Tag: humor

My Exciting Life

Is anybody out there bored and want some excitement in their lives? If so, come on over, I have fun and excitement to spare and I would love to share. The only catch is that you have to be up and ready to go at 4:30 in the morning. That’s when most of my fun happens, when it’s dark outside. No it’s not kinky; my exciting life revolves around my dogs. Our morning walks are always fun and sometimes quite thrilling, especially when I get to play boat anchor as they drag me off into the brush after a deer or a raccoon. This morning was no different, the only difference this time was it was all my fault.

Early this morning sometime after midnight it started snowing. We didn’t get much, only a dusting, just enough to cover the sidewalks and the grass. There were also a few slick spots on the roads here and there. We started off as usual with Orso walking searching for the perfect spots to pee and Charlie jerking back and forth trying his level best to pee on both sides of the road simultaneously, which is one of the reasons my chiropractor loves me so much. The walk was pretty much uneventful even when we walked past the ravine, Orso had his head up ears cocked hoping for something to move down there so he could charge off after whatever it was.

We walked out to the turnaround point and started back when both dogs headed down into the ditch on the side of the road, walking along like they were searching for the perfect spot to poop. Orso is so easily distracted that when he starts exhibiting the telltale signs we pay close attention and make sure all the elements for the perfect spot is right there for him. If you don’t own a dog, you won’t understand, but bear with me. So anyway, I was walking along the side of the road watching the dogs carefully so one doesn’t run into the other one and both are spaced out with plenty of room to do their thing. Orso was sniffing the ground and walking slowly, Charlie was a little higher up on the slope of the hill going up on the far side of the ditch walking slowly and I just knew we were going to have success when I got a little too close to the edge of the road.

I wasn’t looking where my feet were going and I stepped on a crumbling spot at the edge of the road and stepped off the road and into the ditch with them, only it wasn’t that graceful. I stumbled as I stepped off lost my balance and fell face first in the ditch almost on top of Charlie. He scooted out of the way and Orso tried really hard to escape in the other direction, but was all wrapped up in the leashes and could only stand there waiting for certain death. There I was lying face first in the ditch with one dog on one side of me and one dog on the other side of me just standing there looking at me not really sure what had just happened. I worked my way back up to my feet and reached down to pick up the leashes. I was covered in snow, dead leaves and who knows what else that resided in the ditch. Plus I had ruined the mood. There was nothing left to do but finish the walk in shame, knowing I was responsible for them being constipated.

But now I have another new name to go along with my list of alias. “Falls off Roads”, has a certain ring about it don’t you think?

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 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.

The Chair

My long suffering husband, Mitch, is no wimp. He’s not afraid of too many things in this world. I’ve seen him stand his ground among men a lot bigger and stronger than he is and come out ahead. In his youth his father taught him to box in order to fight back against school bullies, something he’s carried over into his adulthood. But there is one thing he is terrified of, me. I can instill terror and panic in Mitch in less than two minutes flat. I know that’s bold statement but I can prove it.

Last Saturday I had him take me to Nebraska Furniture Mart to buy a couple of accent chairs for the living room. He didn’t really want to go, you know how exciting furniture shopping is to a man, but nevertheless he went. As we were walking into the building he commented, “So we’re going to get a couple of chairs to match the couch?” (Mitch likes everything to match, coffee table and end tables alike, sofa, loveseat and matching chair, you get the picture)

I shook my head and said, “No, I have something else in mind. The room would be very drab all the same color, no I want some punch in the room. You know, I want something with a bold pattern and some contrasting colors.” He turned and looked at me, eyes a little wider, like someone who’d just been told they had cancer.

“Colors, patterns, what colors and how big a pattern?” This while his left eye started to twitch.

I said, “Oh I don’t know, maybe red or orange, something bold. I’ll know it when I see it.” The twitch got more pronounced. Then I said, “I was thinking of buying two different chairs not a matching set. Something to give the room more punch.” His eyes widen and he sucked in his breath trying to picture the unbalanced room in his mind’s eye. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

As we wandered around looking at the variety of chairs, Mitch kept trying to get me to look at brown or beige chairs and I pointed out all of the chairs with wonderful patterns and colors other than brown or beige. He would sit in the ones I would point to and say how uncomfortable they were, like he would ever sit in it anyway. I found one chair that was a sort of barrel shape and had very large red and brown circles covering the chair. Mitch looked at it and I could swear he sort of clutched his chest and looked skyward as if to say, “Look out Martha this is the big one! I’m coming home!”

He said, “Do you really like this?”

I said, “Not especially, I just want to see you flinch.”

About an hour later I finally found a chair that I really liked. It was a cream colored fabric with red and brown and black writing all over the chair, almost like old envelopes and cancelled postage stamps. It had a low back and sloping arm rests, the perfect size. I could see that Mitch wasn’t sold on it, so I decided that I would look around a bit more and found another chair that was also cream colored with dark brown butterflies stamped all over it and proclaimed this was the one. Given the choice of either butterflies or antique writing, he went with the antique writing. Butterflies was just way over the top for him, I think it would have given him nightmares.

When I suggested that we buy both, Mitch was convinced that the room wasn’t large enough for two chairs. Funny, if I was going to buy matching solid color chairs, there was enough for two, but two different chairs were way too big for the room. In order to not send him to the hospital with a coronary I found a round ottoman that I liked and bought it to go in the room with the chair. This way, I have one chair and the ottoman can be used another place to sit. Genius.

Poor Mitch, what he has to put up with.

Day 2 – The Continuing Saga of the Hotel Room from Hell

Thankfully Mitch brought soap from home so at least I could be clean and not forced to use the used bar of soap, which I threw in the trash. I finished my shower, put on my makeup and fixed my hair. Yes I know, I’m going to walk around in the field carrying a gun, tripping over roots and stepping into badger holes, maybe even get shot by a fellow hunter, but at least I have on makeup and under my hunting hat my hair had been washed. All dressed and ready to go I left Mitch to shower and get ready and walked around to the front desk to check out the free complimentary breakfast.

There were frozen waffles, prepackaged cinnamon rolls cut in half, whole wheat and white slices of bread, a couple of apples, four packets of instant oatmeal and a choice of either raisin bran or frosted flakes cold cereal. Carb city, yummy. I popped two frozen waffles in the toaster and poured a glass of orange juice for Mitch. I buttered the waffles and poured syrup over the lukewarm waffles and carried them back for Mitch. After unloading the waffles and orange juice I headed back with my own oatmeal packet from home. I searched for hot water, but no hot water was not an option. How do you make hot oatmeal without hot water? My option was to add water from the faucet and put the bowl in the microwave to heat it up. Of course the only bowl offered was Styrofoam which meant I was going to get all of those bad nasty Styrofoam chemicals transferred from the bowl to my oatmeal. I don’t know how true that is but I figure why push it.

As I turned to walk back to our room Mr. Happy came up to me to tell me that the dogs couldn’t stay in the room if we weren’t there with them. I asked what he meant and he said, “You in 112?” I said that I was, he said again, “Dogs can’t stay in room if you are gone.” I assured him that the dogs would stay with us. How much fun would we have walking around in the field searching for birds without our chief sniffers? I walked back to the room finished up breakfast, loaded up the dogs and headed out for a day of communing with nature.

I had my fingers crossed for fresh towels, clean sheets and Kleenexes, but I wasn’t holding my breath. We got out in the field about nine a.m. and had really good luck in the morning. Orso turned out to finally get it, that he was a bird dog. We called it a day about 4:30 in the afternoon and headed back to the luxurious suite of our dreams. We walked in and saw that the bed looked the same as we left it, the sheets pulled up and the comforter pulled over the pillows. The sheets hadn’t been changed. I walked into the bathroom and saw towels folded and stacked into the slots for the towels. I don’t know if they were clean or just refolded. I looked on the back of the toilet and saw a new package of soap, that wasn’t opened yet. I could just imagine how busy the housekeeping staff was with seven rooms occupied.

But guess what, still no Kleenexes. There must be a world shortage.

The Hotel Room from Hell

Once a year maybe two if we’re lucky, we head to central Nebraska to go pheasant hunting. For the last five years we’ve stayed in a little town in central Nebraska at a national chain. The rooms have always been clean and the staff very friendly. Last year we didn’t go hunting because I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had my surgery about the time we normally go hunting. When I called to reserve our room a man answered with a very heavy accent that made conversation a struggle with a lot of repeating on both our parts. I was just hopeful that I had actually made a reservation and there would be a room for us when we got there on Friday evening. It turned out that we would have been better off if we haven’t gotten the reservation. The name had changed and was no longer a part of the chain. The man at the front desk was the same one I spoke with on the phone. In person he was not very friendly, I don’t think he ever smiled in his life. He spoke loudly and repeated everything I said. Granted I had a difficult time understanding him. I tried but I am not good at accents. He gave me the room key cards and pointed to the direction of the room.

We drove around the building found the room and started unloading. Evidently the new owners were economizing. The room was tiny with one bed, my mistake, I usually ask for two beds but having missed a year I forgot. There was a piece of cardboard taped to the wall presumably covering a hole. Spackle and paint must be very rare in this part of Nebraska. There was no in-room mini coffeepot, good thing we brought our own. The towel bar over the sink had no bar, just the two mounting brackets supporting the missing bar. The sink stopper was lying on the sink next to the sink, not in the drain for some reason. There were two bath towels, two hand towels and two wash cloths. One roll of toilet paper and no Kleenexes. There was a small refrigerator that sounded like it was on its last leg. Mitch’s favorite thing about the room was the hand written piece of paper with the new name of the hotel taped to the telephone in the room. Vary classy.

The bed was a full size bed, not queen size bed mind you, a full size. At least the television worked. I walked back to the front office and asked Mr. Happy for a roll of toilet paper and a box of Kleenexes. He handed me a roll of toilet paper and said that I had to wait for housekeeping the next day for the Kleenexes. I said that there were no Kleenexes in the room now and I wanted a box today. He said that I had to wait for housekeeping tomorrow. Customer service 101 was a class he evidently skipped. I walked back to our room toilet paper in hand and started to get ready for bed when I realized that I forgot my contact lens solution. Mitch offered up a bottle of water for me to use. Thanks but I don’t that would have worked. I jumped in the car and buzzed across the highway to the Walmart for contact lens solution and squirt cheese for the dogs to hide Charlie’s pill in. I should have bought two pillows and pillowcases, but I hadn’t seen the pillows before I left the room.

While I was gone, Mr. Happy knocked on the door of our room. It took Mitch a minute to answer thinking it was me and that I forgot my key. Anyway when Mitch finally answered the door the dogs bounded out in front of him and out the door before he could stop them. Mitch always thinks that everyone loves dogs. He looks at our dogs as big friendly dogs that love everyone, he forgets that a lot of people are apprehensive around dogs, especially large dogs. Mr. Happy was a few feet away from the door with a plunger in his hand thinking that because I asked for a roll of toilet paper I must have clogged the toilet and we were under water. He took one look at the dogs romping toward him only seeing giant brown monsters with poisonous venom dripping from three foot long fangs coming to eat him. He waved the plunger back and forth in front of him like a light saber warding off the evil creatures of darkness. Of course by waving the plunger at the dogs Charlie saw it as a threatening act causing him to bark and growl at the man. Orso just wanted to be petted by someone new and just kept moving toward the man. Mitch got them under control and shooed back into the room and turned to Mr. Happy. He asked if we needed a plunger to which Mitch politely declined.

I came back contact solution in hand and finished getting ready for bed. That’s when I realized I should have bought pillows. The bed had two pillows on it, one small pillow and one smaller pillow. The bed had a definite tilt to it. The foot of the bed was higher than the head of the bed. Sitting on the bed felt like sitting on quarter inch plywood laid over springs, not comfortable at all. To top it off, Orso was disoriented and clingy, making himself at home across the foot of the bed, shortening the length of the bed by two feet. Mitch on one side, me on the other and here comes Charlie making himself comfortable between us. A full size bed is large enough for the two of us, but add in one hundred eighty pounds of dogs and the bed gets really small very quickly. Charlie wasn’t happy with the hardness of the bed and kept squirming around flopping on my stomach. We laid there for about thirty minutes listening to the refrigerator cycle on and off. I finally couldn’t take it anymore got up and unplugged it. Between Orso at the foot of the bed, Charlie squirming around in the bed and a bed that felt like sleeping on plywood neither one of us got more than a couple of hours sleep. If I hadn’t been afraid of what disgusting things had been ground into to the carpet I would have slept on the floor.

We lasted until about 4:30 in the morning, that was all my lower back could take. I got up and noticed a puddle of water on the credenza next to the refrigerator. I looked down on the floor at the shotgun cases directly below the fridge and saw that two of the four cases were wet. Great. Neither one of us thought about the refrigerator defrosting when I unplugged it.

Mitch took the shotguns out of the cases to see how wet they were, salvaging three. One of mine, my back up shotgun took the brunt of the water. He dismantled it to dry out. I turned on the water in the shower turning the knob all the way over to the hot side in order to get the water warm enough, pulled the flow knob to shower and can only say that the best part about the shower was that the water was wet. I realized I forgot soap and reached for the bar of soap offered by the hotel. I picked up the package to unwrap it and discovered that it was already open and the bar had been used. Super disgusting.

It was going to be a long three nights. This trip was starting off a high note for sure.

Down to the Nitty Picky

This is what our remodel has been reduced to. Because of previous battles and total opposite styles in taste and décor, our never-ending long suffering remodel of this money pit called our home, Mitch is now consulting my opinion on even the minutest detail. Believe me when I say that when we first started this arduous journey, I didn’t think our marriage would survive. We argued constantly about everything. The biggest stumbling block to our relationship was the master bath. We totally gutted it down to the studs and started over from there. The only fixture that stayed in its original spot was the toilet. And that was only because of the difficulty in moving the drain. We, meaning Mitch doing the labor and me being the creative genius, have moved from room to room bringing this hodge podge house into some kind of homey updated house.

Now we are down to the last two bedrooms, laying bamboo floors and rebuilding the closets. We fought over the placement of the closets and we removed them because of poor original construction. People back then used whatever material was available and no building code was followed. I finally gave in to Mitch’s idea of dividing the one closet into two with a wall separating them and with doors opening into each room. Mitch had a genius idea of making them cedar closets which for those rooms is very practical as well as a unique idea. Those rooms are on the old side of the house, which was originally built in 1928 and added on to in 1934, which means that side of the house is not as tightly constructed leaving room for mustiness and the possibility of mold. So the cedar closet was a stroke of genius. The only thing left to argue about was what type of door to install for each closet, bi-fold or sliding, solid or louvered. Louvered bi-fold won (my idea). I bought wooden knobs thinking simple easy plain, no fuss, no muss. It wasn’t until Mitch opened the doors up to remove the hardware and prepare to be stained, that he found that each door had its own wooden knobs.

When it came down to the stain, that was another dilemma, the knotty pine planks are all eighty years old and I’m pretty sure that the stain used back then is long gone, even if we knew what the color was. Mitch went on the hunt buying about a dozen small cans of stain to try and come as close as possible to the original color. A friend suggested that we go to Sherwin Williams with a piece of one of the existing boards and have them create a matching color. Mitch stained the doors, the knobs (all four of them) and the trim. When it came down to putting the knobs on the closet doors, he called me in the make a decision, which knob did I want on the doors. I looked at the knobs and laughed out loud, they were so similar. The only difference was a slight rounded top on one and a flat top on the other. I asked if he was serious and said that he could pick, to which he said no way, I had to pick.

Which one do you think I should pick, you know they are so very different.

knob picture

One of Those Days

You hear stories all the time about the strange behavior of people and animals during a full moon. I’ve always laughed at the stories and made jokes about it. Wednesday morning it was even better, we had a full moon and a total lunar eclipse of the full moon. It’s called a Blood Moon, because of the reddish glow the moon has at the peak of the eclipse. I think the eclipse caused the lunar waves to scatter and pull the earth into mass chaos.

As usual the craziness started on the morning walk. I took my camera along with the dogs to try and capture a few shots of the start of the eclipse. Both dogs were behaving well until we topped the hill and started down. At the bottom of the hill there was a truck parked on the side of the road with a man standing in the middle of the road holding a flashlight. He had attached a large hose to the fire hydrant and had opened the water valve to the hydrant causing water to gush across the street forming a large pool of water. He had the flashlight pointed down at the water looking for something. Now I don’t know about you but trying to see things floating around in rushing water is something I’ve not mastered. Maybe he just liked looking at rushing water in the dark, or maybe he was a victim of the lunar eclipse. Anyway seeing a man in the road that time of the morning is something the dogs don’t usually see, so consequently they took exception to his presence and let him know by barking and growling letting the man know whose road it was at 4:30 in the morning.

In a rush to get back home, get showered and dressed so I could get back out and take more pictures of the eclipse as it progressed across the sky, I pretty much dragged the dogs along, leaving little time for them to pee along the way. I rushed through putting on my makeup, luckily I applied mascara to both eyes, threw some clothes on and went looking for my tripod. Of course that morning I couldn’t find it and knowing I was running out of time I grabbed my camera and went outside looking for a better vantage spot to catch more of the eclipse. By then the moon had moved across the sky and the best spot meant a trek up a gravel road in the dark, the perfect location to twist an ankle. The eclipse was almost at its peak and the moon was well on its way to a full dark reddish color. I tried but couldn’t get any good shots without the tripod to hold the camera still long enough for the shutter to fully open and close and being on a gravel road probably wouldn’t been much better even if I had the tripod. Oh well, I tromped back down the road went back in the house and realized that the clothes I put on did not look good which necessitated a wardrobe change.

I changed my clothes and went to fill my coffee thermos, pack my lunch and head out the door. Orso turned and walked into the dining room and proceeded to vomit his breakfast all over the rug, not just in one spot but two. Why couldn’t he have done that on the tile floor in the kitchen? I couldn’t get to him fast enough. I went through almost a full roll of paper towels cleaning it up, which I put in a plastic trash bag. Wednesday was trash day so I thought perfect, I’d just walk this bag down to the trash can and it won’t have to sit in the trash can for a week. I walked back in the house and washed my hands for about five minutes loaded my lunch container and walked it and my thermos to the living room with my purse so I wouldn’t forget anything when I left for work. I called Charlie and nothing, he wasn’t there. I waked from room to room with Orso in tow but no Charlie anywhere in the house. It dawned on me that he must have followed me out the front door when I took the bag of vomit and paper towels to the trash can.

Now I was late and missing one dog. I walked to the front door calling him and no Charlie. I then walked to the kitchen door and called, still no dog. I went back inside and walked to the back door and called, sure enough he came running. My first thought was that I was really glad he came back and my second thought was that we have too many doors. I got the dogs settled gave them each a rawhide chew, hoping that Orso doesn’t vomit again after I leave, grabbed my stuff and headed out the door.

It dawned on me as I drove to work that the blood moon scattered lunar pull was effecting the drivers more so than normal, I watched one driver ahead of me drift from the far left lane to the middle lane then on to the right without using a turn signal and didn’t once turn to look to see if there might be something in his path. He didn’t stop drifting until his right front tire drifted right off the road, then of course he overcorrected and almost smacked the car to his left. I just shook my head and passed him as quickly as possible so I didn’t get caught in the debris field.

After everything that had gone wrong Wednesday morning during the Blood Moon eclipse, I became a firm believer in the hold the moon has on the crazies.

My New Nickname

I have a few nicknames that Mitch has given me over the years, “Speed Racer” when I spun out at the airport and crashed going too fast on wet pavement, or “Dances with Ladders” after my latest tryst carrying a ladder down a hill (it didn’t end well). But today I can add a new nickname to my list. This time it’s the dogs that can take credit for my new nickname.

On our morning predawn walk today things started off as always, Charlie and Orso sniffing and peeing on everything wandering back and forth on both sides of the street making the most of their time and bodily fluids. I was distracted thinking about a million different things, calling the doctor to rewrite a prescription, what I was going to wear to work and what to take for lunch, you know everything that goes on in your head as you go about your day. Granted, it was all my fault, I know better, when walking the dogs in the dark I have to be on guard constantly for critters large and small that might cross our path.

Just as we had crossed the road to head down a long tree lined dark stretch of road, Charlie and Orso either saw or caught the scent of something ahead. I didn’t see or hear anything but they did. Charlie was on my left side and Orso was on my right side, when Charlie jerked around and circled behind me yanking my left arm behind my back to come around and stand next to Orso, both lunging and growling at something. Jerking my arm around behind my back with enough force and the combined force of Orso lunging forward with Charlie meant my body had a choice, dislocate my shoulder or spin around and follow the leashes. In reality what happened was a combination of both. I would like to say that I pirouetted around like a ballerina, but in reality I jerked around lost my balance and very ungracefully ended up sitting down hard in the middle of the street with my feet splayed out in front of me.

The dogs turned around to look me in the face with what looked like embarrassment that I was so clumsy. How could they possibly be tough dogs facing the unseen danger ahead with this woman who can’t even stay on her feet? I on the other hand was not so pleased with their attempt to be guardians of the roads. I stood back up dusted off my behind and made sure nothing was broken or bent. Evidently whatever was out there fled in terror, not so much from the ferocity of the dogs, but because of a small woman flaying around like a madwoman.

My new nickname, “Sits in the Road”.