Tag: satire

What a Day!

What a fun day Tuesday was, I couldn’t ask for a better day, oh sure. I woke up with a monster headache for the third day in a row. Switching from Daylight Savings Time to normal Central Time is a killer, even though we gained back that hour we lost in the spring. I keep waking up an hour earlier which is not good since we get up at 2:30 in the morning because of Mitch’s work schedule. Charlie and Orso are totally confused and don’t understand why they are eating an hour later but their stomachs are still on Daylight Savings Time. They were being especially annoying poking and pacing letting me know just how put out they were waiting for me to get my contacts in and clothes on. Ever tried putting a contact lens in when all of a sudden you get a jab in the back of your butt? Super good time.

The morning just kept getting better and better. I unplugged my phone from the charger pushed the button to turn it on and nothing happened. The screen stayed black and the phone felt hot. Wonderful, phone dead. It is two years old but I wasn’t ready for an upgrade, it worked just fine for me. I guess Sprint had other ideas and probably secretly sent a self-destruct code to my phone while it was charging. You don’t realize how attached to the little buggers you are until it doesn’t work. I always carry my phone when walking the dogs because between my “natural grace” and the things that go bump in the dark, I want to be able to call for help when they drag me off a cliff chasing some deer. I told the dogs that they better not knock my down or drag me around since I had no phone, like they care. I spent the day randomly calling my cell phone just to see if anyone called and left a message. No messages, just goes to show you that I really shouldn’t be so attached.

I was swamped all day at work with no time to take a breath, which makes the day go by faster, but didn’t help my headache. I had a consultation appointment with a plastic surgeon late in the day to discuss whether or not a mastectomy was a viable option and what the recovery time was. I have already read the horror story articles about women that the surgery didn’t go well for them, complications and infections, multiple surgeries and taking years to heal. I’ve heard the “It’s a great way to get a boob job” remarks and read the articles that paint a rosy picture of the procedure and wanted a realistic explanation from a reputable source. The plastic surgeon was awesome, we spent an hour and a half asking and answering questions. He explained the different types of reconstructive surgery available. When we left we both felt that we were as informed as possible about the procedure.

Mitch just had to tempt fate and suggested that since we were in the area, why not buzz by the Sprint Store and get a new phone. I don’t know about you, but there is no buzzing by a Sprint Store. We pulled into the parking lot and of course it started pouring down rain just as we parked the car. We made a mad dash into the store and was greeted with a packed house. Sprint was the place to be evidently. A Sprint staffer pointed out that there were eleven people in front of us (I think she wanted us to go home) and would be helped as soon as someone was free. Of course I didn’t know what I wanted, because I wasn’t looking for a phone so I wandered around looking at the different phones available. I am not super tech savvy so I mainly looked at the different sizes and colors. When it was finally our turn, I had narrowed it down to two models, decided on one based on the staff’s help and thought I was good to go. Oh no, I had to pick a color and a case to match, then it was screen protectors to avoid scratching the screen. The last challenge was trying to get my old phone to turn on so that they could sync all of my contacts and data over to the new phone.

Two hours later, we walked out of the store new phone in hand back into the pouring rain and headed home. Pour Mitch, by the time we finally got home it was too late for dinner. More good news, my headache was still going strong.

I Just Love Orso’s New Habit (Not Really)

Orso has a new habit and it’s a doozy. When I had my foot surgery earlier this summer and couldn’t walk the dogs, we had these wonderful friends that came over every morning and walked both of the dogs for me. Sometime during that time Orso decided that he really liked standing up on his hind legs and giving me a good greeting face to face. At ninety-eight pounds he literally can put his front paws on my shoulders and look me in the eye. What a great experience when coupled with that same ninety-eight pounds coming at you with a lot of exuberance and me being in a walking cast.

I have no idea where he came up with this new “fun” discovery of his. Maybe he picked it up from watching westerns on television in the mornings after I left for work. We started leaving the television on when we were not home for AJ our black lab who had severe separation anxiety issues to help him cope and just continued on after he died. Maybe I should stop this practice; it seems to be giving Orso ideas.

Since then we have been trying to break this new habit without much success. Orso has decided that rearing up like a horse is a great deal of fun. He’s started standing up routinely when we meet other dogs walking during the afternoon. This is his new way of saying hi I guess. The look of terror on the other dog owners faces don’t seem to agree with his idea. If he sees a deer in the darkness on our early morning walks, standing up barking at them and then lunging forward is huge entertainment for him. Couple that with me getting lurched around and jerked almost off my feet and we’re having a great walk.

I figure that in the near future I am going to be paying for a really nice vacation for my orthopedic surgeon.

The Walk from Hell

I did not enjoy our walk this afternoon, no not at all. It started off so promising. Mitch was busy putting brakes on my car when I got home from work, so I fed the dogs and changed my clothes. I put their harnesses on them, grabbed my phone, stuffed a couple of poop bags in my pocket and grabbed the leashes off the coat rack. We walked outside, I leashed each one up and told Mitch we would be back shortly and would fix dinner then. It was a beautiful afternoon, mid-seventies and a light breeze, perfect for a dog walk.

Nobody else was around just the dogs and me; we were about halfway to the dam when Charlie stopped to sniff something in the ditch next to the road, took a step and jerked sideways and sort of jumped and limped to the road both at the same time. I looked at him and he was holding his left foot up as if he had stepped on something and cut his paw or had been bitten. I looked down at his elevated paw and saw something sticking out between two of his toes. It looked like a small stick sticking out of a dark brown rock wedged between his toes.

So being the loving caring pet owner I am, I reached down to pull it out. Imagine my surprise and disgust when I discovered it wasn’t a rock wedged between his toes, but instead it was dog poop. I now have dog poop on my left thumb. Gross! Charlie had stepped in some other dog’s feces and was as disgusted about it as I was when I touched it. I walked over and pulled a leaf off of a bush to try and wipe as much off of my thumb as possible. I didn’t have a Kleenex with me and if I did it would have been in my pocket and I certainly wasn’t going to stick my poopy thumb in my pocket to retrieve it.

After wiping as much as I could off of my thumb, I picked a bigger leaf to try and wipe the poop off of Charlie’s toes. Charlie was being his usual uncooperative self and jerked his paw away from me causing me to get dog poop on my right thumb. Now I have dog poop on both thumbs, I am thoroughly disgusted and feel super gross. I can’t touch anything with my thumbs because I don’t want to get the gross icky poop on anything else. I decided to turn around and walk back home. I held the leashes in each palm curling my fingers around them with my thumbs sticking straight out so I wouldn’t accidently touch anything with my thumbs.

Halfway home and so far so good, no other people or dogs show up and both dogs are behaving rather well, when all of a sudden now I have a goddam gnat flying at my face. There was nothing I could do, I couldn’t swat it, just wave my arms around like a crazy woman and jerk my head spasmodically to try and keep it away. I can only imagine what someone thought if anybody looked out of their window at me.

Where is a wet wipe when you need it?

The Bane of My Existence

Once again modern technology is making me insane. I thought computers and the internet are supposed to make our lives easier, but no, not so. Every day we use the internet to shop, do online banking and surf thousands of search engines for things like more shopping. Almost every place you go out there in cyberspace to do business has you set up a username and a password all in the name of security. And of course all of the IT gurus tell us to create a different unique password with capital and lower case letters with numbers and special characters at least a million characters long for each time we create a password. Some tell us to use a phrase such as, “Mary had a little lamb” but change some of the letters like this, “M2ryh#daLIT*&%-098b” to make it even more secure. Good luck remembering that one.

I don’t know about you but I have a bunch of passwords to remember. There is my work password to sign on to my computer, the password to sign on to my payroll, taxes and vacation, password to sign on to my health insurance benefits, retirement account, bank, and multiple shopping websites. Passwords, so many passwords to remember and of course you only get three tries before the web site locks you out. I bet hackers and identity thieves get more than three tries. So what’s a memory challenged internet user to do? Write down all of my different passwords, but then where do you store them, in a file on the computer? What if you get hacked, can the hacker find the password file and now have access to your whole life? Do you write it down on a piece of paper? If so where you hide it so only you know where it’s at and still have easy access? Or do you use one the password managers that come with your firewall protection software?

But I’m not so sure those are the best option either. I used one of those password managers and it forgot the password for the website I tried to use. Can you believe it, I logged on, my username and password populated perfectly, and evidently it was not the correct password. I even tried the “forgot password” button and it took me to a screen that wanted my phone number, are you kidding me, my phone number, what about my email address? I have no idea what phone number I put down, but I always know what email address I use. After trying every phone number I could think of I got the death message, “Too many tries, contact IT support to access your account”. It was nice enough to give the phone number of a live chat, but these people keep bankers hours, I can only call from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm and whatever you do don’t even think about calling from noon to two, everyone will be at lunch. I have things to do today and sitting around waiting until 8:30 to talk to someone about resetting my password is not on my list. Seriously, the internet is open for business twenty-four seven, why is it that we can’t get technical support the same way?

There goes my blood pressure, perfect the doctor will love that.

What a Couple of Fair Weather Sissies!

My chair has been bashed for the third time now and I have almost been knocked out of it twice, all because these two hooligans have decided it’s game on. When Charlie and Orso go at it, furniture gets moved whether it’s occupied or not. It is eighty-five degrees outside and these two sissies think the only place that they can play and wrestle is in the house. At almost nine years old, Charlie is a tad on the cranky side most of the time and won’t play with Orso. Orso who is the perennial puppy is always up for a free for all, so when Charlie is in the mood Orso will take advantage of every moment of neck chewing he can get.

Normally the wrestling only lasts for five or ten minutes tops, but tonight this has been going on now for twenty minutes. There is lots of heavy panting, but no one is giving an inch of ground. Barking, snarling and bodies leaping on and off the bed, means a good time is being had by all. Mitch has been trying fruitlessly to stay out of the line of fire, but it’s not working. He’s been bowled over twice now. I call a time out when one of them grabs the edge of my rug in his teeth and wants to play tug of war. Nothing is safe from the jaws of death around here.

After twenty five minutes Charlie has finally called a truce and both have tongues hanging all the way to the floor. A quick drink and both collapsed on the floor to cool off. Now I just have to cross my fingers that maybe they will both sleep all night long and not come nudge me in the middle of the night to see if I’m awake.

Cramping My Style

Work is cramping my style. I have been swamped at work lately. So busy, that I have been going in an hour early every day and working through lunch just to keep up. That extra hour of early time means that I don’t get to do any writing and of course when I have no time to spend writing, I have lots of great story ideas. All of these ideas come when I’m either walking the dogs, taking a shower or doing something else that entails my hands being otherwise occupied and there is no paper or pen around so I can at least jot down an idea. Then just like a dog seeing a squirrel, I start something else and totally forget what I wanted to say. I have no idea how many story ideas that I’ve lost and are floating around in the mishmash of my brain among all of the other things I’ve forgotten, like where I put the electric bill.

What I need is a thought activated idea recorder that will record my random thoughts, organize them into complete sentences and write a finished polished story. I could then take my idea recorder, plug it into the computer and download this wonderful story. What a superb product this would be. Every writer I know would have one. Sadly I know of no such gadget or believe me I would be the first to own one.

But back to my original thought, work is definitely getting in the way of my writing. (See what I mean about “squirrel”? One minute I’m focused the next off on another tangent.) The audacity of a company in the business of making a profit through the labor of their employees, said company shows its’ appreciation by paying us a salary and actually expects us to work and earn that salary. Can you believe it? Actually work to receive my paycheck? Oh man, the unfairness of it all. But I really like eating, I’m not the starving artist type, so I go in and work every day giving it my all, so for now I have to squeeze out my writing time when I can, right along with my work out time, which isn’t getting done on a regular basis either.

The Day That Shall Remain Nameless

My Monday started off okay, nothing spectacular one way or the other. The dogs actually behaved themselves on the walk. They did their business sniffing and peeing on everything, but acted like perfect little canine gentlemen. I showered, put on my makeup and tamed my crazy, curly hair. My hair hates me and generally does its’ own thing, but I got it to look presentable. So far so good, no sign of impending doom.

If I had any inkling as to how my day would turn out, I would have crawled back into my bed, pulled the covers up over my head… and I would have stayed there for the rest of the day.

On my drive to work, I apparently forgot to remove the target on the back of my car. I had three different morons think that my lane was their lane too. I try to play nice but I draw the line at sharing an eight foot wide space with an idiot driving a pickup truck who was too busy drinking his coffee AND talking on his phone. I have no idea how he was steering and I’m not sure I want to know. I’m a little protective of my 2002 Pontiac Firebird. Even though it’s eleven years old, it is the first car I bought off the showroom floor. It’s too bad I don’t have a bazooka… I wonder if I can get one online.

Walked into work, climbed the stairs to my Department and sat down at my desk. I poured a cup of coffee from my thermos. I’m all by myself in the mornings, so I get a calm moment before everyone else gets in and the crazy starts.

At nine, my boss called me and asked that I come into his office. A project I had worked on for weeks had become a top priority and was needed for a big meeting in half an hour. Super. The spreadsheets won’t work properly on his computer. Double super. So I did what any sane person would do, I called a friend and coworker for help. Crisis averted with a few minutes to spare, keeping me from spending the morning in ladies room crying.

The meeting was almost two hours of looking at spreadsheets on the big overhead screen. Long meetings are a death knell for me, my eyes glazed over and I started to nod off. I can’t sit still that long without falling asleep. So I sat there scribbling on my note pad, wiggling my feet and fidgeting like a six year old, trying to stay awake.

The final blow to the day was when I slammed the middle finger on my right hand in the door to the ladies room. Granted most bathroom stall doors aren’t very menacing, but the bathrooms were built European style with each stall designed as a sort of closet with floor to ceiling doors, just like a regular interior door with sharp corners. I slammed it so hard that the door cut my finger on one side and produced a giant blood blister on the other side. I stood in the stall squeezing my finger that sent throbbing pain all the up my arm and to the pit of my stomach. I thought I was going to get sick. It took a minute for the finger to start bleeding but when it did I had drips all over the floor. I had a nice blood trail going and, with my loud epitaphs, a body would think that someone had been murdered.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Monday’s suck. No beating around the bush on this, no sugar coating it. Monday’s just suck. So, I have decided that I am no longer going to refer to Monday as Monday. From now on Monday shall be called “The Day That Shall Remain Nameless!”.

To quote Yul Brynner in The King and I, “So shall it be written so shall it be done, etc. etc. etc.,”. Great movie, I bet it wasn’t filmed on a Monday.

I’m Married to a Ten Year Old Boy

Don’t get me wrong, I love Mitch with a passion and ninety percent of the time he acts like any normal man in his sixties. He takes his responsibilities seriously, has a strong work ethic and for the most part makes good decisions. If you ask almost everyone that knows Mitch, they will tell you he’s an old soul. He is usually pretty serious, doesn’t smile much, which scares a lot of people. He’s reserved and holds himself back a bit around people. Mitch is definitely not in the group labeled that the collective IQ drops when a bunch of guys get together. But every once in a while the ten year old boy comes out to play.

Because we pheasant hunt, we own bird dogs which require daily exercise. Our walks include both dogs sniffing the ground checking the scents left behind by other animals. Squirrels, raccoons and possums beware; these two will sniff them out and if we let them, will give chase. Squirrels run in fear because Charlie is fast enough and has caught and killed a few; Orso goes along for the ride. Geese are another favorite that the dogs love to chase. As long as the geese are not nesting, it is legal to harass geese with dogs in order to make the area less desirable to them. Geese are pretty lazy and will stay around and take over an area if not managed by different means, such as egg shaking and using dogs to make the geese fly. You can’t let your dog attack and kill them, though.

The ten year old boy thought that it was pretty cool to let the dogs chase the geese and make them fly. Well the geese only flew as far as the lake and landed in the water. That did not stop the dogs, only slowed them down a bit. Charlie and Orso jumped right in and started swimming after the geese. The geese swam up and down the lake with the dogs in hot pursuit and refused to come back when called. The two just kept swimming away after the geese to the other end of the lake. Problem one – Mitch discovered that there was no way he could get to the other end as quickly as the geese and the dogs would. Problem two – how would he get to other end quick enough to catch the dogs? Mitch had to run home jump in the station wagon and drive to the other side of the lake. He got there just in time to see the geese and the dogs turn around and start back the way they came. The ten year old boy quickly figured out that the dogs would drown from exhaustion if he couldn’t get them to come out of the water. This meant that he might have to jump in and swim out to them. Mitch finally caught Charlie’s attention and coaxed him to shore, with Orso following. I had two very tired dogs and one husband in the dog house.

One of our neighbors put a deer target out in his front yard propped up against a small tree. The start of our walk yesterday morning was just about sunrise still fairly dark, and the dogs didn’t notice anything, but on the way home the sun had come up and was a lot brighter out. Charlie saw the deer first and froze just staring at the deer; Orso swung around and saw what had captured Charlie’s eye. Both dogs stood stock still waiting for the deer to make a move so they could give chase. Of course Mitch encouraged Charlie to get a closer look, just like a little kid. Charlie lunged at the deer causing Orso to follow suit. The deer statue didn’t move, the dogs felt foolish and now I had a ten year old boy rolling on the ground laughing at the prank. All I could do was stand there, shake my head and roll my eyes.

The Sultan of Slobber

The other day I was sitting on the bench at the end of the bed putting on my shoes when I glanced up and saw a long brown streak on the wall a little higher than eye level. I walked over to get a better look and figure out what it was. You can imagine the look on my face when I realized it was dried dog slobber. Gross! Of course this isn’t the first time I’ve found dried dog drool on the walls, it is almost a daily occurrence around here. Ever since we brought Orso home we’ve had this phenomenon. So you’d think I would be used to finding it by now, but every time I spot a new blob of drool, I get grossed out.

I’m pretty sure there is a Saint Bernard hiding in that Labrador body. I’ve never seen a dog drool quite as much as him. Orso will be walking along and drool will be hanging down swaying back and forth with each step getting longer and longer. The long tendril will even pick up stray debris and add to the drool creating a sort of anchor at the end. It’s really disgusting looking. Mitch will take his shoe and knock it off, no big deal, but not me, I do not want that anywhere near me. I’ll take a twig to try and snag it, but I am not going to touch it with any part of my anatomy, unh huh no way. Yuck! I am pretty sure it is some sort of toxic waste or something like that.

What amazes me the most is how in the world it ends up splattered on the furniture, the walls and occasionally me. That is probably the grossest feeling in the world getting hit with flying drool. My stomach usually turns over a couple of times when that happens. Then I rush to go bathe.

Now my life is reduced to doing daily wall checks, where I walk around each room and check for fresh slobber shrapnel. I have found it as high as above the door jam, how he got it almost seven feet high amazed us both, but it usually is about five foot off the ground that I find most of Orso’s weapons. There is nothing more embarrassing than washing down all the walls and as soon as someone stops by the first thing anybody sees is the remains of a fresh nasty slobber blob at eye level.

That’s my dog.

I’m Going Solo Again

It’s just like old times. It’s just the dogs and me, facing life all alone in the wee hours of the morning. It has been eleven weeks since my foot surgery and one week bootless. This morning was the first morning that it was just me holding both leashes wandering around in the predawn hours. It was a nice quiet morning all by ourselves, no critters or other vermin about. It was a slow walk much to dogs dismay, my foot is still stiff and a bit tender, but I’m walking, and that is a wonderful feeling.

Charlie kept an eye on the road ahead as usual always on the hunt. Orso snatched as much tall grass to munch on along the way as always. The world is his “All You Can Eat Buffet”. I’ve never had a dog that will eat just about everything he comes across. Tall grass, mulberries and wild blackberries in the summer, acorns in the fall and hackberries in the winter are all on the menu, plus the undesirables, goose poop and deer droppings are quite the delicacy. Yuck.

This morning was quite uneventful and for that I am very grateful, because I know in the not too distant future, something will be out waiting for us. Waiting to run in front of us or make a noise in the dark and the dogs will lunge and drag me around like a boat anchor, and hopefully my foot will be able to take it, not to mention the rest of my body.

But there is hope, our wonderful friends that walked the dogs for me while I recovered also worked with them daily, training them to heel, do stupid pet tricks and not lunge at other dogs on the walk. I intend to carry on and continue the training; otherwise we’ll have dog stew for dinner. Just kidding, we don’t eat stew in the summer.

It felt good though, almost as though life is almost in balance again.