Aug
10
August 10, 2007
I visited Whole Foods with Riley this afternoon where immediately upon entering the store he snaked out a lightning-fast tentacle from the cart and grabbed the entire contents of a toothpick container on a produce sample table, once I wrestled every single pointy, stabby pick out of his surprisingly impenetrable paw, he lunged the other direction and managed to grip onto a Stability Orange from a large pyramid-like display of fruit, nearly causing a massive tropical catastrophe; I quickly rolled us out of the vegetation and into the dry goods where I was forced to choose organic yogurt-and-barley-infused ultra-expensive dog and catfood because Whole Foods doesn’t carry Purina, they carry Newman’s Own, the contents of which probably include ground-up hippies and pretzels and hundred dollar bills; the next aisle I visited contained many boxes of cereal but not one single box of Cinnamon Life, everything was gluten-free and featured whole grains and millet and powdered tofu sweetened with carob; I moved on to the dairy section and a woman buying kefir sniffed at my Go-gurt choice; when I finally battled my way through the health-conscious, aisle-hogging, Porsche-Cayenne-driving crowd to pay, my total came to $116.04, and I only had two motherfucking bags.
Aug
9
August 9, 2007
You guys cracked me up with your responses on the last post, but if you think I’m clicking ANY of your illustrative links, you’re out of your goddamned mind. Especially when the URL is accompanied by a comment like “This one made MY skin crawl and I LIKE spiders!”
Yeah. Right. Because I want to wake up screaming every night for a MONTH.
I had hoped our Giant House Spider visitation was an anomaly, but JB claims he’s seen at least four (!!!!) in the garage, and he killed one in the bathtub the other morning. I didn’t ask him how, because if he squished it against the tub and didn’t clean the remnants and later that night I unwittingly took a nice warm bubble-and-spider-goo bath, well . . . you know how they say knowledge is power? Sometimes that is just so not true.
Now I’m almost constantly paranoid, of course. I do a visual sweep before cautiously entering a room, and whenever I see something remotely arachnid-like (read: anything smaller than a loaf of bread) I announce my presence with a high, ululating scream of terror. I feel this helps inform any potential spider occupants that they should remove themselves to a less offensive location, such as on the surface of Mars where they belong.
In other news, we had a bad scare with Dog the other day. When JB and I came home on Tuesday, she was gone, having escaped from the backyard some hours before. The construction on the house was particularly loud that day, with sheet rock going in and saws blaring, so we guessed the noise just frightened her enough to squeeze under the temporary makeshift fence back there.
Her custom-made collar with our contact information stamped onto the tag? Just lying there on the patio table, because we’ve grown lazy about putting her collar on before leaving for the day.
JB drove around looking for her, while I trundled around the neighborhood with the stroller trying not to feel foolish about yelling “HERE GIRL! HERE!” into people’s yards. But no dice. Dog was gone.
Our annoying next door neighbor told us she’d seen Dog running loose, but was in “too much of a hurry” to stop and do anything. Thanks, lady. Remind me to crash your next party. With a Molotov cocktail.
Since the local animal rescue offices were closed, as a last ditch effort I printed up some lost dog flyers and posted them on nearby mailboxes and stop signs (is that illegal, posting stuff on stop signs? If so: oops). We spent the evening moping around the house, occasionally stepping outside and yelling Dog’s name. I felt so horrible, because it was entirely our fault, from the hoopty fence to the AWOL collar. I thought of all the times I’ve been impatient with her, booting her out of the way when she was underfoot, pushing her aside when she tries to horn in on some of the affection we give Riley, yelling at her when all she was doing was licking herself.
O, the guilt.
JB made the dire prediction that we had seen the very last of her, and I’m sure he would be really pissed at me if I confided to you that I saw his eyes watering, so let’s just say that sheet rock dust sure can trigger some allergies.
Thankfully, there is a happy ending: a neighbor several blocks away called us late Wednesday morning, having taken Dog in the night before (apparently she was just hanging out on these people’s front door step, waiting to be let in) and discovered one of our flyers the next day. She came home no worse for wear, only slightly muddy from befouling this kind family’s backyard pond.
The fence has been fortified, and Dog’s collar is now permanently in place. Boy, there’s nothing like being threatened with the loss of your pet to re-appreciate their presence. All those little Dog annoyances—the scritch scritch scritch of her toenails and she pads up and down the hallways, the slup . . . slup . . . slup of her self-cleaning tongue baths, the way she lies directly against the couch and breathes Death Lab Halitosis up at me while I’m watching Battlestar Galactica—all of those things now seem like glorious reminders that she’s here with us and not smashed up on the side of a highway.
Hell, I’ve even decided not to get bent out of shape when I vacuum the entire floor and five minutes later it looks like this:
Well. Okay, that DOES still suck, but I can deal. Long live Dog! (So say we all!)
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