Month: December 2014

How to get a Black Eye

Have you ever wanted a black eye? I know sounds weird, right? Who wants a black eye? Well think about it for a minute, what better way to garner sympathy without getting hurt so bad you can’t walk or worse end up in a hospital? You know when you’ve had a bad week where nothing you do is right and everybody is on your case; well going into work sporting a black eye will definitely get you looks of sympathy and shock. A myriad of questions about how you got it and what does the other guy look like may even bring offers of support and help if you play it up, wincing from the pain and making excuses about not seeing really well.

Well if you are interested in how to get a black eye without having to go up a very large man in a bar and insult him, which is not a good idea, (that could escalate and you may end up in traction) I have a couple of options for you, that are safer and not mean a trip by ambulance to the emergency room.

First off you need a dog. Not a little dog, little dogs are sweet and cuddly and can’t really do the kind of damage I’m talking about. I mean a big dog. Something big and clumsy and over-exuberant, one that really wants to show you how he feels about life in general. You need a dog that can and will leave a mark when you get up close and personal with the dog. I have a breed in mind, a very large chocolate lab.

Black eye option number one is a simple exercise, all you have to do is approach your large dog when he is excited, bend over and lower your head to just inches above his massive head and nose, do this as if you’re going to pick up something you’ve dropped on the floor. Your dog in his excitement raises his head up to bark in your face slamming his large wet nose into your right eye. Bonus he barks very loudly at the same time and now you’ve ruptured your eardrum and are deaf in the right ear. If done correctly this is guaranteed to blacken your eye and leave your ear ringing, causing you to walk around with a squinty right eye and will have to turn your head to hear anything said to you.

Black eye option number two is also simple to achieve if you have the right conditions. Take your very large dog for a walk in the rain, getting him good and wet. Come home unlock the door, step inside with your dog and take off your gloves so you can remove the leash from his harness. Once again you have to bend over and lower your head down so you are close to the dog’s head. As you reach down to unhook the leash from the dog’s harness, your wonderful large dog that has been standing very patiently waiting, decides to shake his entire body to shed the water from his coat. This time it is his large wet ears that will whip your face and eye like a cat of nine tails. Bonus this option will cause a million short dog hairs to get in your eye leaving it red and irritated in the eye as well as black and bruised around the outside of your eye.

Believe me both of these options will work for you, I know from actual “laboratory” testing. If you don’t have a very large dog and don’t want to bring one home on a permanent basis, I have one I will rent you. This one is guaranteed to leave you bruised and bent. Come to think of it, since this is Christmas Eve, this might be a great gift for that “hard to buy for friend”. Let me know, if you are interested, I would even consider free delivery.

The Jerk and the Doofus

This morning we woke up to the first snowfall of the season. Let me correct the term morning, morning was 1:15am. Mitch ever the dedicated wanted to get up an hour earlier than normal so he could get to work extra early in order to get all of the equipment they use at work up and ready for a day of deicing one airplane after the other. Anyway at 1:15 this morning we had about two inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing fairly heavily.

After I fed the dogs and Mitch in that order, got him to work then it was time for our morning stroll. The dogs started off down the road with Orso the Doofus head down eating snow as he was loping along. He kept lurching ahead wanting to race around and play in the snow. Charlie the Jerk walked along at his usual pace head down sniffing the ground always hunting and because Mitch lets him get away with murder, Charlie has a really irritating tendency to race back and forth from one side of the road to the other, yanking my arm around. It is nearly impossible to be on both sides of the street at the same time, but Charlie gives it his best shot.

We had reached our turn around point on the walk and started back when Orso forgot he was eight years old and suddenly became a two year old again. He lunged forward yanking the leash causing me to lose my balance on the slick road. I went down in what had to be a very graceful plop in the road landing on my butt hard. I lost my grip on the leash and Orso took off with his butt down racing around in circles slipping and sliding in the snow. It was a good thing I let go of the leash because otherwise I would have literally been dragged down the road. On one of the laps around Charlie and me, Orso decided that both of us should join in the winter fun. He ran over me stepping on me and bashing into Charlie. Charlie didn’t forget he is ten years old and snapped at Orso growling and trying fruitlessly to get in a good bite or two, also stepping on me in the process.

Orso undaunted raced off to find a weapon to battle the Jerk with. He came across a stick snatched it up and waved it around whacking Charlie and me in the head. Charlie went after Orso with a deadly purpose, causing Orso to race away barking back at Charlie. Now I have one dog barking and one dog with murder in his eye at 3:30 in the morning. My neighbors just love us.

I was finally able to get back up on my feet and grabbed both leashes got the dogs under control and finished the walk with all of us covered in snow. It’s going to be a long winter.

The Mind is Going

I’m not sure if age is to blame, work stress or the holiday season, but I think I’m definitely losing my mind. Each week I set out a work week’s daily wardrobe selection. The idea is to be able to go in to my closet pick out what I’m going to wear that day and not stand there looking at everything I own with slack jaw and say “I don’t have anything to wear”. Which is certainly not the case, I have plenty to choose from, it’s just that if I don’t plan ahead then I end up wearing the same things over and over. Granted just because I’ve set something out for that particular day, doesn’t mean that I won’t change my mind or maybe weather causes a wardrobe change, it is just helpful for me to at least have made an attempt at pre-planning.

This week I’ve changed my mind on about three of the four days so far this week. I thought I was doing pretty well this morning; I only changed my mind on the sweater I was going to wear with my black slacks. I wanted to wear a scarf and the original sweater choice didn’t look as good with a scarf. I know in the great grand scheme of things, accessorizing my attire is so unimportant, nobody cares what I look like at work, but it makes me happy and that is all that is important to me. Anyway I digress; (see what I mean about the mind going) I put on my new sweater choice and set about choosing a scarf to complement the outfit. Scarf in place then on to decide which earrings to wear, I’m beginning to think I should work from home; the dogs don’t care what I wear. After getting the earrings on I went back into the closet to grab my black pant boots to wear.

I walked to the back corner of the closet and grabbed the left boot put it on then grabbed the right boot and put it on. I turned around and walked out of the closet and closed the door. I picked up my purse and turned off the light and headed toward the kitchen to fill my coffee thermos and pack my lunch. As soon as I stepped off of the rug and hit the bare bamboo floor I noticed that when I stepped with my left foot my heel made a clicking sound with each step but not the right heel. The right heel made no noise with each step. I walked into the kitchen turned on the light and looked down at my boots. The right boot had a rounded toe and rubber soles. The left boot had a squared off toe and a seam up the middle of the shoe with hard soles, it was also brown not black. I was standing there in the kitchen wearing one brown boot and one black boot. Had the left boot not made that clicking sound I would have gone to work wearing one brown boot and one black boot. That would be a bit awkward.

Mind you, Mitch recently took out the lone single bulb light fixture and installed three recessed light fixtures to really brighten up the closet and give it three times more light, so there was no excuse for picking out the wrong boot. I’m either going blind or losing my mind. I think I’d rather lose my mind, at least I could see it coming.

My Inspiration

I get most of my creative inspiration from Mitch and the dogs. Granted all three have been very entertaining over the years giving me lots of good stories to write about. But now the dogs are much older, Charlie is ten and Orso is eight, and for the most part are calm and sedate spending more time sacked out either on our bed or the couch than up doing cute dog tricks. They still drag me around as a boat anchor when they spot something in the dark and want to give chase, just not as much as in the past. Orso will lunge forward give a big woof then sit because he knows I’m going to correct him and part of the correction is to make them sit then lay down, something I’ve been working on with both dogs. Making them sit then down to make them focus on me and break the focus on whatever it was that got them worked up in an agitated state. It works most of the time, but sometimes I still get yanked around getting body parts dislocated.

Mitch occasionally provides me with inspiration, usually because I come up with some off the wall idea or a remodeling project that always goes horribly wrong. With every project I always hear, “Just once I would like something to go right, just once!” Guess what, it never goes well. Everything always takes longer than expected and costs much more than it would if any other person was doing it. Part of the reason for that is because Mitch is so fastidious about his work and because the house we live in was built in three separate sections starting in 1928 and ending in 1986. But now the remodel of the house is almost done after eight long years, so there are less catastrophic remodeling projects to be had.

I came up with what I thought was a really great idea for future writing inspirations, but Mitch is not so keen on the idea. I suggested that since the dogs are old and not as much fun we should get a puppy. Mitch looked at me the same way a person looks a-would be stick up man who’s pointing a gun in their face. Shock and horror was written all over his face. I know we’ve always said that we would not get another dog until Charlie went to the “farm”, but I had a weak moment. My head knows that we can’t bring another dog into the house while Charlie is still alive, but my creative juices wanted a nudge. Charlie is animal aggressive and we have to work very carefully when introducing him to other dogs. It’s a long laborious process. When we rescued Orso, we had to call in an animal behaviorist to work with us just to keep Orso from ending up in the emergency clinic over and over. Even though Charlie is outweighed by thirty pounds, he can be a mean little dog.

“Are you out of your mind?” was Mitch’s response when he could finally talk. “We are not getting a dog.”

I knew that but I just wanted to see the look on his face when I suggested it. Besides if I start mentioning it occasionally, he’ll get used to the idea of getting another dog, in the future.