doctor, don't go to the doctor. And then yesterday I realized it had been eight days since I had been bitten. That is one day longer than WebMD said I had to live. Not only was I still alive, but my arm had stopped twitching two days earlier. I went back to WebMD and re-read what it said about my symptoms. I had missed one important thing, and that is that the symptom of twitching wouldn't manifest itself until five to seven weeks after the dog bite.

I learned three things over the last week. Don't look up your symptoms on WebMD, it will only scare you. Go to the doctor the minute you think you should, it's better to be safe and look stupid than be dead. And don't try to get too close to a dog that clearly hates your guts, because it will probably bite you.

Taking a Leak

I live in a house of cards. A fragile matrix of mechanical parts, electronics, and plumbing. Touch one part of this stew and another reacts.

I was sitting in my big fluffy chair last night watching American Idol, when one of their handy ten minute commercial breaks came along. I decided to take advantage of it and get a snack and a drink, but first I had to go take a leak. I stepped into the hall on the way to the bathroom, and I heard a squishing sound. I looked down, I was standing in a quarter inch of water. I opened the closet door, and sure enough more water. Water everywhere.

Here is the chain of events as best I can figure out. It all had started earlier in the day when I was assessing the damage under the kitchen sink. Some months ago the garbage disposal had sprung a leak. This in turn soaked the cabinet under the sink, which caused the shelf under there to expand and ultimately collapse. The collapsing shelf was to be repaired by me, so I went to the hall closet to get some tools. When I moved the tools, I noticed the condenser pump for the A/C was not positioned correctly, so I moved it back against the wall where I wanted it. Within a few minutes I noticed that the air-conditioning had stopped working so I went around and reset all the circuit breakers. Still no A/C. The only variable was the fact that I had touched the condenser pump. So I returned to the hall closet and gave the pump a tap. It took off working, the A/C kicked on, and all was good with my world. That is until I took that pee break and found that the goddamned condenser pump was leaking. If I had left that mother scratching pump alone earlier in the day, I'd have already taken that pee, got my snack and drink, and still had a few minutes to spare. As it is, I made it back just as Ryan Seacrest was introducing the next sob story. Those American Idol ad breaks are way too long.

Pool Poo

Just about every evening, around the same time, the backyard cats step away from their food bowls and let the neighborhood possums eat. Never mind that the possums have rat faces and rat tails, the cats aren't into dispatching them. So instead of the cats killing them, I have very healthy possums who have fur that is quite luxurious, all on my dime. And then there is my dog Chandler. He hates the possums more than I do, and throws himself at the living room window trying to get at them. This happens every evening and I should be used to it, but each time he goes nuts at that window it scares me half to death. Speaking of having the shit scared out of me, it seems that I now have a raccoon that has decided my swimming pool is a great place to take a crap. Every morning this week, I have gone out back and found a pile of raccoon shit on the edge of the pool. In exactly the same spot each day I have found a pile of poo that rivals anything a dog might leave. So each morning I have to hose it off, scrub the coping, and just in case somebody wants to go swimming I dump some chlorine into the pool. I don't mind the raccoon so much. They're cute little guys. Sure they carry rabies, but they're cute. Not like those rat faced possums. I don't even know where they're shitting.

Jack Frost Nipping

I called my mom yesterday and she told me about how she had locked herself out of her house when she went to get the newspaper. My mom is ninety one years old. It was fourteen degrees Fahrenheit, with snow and ice on the ground.

I'm sure my dad thought he was doing the right thing when he bought the home he and my mom retired to. They had no more children in the house, no more relatives to care for. They wanted a place that would be maintenance free and pleasant, so my dad bought a home in one of those places that only sells to old people. Little did he know that he would almost be responsible for my mom freezing to death twenty years later.

So there is my mom in her little house dress, slippers, and a coat, pushing her aluminum walker down the driveway as the kitchen door clicks shut behind her. When she returned with the paper, she couldn't get back in the door. Her nearest neighbor is fifty feet away. That's as good as a mile when pushing a walker with tennis balls through the snow, but somehow she did it. She managed to make it all the way over to her first nearest neighbor. The deaf one, the one who couldn't hear her knocking on the door. When that failed, she started across the street to the other neighbor who was just leaving in his pickup truck. As mom flailed away, waving her arms franticly at him, the nice neighbor waved and smiled as he drove off. For forty five minutes my dear mother wandered around trying to get somebody's attention. The problem is she lives in a development full of only old people. People who can't see very well, who probably thought that was just a snowman in the middle of the street as they drove by. A snowman in slippers pushing a walker around. Luckily the pickup truck neighbor came back home and realized mom wasn't waving to be friendly.

There is a reason I live in a normal neighborhood. A place with kids playing in the street, folks walking their dogs past the house, a place with life. If I were ever to lock myself out of the house I wouldn't have much of a problem finding somebody to help me. I wouldn't ever have to worry about freezing to death while a bunch of old deaf, and blind people whizzed past in their Buicks. But then again, I live in Florida. No way I could freeze here. I'd probably get eaten by some exotic beast instead.

Sick

I was laying in bed, it was the middle of the night, and I heard the unmistakable sound of bagpipes wheezing out their last gasp of air. Now where in the hell could that sound be coming from I wondered? It was an unusually quiet night other than that. It was cold outside, in the fifties, so I had turned off the air-conditioning and all the fans. The only sound I heard was that wheezing, so I held my breath to see if I could hear what direction the sound was coming from. Nothing, the sound had stopped. It was when I started breathing again that it became obvious, it was my lungs. My lungs were making that horrible, wheezing, bagpipe sound.

Earlier this week I caught some kind of mild bug. A little scratchy in the throat, a little phlegm, and not much else. Apparently last night, it blossomed into something more. My throat is very sore, I'm sneezing, and my body is a bit achy. Not to worry though, I have a full bottle of Nyquil. So when I realized that I was playing 'Scotland the Brave' on my lungs, I got out of bed and took a big swig of the stuff. That was when I heard the potato chip bag in the kitchen rustling. Odd, I thought, what is Mark doing eating potato chips in the middle of the night? Except he wasn't. Mark was in bed, as was Sasha, and Chandler. Remember, it was cold last night, and on cold nights here in Florida the rats like to come inside for the warmth. They just aren't as hardy as their northern cousins. I went into the kitchen, screwed up some courage and started poking at the potato chip bag. Nothing happened. I poked around a little more, but still no rat. After a few more pokes I decided that I was just imagining what I had heard, and went back to bed. No sooner had my head hit the pillow and I heard the potato chip bag again. Thankfully the Nyquil was taking effect, and I was feeling the land of nod beckoning. So I just closed my eyes, and slowly drifted off to the sound of potato chips and bagpipes.