15 posts tagged “dogs”

Sunny Alter Noon

Reading to sleep
I will dream deep

Creep into my safest place to rest the night

Secure and tight no threats in sight

The bitch barks and coughs
Regurgitated bile

Middle of the night I shift in bed

I hope I don't step in her puke in the morning

Morning bright breaks
Cereal bowl full of flakes

Offer it around see if they're takers

Everyone to his own and they take their places

Reading the news
Looking for clues

Forced to look away sharply

Repulsed from what comes over me

The clouds that break
the clowns that take

But they've never seen the way my dog shits.

I mean, it's really incredible, like a four-legged dump-truck.

The house that shakes
Rocks California state

But they've never seen the way that my dog eats.

You can feel the suction, a wagging vacuum.

Lawn grass long grows
So neighbor man mows

Then she farts with such a forceful blast of canine will

Wind swirls with cacophonous melody assaulting ears and nose

As an effort this ranks shitty
We can't always come off witty

Afternoon shade will go its way and lead us into dark

Some go willingly and some grasp the day, but we all go past another day

No, not the whiskey.

A real live one.

It ran through the backyard, circled around, peeped in the back sliding glass door, startled the hell out of two boxers and one stay-at-home dad who was cooking tater-tots at the time, and then sped away to do whatever the hell it is that wild turkeys do.

Yes, that bumps the mosquitoes off the top of the list of largest wildlife I've seen in Tennessee so far.

Now, back to my taters and tots.

Gabba, gabba, hey!  as the Ramones would say.

We've all still got some ass to kick.

Counting the Years

My mind's eye sees us young.

This group peeling layers off the great onion of life.

Jobs became careers and girlfriends turned into wives.

And I add it together and piece it apart.

I've had the same wife for nine years, today.

But I can't keep a bottle for more than a week.

Yes we've had two houses, two kids and two dogs before that.

We hold them, and fix them, and pay all their bills.

Wherever we'll go, that's where home will be at.

And in all, we've been together for eleven years, today.

But I can't keep a bottle for more than a week.

I'm an uncle and wife's an aunt for the very first time, today.

Careful maturing and aging, the form is an art.

See that's the distiller you know, me I'm just an old fart.

Friends married, bought houses and bred.

None of that kept me up nights in my bed.

But I can't keep a bottle for more than a week.

Selfish for sure, but this will be honestly selfish.

My mind says I can't be old enough to know a widow.

The bottle drains quick, looking for meaning or reason.

Some always died, sure, stretching back a long line

Those were the legends, the ghosts kept alive in their stories

And I didn't feel old knowing spouses, or parents, or uncles and aunts.

But the widow.  The survivor of death of a spouse.

Knowing a widow in the group, my memory keeps us so young.

That's the one that has me feeling the aches and the bruises.

Cold and unfeeling, it's the life that hands out these titles,

Now how we live with that life tag

That's what'll define us.

Me, I can't keep a bottle for more than a week.

From the long lost pilot-episode of my life:
(Still shopping it around for a network)

Sub-Dude

The car, here, is out of place
Bicycles far more the pace.

Fried potato starch stains

We'd trade the use of Daniel's lion pack
For one flat wooden toothpick seat

Button-fly or zipper today?

We're shod with iron horshoes firm
To evict their cuckoos from his nest.

Light Emitting Diodes, all systems green on zeppelin.

A pizza in my pocket, nuked
The dog was hot and bunned

Frozen fruit hookah pipe-sicle treat

The burger's cow hammed the town
This cheese, it is not yours dear nun.

Pale cow, the rider is hooded

I sat all day and nigh fortnight
Before we came upon ourselves again

Hang-nail, torn, bleeding, quick

You were there and so was I
The future played us fair

A ring repaired, but not the One Ring.

Three sets to one we were not done
So in the car you rode uphill

Mmm, Buffalo-style onion rings, crispy

Duh dizzy bunny hopped limply
Fried out from the sun

Sister fingers, sister hand, close crate door again

But your car there was out of place
so pinched me I did do

Thought in head and key in lock

In a crowd that stank with sweat
On the bus did bounce.

Expunged, expelled, the sponge that failed

And bunny, she hobbled a corner round
There under wheels was flattened.

Well, wet my nose and wag my tail

Bicycles far more the pace.

• Wake, sort of
• Sheets pulling me back under like water lapping at a drowning man.
• Pillows at least a half-mile deep.
  
• Sunrise, walking the dogs, orange light, dewy grass
• Note that the dogs have gotten into a diaper somewhere, visual data from their droppings
• Shower, warm, borderline hot, needling; and smelling ever so slightly of mold
• Mental note to confer with property management agent.
• Kids, where the hell are the kids?  Bed, a yes, awake but not in trouble.
  
• Shave, note blade slightly rusty... slightly?  It is or it isn't.  It is.  Must find replacements in box somewhere.
• Coffee, java, espresso... life.  Christopher Bean Tiramisu beans.  Hot steam under pressure, voila.
• Kids, where the hell are the kids?  Ah, breakfast table, eating cereal, mostly neatly.
  
• PC to check traffic for wife's commute.  Suggest alternate route.  Avoid congestion = faster = happy.
• Sausage.  Squished medallions of porcine yumminess emitting greasy smoke.  Crisp and unburned.
• Kids, where the hell have I put the kids?  Oh, TV, Noggin, to make smart kids who are active, by sitting on their asses.  Actually very active today.  Lots of play in the dogs crates.  The pups yield the field with valor.
  
• Drag pool off patio into yard.  Do battle with insects of extraordinary size.  Extend hose.  Fill pool.
• Cuppy and a nap in crib for youngest.
• Eldest spots pool.  Much whining.
• Eldest changed into swimsuit.  Much splashing.
• Sunny.  Warm.  Chair.  Footrest.  Backyard.  Pool.  Daughter giggle.  Tanning.  Beer.
• Where the hell are the kids?  Ah, lunch.  Dry one off, dress, table, peanut butter toast in the face.  Wake other up, dry off bum, change diaper, reapply clothes, table/high-chair, peanut butter toast, on the face and the hair, and the floor, to the puppies.
• Pool, splashing, two daughters giggling, warm, sun, chair, footrest, tanning, beer.
• Tired tantrums.  Nap for one.  Quiet puzzle time for two.  Microwave, processed-cheese on tortilla chip rounds Nachos for me.  Lookie, BBC America, and Discovery Science Channel and way too many others to ever flip through.
• PC time with the eldest.   Lots of Nick, Jr games.
• Checking on wife's commute home, suggest alternate route, ignored.
• Wife stuck in traffic, finally aborts and attempts suggested route.
• Dinner, sirloin tip under the broiler, finished with blue cheese, bovine bliss.
• Music and dancing and craziness on the coffee table and lots of shoulder rides and tummy-floor-swing-rocker rides.
• Kids asleep, nightlights on.  Grown-ups on the patio with matches and marble, and green faeries dancing with the fireflies in the treeline down the hill along the creek.
• Sweet tea and vodka.
  
• Marital aerobics.
• Oblivion.
  

For the early years of parenting, one item is neccessarily ubiquitous.

The hand-broom and dustpan combo set.

Particularly during the fingerfoods-learning-how-to-feed-themselves stage in the high-chair with the tray and bib that has given up the fight long ago.

My dogs love this phase of childhood develpment.

Caution:  Do not live in a house with flat finish paint on the walls during this phase.

Or at least my credit card company thinks so.

Some background.

As the regular readers know, and are sick of hearing by now, we just moved.

My credit card company knew this too.

I called them the week before we moved with the new address.

Which is why it galls me that I caused a major backup at the local Target store here.

See, the credit card company fraud early detection unit had been monitoring my account.

The $200 plus I attempted to spend at Target was more than their nerves could take and they put a halt to my fraudulent ways.

The cashier was confused.  The lane manager was summoned.  Who summoned the shift manager.

All while the line grew to Star Wars Episode One opening week proportions.

The red phone was used.  All of us waited on hold.  The cashier interrogated me, by proxy, for the credit company.

The other two managers saw this as a training opportunity for him.

He saw it as an unnecessary delay in his lunch break.

Forms of ID were passed all around the group.

More questions were asked and answered.

Finally, I was handed back all my kit and told it was my turn to actually use the red phone.

I was immediately put on hold.

It was AC/DC, so you know, I was cool with it.

Much to the ire of the assembled tribes of Israel behind me in line, seeking exodus from the land of red and khaki retail oppression.

Then I was, very politely, interrogated as to what I had been doing and buying and staying, and traveling to, and gassing up and eating.

You see, all of these purchases for the last week were outside of my NORMAL spending zone and were not the types of purchases normally made.

There were lots of service station gas and food charges, and fast food restaurants, and motels, all within a short period of time and in a straight line away from my NORMAL spending zone.

It was almost exactly like the charges were following Interstate 75 down from Detroit to Cincinnati, with a layover in the night at Dayton, from there to I-71, around Louisville, then I-265 and 65, around and South, straight into Nashville, where there were more hotel and restaurant and gas charges.

And then, THEN, I had the nerve to go to Target and buy $200 plus of furnishings.

I was almost EXACTLY like I had moved from Detroit to Nashville, and taken two days to drive down, my wife in one car with the kids, and me in the truck with the two dogs, stopping for the night in Dayton, which is almost exactly the halfway point (just a little shy actually because we got a late start on day one with the movers).  And then spending another night in hotel in Nashville waiting for the movers to arrive, unload, and having gotten all that done, gone shopping for all the little things you don't move with you to your new house, when you're going to rent out your old house.

I got to explain all of this, in three-part harmony (with apology to Arlo Guthrie but the kids were getting vocal by this point), to the early fraud detection unit.

I also reminded them, that I had called them the previous week, to notify them that I was moving.

They had my old address, my new address, and they had the recent change on file as my last contact with them.

And yet, they needed me to connect the dots for them.

Hmm, all the bililng charges run in a straight line along the interstates from the old address to the new address, and then the day after they get there, they go shopping at the Target 2 miles from their new address.

Yeah, it all sounds really fishy to me, couldn't possibly make any sense of it.  We better freeze the account to make sure.

And yet I think of all the times that I've flown somewhere really random without telling the credit company, rung up really absurd and suspicious, even to me charges, and haven't heard a peep from them.

This one, this one actually made sense given that they knew I was moving.  I'm the one that told them.

Crisis resolved I was allowed to make my purchase and escape before the mob began line-dancing to the Achy-breaky.

Geesh.

Alrighty then.

The checklist upon arrival:

Me, male, thinning hair,
check.
The wife, already successful in new corporate office,
check.
Kids, two, female, aged 3 and 1,
check.
Dogs, two, female, boxers,
check.
Vehicles, two, one sedan, one pickup truck,
check.
A not insignificant, (read "crapload") of stuff inside various sized moving boxes, (seriously, you could fit a household of stuff in there)
check.

Only snafu was the rental agent and the cable guy not being able to connect with each other before we arrived.

First available makeup appointment was yesterday.

So we've actually been here for a full week before our TV had channels and my little rectangular metal box of a gateway to the rest of the cyber-world did anything aside from an impersonation of a 3 year old in timeout.

For now, I am now going to eat pizza, drink local beer, Yazoo "Dos Perros" Ale brewed downtown in a former motorworks factory, and smoke a victory cigar.

And yes, I got carded (out of state ID and all) by a sweet young thing while buying the beer at the local store.

Maybe the hair is not so thinning after all.

Later I will share anecdotes about the size and veracity of the local insectoid population and my legendary warrior prowess with the two-handed broad-swatter.

We're faxing in the rental agreement this afternoon and we'll be moved in to our new base of operations by May 15.

NewRentalHouse

I think.

Unless I just jinxed it.

Course, I don't believe in jinxes.

But then, you don't have to believe that you're ever going to get hit by a bus while crossing a street, and could still find yourself one day flattened into human cube-steak.

Our moving boxes arrived today so we can begin filling the bulk un-breakables ourselves to make the day the actual movers arrive move along more swiftly.

Uhm, well... shit.  That's just so cool.

I don't know what to do with myself.

Apparently, I will be obsolete on this move.

Just found out from new company's Human Resource director that the relocation will be all-inclusive.

They contract out to a firm that manages all their relocations to make things as smooth as possible for employees.

So, we will have a "relocation coach" assigned to us, available 24-7 throughout the process.

They will pay airfare and hotel for two separate scouting and house-hunting trips before we move.

They have their own in-house people to box up our house and place it in storage until we find a new house.

Meantime, we will live in a furnished house in the new city, paid for by them, picked out by them using a list of criteria we provide.

They will transport our two dogs from here to the temp furnished house there.

They will contract with a realtor here to sell our current house and pay all fees, titles, and closing costs, commissions, etc (except for any applicable taxes, which won't be much because we've been in the house long enough for the sale to be tax-exempt.)

They will contract with a realtor in the new city to assist our purchase of a new home there and again, pay all fees, loan-origination, and closing costs, commissions, etc

When we select and purchase a new home, they will contact the local utilities, trash hauler, phone, cable, internet and establish service.

They will then deliver our boxed up household possessions that had been stored (they don't unpack, but they do label by room and deliver to appropriate room.)

I think that we may have to stand in line at the DMV ourselves to get our pictures taken for the new state drivers licenses and to register our vehicle titles in the new state, but that seems to be about all the effort required on our part.

Uhm, again... well shit; that's just so cool.

I'm going to sip down some mojito with the wife and watch Clerks 2 now.

Snootchie-bootchies.