Friday Night Singleton Glamour

As I was locking up my desk Friday night, my phone rang.

Me: I have to take this, it's Starter Husband

Coworkers: Eeee Ooo0o00oh! See ya!

Me: Hello.

Starter Husband: Hi.

Background noise: YAPYAPYA YA YA YA YAPPP YAP YAP [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

SH: Do you have plans tonight?

BN: [yappity yap yap yappish reverberating yaps!]

Me: If you are looking for a dog sitter, this is not helping you.

SH: [Nervous Laughter]

Me: Do you want to bring *them over?

SH: Well, I mean, do YOU want them? I only want to if YOU want to see them.

Me: I don't care. You can tell me you have a date. [Read: I'm getting mine, bitch, see the entry on my earnest wishes for an STD-free lifestyle of you getting lots of poon].

SH: No, that's not it. They're driving me crazy. I'm going to lose it.

Me: Yeah, I want to see them. I'll be home in 30. Leave them in the dog run.

[I hang up, and the immediate silence following yappage soothes my soul.]

As I pull in to the garage, I see outside into the dog run, a single glistening dog tag in the black of night. It's the only way to identify a jet black dog in a dark corner. Then I hear his big dumb bark.

He plowed me over as I tried to balance my purse and keys and notebooks and clipboards and Indyboy's collar. I opened the door to the house and he bulldozed over everyone in there, with his joyous bounding and face-licking.

Me [to Mishi]: Mmmmmmsurpriiiise!

(Yeah, I failed to call her and give her the heads up that both Starter Husband and that horse of a dog would be paying her a visit, with a bonus rat dog that has not been trained).

Mishi: Yeah, I know. Starter Husband already brought him in. Mo immediately ran to my rug and got on his back and started writhing around, flailing his legs while trying to bite his tail. Starter Husband seemed a little frazzled.

Me: I almost think he didn't even really have a date. 

Have you ever seen a deer bound across a field? It is mid-air for like, 4 seconds without a single hoof on the ground. Combine that with a bucking bronco, and that's how Mo runs when he's out in the back yard. 

I let the two dogs out into the snow this morning to do their thing, then I [attempt to] call them in. Mo bounds toward me with his tongue out sideways. 

Harley [The Yapster] ignores me. He crawls over clods of snow, and then plants his entire body in a single crater created by Mo's foot. Mo loves when Harley doesn't come when called, because Mo thinks it gives him permission to return to playing, disguising it only as "I'm bounding out to herd Harley in! My grandpa was a German Shepherd! I'm not playing! Watch me work! Watch my 'pedigree' shine through!"

It's fricking-ass cold, so I don't want to have to go physically retrieve Harley, so I stand in the door and yell. I really want to stay barefoot and t-shirted.

I hate that. Because it means:

- Not only do I have to yell some more at Harley, 

- But I have to yell louder because I'm being defied, and I've lost patience so my intensity has risen.

- The probability of either of them subordinating in any capacity has seriously, seriously diminished, so the probability of me having to put on shoes and a coat (WHY ME) has exponentially increased.

This becomes a bigger problem because:

- I've been sick so there's the gravelly haggardness to my voice

- I'm yelling the word "Harley." 

It is all I can do not to go "LoLo, put down your Tonka Trucks and go get aunt Kicki another Natty Lite." I swear, there is a White Trash (Meeshy calls it dubya-tee) gene in my body. I can't help it. My biological paternal grandmother still has a bullet (or shotgun shrapnel, I dunno, which sounds more WT?) in her ***cantaloupe-sized calf from an argument with her husband 20 years ago. Which probably wasn't even about either of them cheating because they lived on a ranch in the boonies, so it was probably about someone eating the last bag of cheetos. So when I'm yelling for the dogs from the back porch, this hick accent comes out. I yell at Maowzizz (Moses) to git bayack ee-in hayre.

All of this wouldn't be such a problem if we didn't live in a neighborhood where it's all but required for you to be both academic and relatively loaded. We showed them! We interpret it to mean progressive and very good with money, so we feel justified being here. That is, until I start braying orders out the back door.

But it can be good, too. When the dogs wear out, the dust settles, and I can do my thing in the house with them lounging on the couch. Of course, this just means Mo looks depressed the whole time, like he's ready to go back to Starter Husband's bachelo-partment and lick the barbeque sauce off the floor.

So tell me, does he look depressed, or just tierd? (That was a typo, but because it phoenetically comes out all dubya-tee, I'm keepin it).

Anyway, that's when I decided to tidy. Of course, that meant I immediately knocked the modem loose somehow and, because there is no quick fix for it in my world, I have to call Comcast. I sheepishly explained to the CSR that I had knocked it loose cleaning. She said "What are you doing cleaning when you're sick!" Yeah, it's still audible. So not only did this poor girl have to spend her Friday night taking troubleshooting calls from modem-challenged idiots who need the internet on their Friday nights, but she also got to listen to my nasty sniffing. For some reason, she seemed to feel sorrier for me than for herself.

*They = My dog Mo, and the SH's family's foster dog Harley, a Yorkie about the size of one of Mo's dumps.

**aliases include:

Modus

Goat

Lenny

Hoss

Mogley/Mogleydog

Mona/Monaboy (How LoLo pronounces his actual name)

Moy-saise (How Latinos pronounce his actual name)

***Yes, granny (her word for herself, not mine) is a large woman. In addition to the WT gene, I get to battle with that little gem too. Of course, by the time she was 14 I think it was apparent. I'm nearly twice that age and I'm still OK, if that brings any of you some comfort.