not that you asked...

Week in review

Gym appearances: 5

Gym appearances in exactly the same unlaundered clothing as previous day: 5

Calories burned: 3500

Gallons of sweat released all over elliptical trainer assuring imminent electrocution: 55

Minutes of boredom at work: 2400

Piles of dog poop stepped in: 2

Piles of dog poop tracked upstairs and into the bedroom creating a sensual and romantic aroma: 1

Piles of steaming cat vomit: 2

Piles of steaming cat vomit eaten by the dog: 2

Bags of cotton balls eaten by the dog: 1

Number of Check Engine lights that materialized on the dashboard: 1

Unsolicited conversations with a man named Jamie concerning a spawning bass in the lake: 1

Movies seen starring Jennifer Lopez: 1

Number of times eyes rolled during movie starring Jennifer Lopez: Hundreds upon thousands

Vows to never see another Jennifer Lopez movie as long as I live: Millions

Online quizzes taken to determine ideal city to live in: 2

Minutes spent discussing whether ideal city meshes well with husband’s ideal city: 15

Minutes spent discussing whether Honolulu is a feasible move: 1

Dollars paid to Mr. Plumber: 291

Tickets received for failure to obey a traffic sign: 1

Dollars to be paid to Loudoun County for failure to obey a traffic sign: 30

Dollars to be spent gambling tomorrow at the Preakness Stakes in the hopes of winning millions and leaving my sad and depressing life behind: Sadly, only 100

"Nekkid" means naked and up to something

Nearly every day last week after our two-mile walk, Hambone and I ran into Grace, his enormous chocolate lab buddy, at the field near our house. I love to give Hambone the opportunity to play with her because after 20 minutes of running and wrestling with a dog twice his size, he is almost ready to pass out, and that generally limits his capability for activity for pretty much the rest of the night, which means I am free to watch American Idol or Designed to Sell UNINTERRUPTED. Of course, the flipside is that Grace is a literal saliva factory, so by the time they’re done dancing around each other, Hambone is wearing a sparkly summer frock made entirely of dog loogies. Grace’s owner has always appeared to be just a normal, middle-aged, American white male, and his presence is tolerable while the dogs are playing, as he never says much except to occasionally comment on the weather or tomorrow’s weather or the upcoming weekend’s weather or that Grace is doing that thing again where she digs a hole in the ground and then eats dirt.

But then, everyone knows that there is something about me that wills even the most seemingly ordinary person to confess their innermost secrets while in the midst of mundane tasks. Now that I don’t ride public transportation anymore, the opportunities for shocking verbal exchanges are certainly fewer, but lately the freakshows have been slowly creeping back into my life in places like the checkout line at Safeway and the chiropractor’s office. And now, well, you see where this is going.

So as Grace and Hambone were flinging phlegm on each other, I asked Grace’s owner if he had seen the Animal Control van that had been sitting on our street the week before. He replied that he hadn’t, but he had heard that Animal Control officers had been giving out tickets to people who had unleashed dogs. And then we engaged in friendly banter about how much money the tickets were probably for, and then I told a story about the delightful neighbor we affectionately call Nutty and how most of our neighbors suspected her of calling Animal Control that day since it is one of her favorite hobbies.

“That reminds me of the craziest ticket I ever got!” said Grace’s owner, laughing. It was probably the longest sentence I had ever heard him speak to me in the hundreds of times I have seen him in the neighborhood.

And then, do you know what happened? Do you want to know what this stranger VOLUNTARILY TOLD ME? Well get ready.

Basically, back in the late ‘70s in San Francisco (yes, it goes downhill from here) this guy was at a park where there were two lakes. You could swim and picnic and frolic at both lakes, but one lake was designated a Nude Lake. And the Nude Lake is where this guy was walking his dog.

Naked.

And you can fault me for this one, because I actually began participating in the conversation like an IDIOT.

“Ha ha ha! Were you at the wrong lake?” I asked.

“Oh, no, I was definitely at the right lake!” he said, an admittance that he was purposefully nude and participating in a leisurely stroll along with other totally naked people.

Before long, a fully-clothed park policeman approached him and announced that he was going to have to issue a ticket to him because his dog was not on a leash at this public park. And then this guy practically doubles over laughing because he’s remembering how, as he stood next to this lake stark naked, his DOG wearing more clothing than he was wearing, the policeman asked him if he could produce any identification.

Ha! Identification! Where would a naked man carry his identification? Get it?

So now I am fully aware that my neighbor, a man I will probably see on a consistent basis and allow my innocent pet to interact with, enjoys being naked and was at one time, a nudist.

The FBI should go ahead and hire me. I could get terrorists to confess to evildoing just by standing next to them at the ATM. Guaranteed.

My hero

It has been an extremely eye-opening experience to take up permanent residence with a man, especially with one who is grossed out roughly a million percent more than you are. I thought when I got married that my new big strong husband would be more than willing to take on the ickier responsibilities around the house, you know, because of his instinctive and honorable duty to protect his sweet, innocent bride and her lovely, delicate hands (that wear an expensive ring he had scrimped and saved for) from the evils of dog poo and human vomit and moldy leftovers. But alas, Dave did not get in line the day God handed out strong stomachs. My best guess is that he had already been through the line to be anointed with a limited attention span, so really, what more could you expect of him at that point?

As a result, Dave's two favorite words in the entire English language are "gross" and "sick," and he uses them without abandon many MANY times a day, perhaps even thrice hourly. Sometimes the usage is completely justified, like when I tell him I found a black booger while rooting around inside my nose ("Sick!") or when he finds out the spoon he just ate ice cream from was the same one I just used to feed ice cream to the dog ("Sick!") or that what we're watching on television is actually a woman giving birth in a bathtub and yes, that IS the head coming out but no, its not cottage cheese all over the baby, that's just part of the placenta... ("GROSS!" followed by a loud thud which is just him fainting dead away onto the carpet). But he also uses it because he is genuinely disgusted by the most mundane of things, like if I suggest he not wear any underwear at all instead of dirty ones ("Sick!") or if the dog gets mud on his pants ("Gross!") or if I mention the new outcropping of pimples I have discovered on my forehead ("Sick!").

As an easily disgusted person, Dave used to refuse to take the dog to the dog park alone, desiring my companionship not because he couldn’t bear to spend a minute apart from me, his amazing and tragically beautiful wife, but because if I accompanied him, he could pass the burden of poo pickup off onto me. To Dave, the plastic baggie is just not acceptable as a proper poo retrieval system because 1) he can still see the poo, 2) because he can still smell the poo, and 3) because he can still FEEL the poo. The combination of these three sensory elements usually triggers uncontrollable gagging and coughing from Dave and pointing and laughing from all the other owners at the dog park who can pick up poo without obvious visible consequence.

One night about six months ago we were sitting on the couch watching TV, and without more than a few seconds of warning, during which Dave’s face twisted into a look of absolute terror, the dog hornked up an enormous, steaming pile of barf onto the carpet right underneath us. Without missing a beat, my darling, brave husband leapt off the couch, and in that diminutive span of time before he spoke, I secretly fantasized that he would announce his intention to continue on to the kitchen for paper towels and carpet cleaner before he would make short work of the offensive mass of vomit at our feet. Imagine my anguish when instead, he pointed at the steaming mound of puke and offered to pay me $20 if I would be the one to clean it up. Then he ran gagging from the room.

So you can imagine my distress when a few nights ago, as I was using the bathroom, and by that I mean USING IT RIGHT AT THAT VERY MOMENT, I dropped my good pair of tweezers between my legs and down into the toilet. My dilemma became crystal clear immediately: Do I reach into a pee-filled toilet and get the tweezers myself? Or do I flush and hope they’re too heavy to be sucked down our 1970’s era toilet so that I can pull them out of clean water? And what would I say if I DID flush the toilet and the tweezers go down and clog it up for eternity? Could I play dumb on that one and just pretend to wonder how tweezers got in there in the first place?

But guess who saved the day? My hero. He may be nauseated to the point of no return by hot dog poo and he might offer me money to get out of cleaning up yak, but my very brave and fabulous husband, who didn’t even consider the idea of a rubber glove and instead reached a bare forearm into a toilet filled with my byproducts, pulled those tweezers right on out.

And then he washed his hands with MY soap. Gross!