Everything I needed to buy was not in stock or not ready for me to pick up.
Anything I needed to work properly was broken.
My house reeks of stinky Chinese food, for I was too busy buying nothing and waiting on broken things to cook dinner.
My husband thinks watching Hulk Hogan in HD is a good idea.
And now I’m going to go scrub the poop off my dog’s ass, because apparently this house is a feudal serfdom.
This morning started off in the most perfect way. Since I telecommuted rather than driving to work and getting stuck in Charlottesville, I was treated first thing to a 45 minute romp through our snowy backyard with the dogs. C-bear sees snow and starts freaking out – she loves it so much, she reverts to a puppy right before your eyes, rolls around in it like a pig in shit, and then melts all over the house for the rest of the day. The stink is awful, but the joy is worth it. Gus got scared with each snowflake that landed on his face, so I let him stay inside while I threw tiny snowballs at C-bear while she tried to catch them and then kill them.
And then, my husband walks in the door with a huge box containing something made of leather and labeled Marc Jacobs. My birthday is not until Sunday, but he’s been lording the surprise plans for this weekend over me for the last few months. Inside this thing of beauty were three envelopes containing our itinerary for the next four days. It includes, but is not limited to, the following things: a different and lovely hotel each night, a Rhett Miller concert, dinner at Les Halles, a day of poking around DC and Annapolis, and dinner with my family and best friend from high school in Philadelphia. Birthday road trip. And he let me open everything early so I can plan my packing appropriately. If you knew me, you’d understand that doing this averted a nervous breakdown on my part, as I cannot handle being either incorrectly packed or wrongly dressed for the climate. I’ve actually requested my tombstone to read “Here lies Double Vision. She dressed appropriately for the weather at all times.”
I love you, dear husband. For shizzle.
Photographic evidence of how my pooches enjoyed spending their holidays: 
“Hello, peons. I’ll be opening all the presents today. Even those that don’t belong to me – I’ll be opening those, too, before you even tell me I can, and I will possibly cart them off to another room so I may rip the paper off and proceed to try and chew the box open in private. After this, I will run circles around the room, looking for more gifts to open. If I find no more, I shall then remove the tops of any shirt boxes, drag the contents out, sit on them, and tear the tissue paper into shreds so small you will never be able to vacuum them up. Finally, I will get a very long drink of water, wipe my beard on your pants leg, and burp in your face.”
“Can’t I just climb into the pile of towels waiting to be washed, look at you pathetically until you wrap me in one of the towels, and then fall asleep while watching Air Bud: Golden Receiver?”
Dear Mike Huckabee
The Constitution is not written in pencil. It’s not a rough draft that some crazy colonial rebel scratched on back of a napkin after drinking too much cider. You can’t just take a big pink eraser to it and make it suit your crazy evangelical needs. It’s purposely close to impossible to alter it, because THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONGRESS WAS MUCH SMARTER YOU. They created a nation. All you want to do is tax it unfairly.
Sincerely,
Double Vision
This is why I get so jaded by politics, regardless of the candidate. It doesn’t matter whether or not something’s true – more people are going to read the sensational false claims and believe them than will read the statement that comes out a few days later that it was all marlarkey.
There’s a part of me that thinks having a Muslim as a president might be a good thing for our country. Although, with the new ID system that’s coming down the pipe, he probably would be subjected to extra security checks before he got on Air Force One.
I promise, I’ll be back tomorrow with more discussion of Britney’s foibles and less commentary on the sad state of our country.
The only thing I value more than my hair products are my civil liberties. This causes constant consternation for my safety-obsessed father, who would happily give everyone in our family an implantable lo-jack if they existed, and then take early retirement so he could constantly track our well-being.
I’ve watched our freedoms and privacies slowly erode in our post-9/11 world, powerless to do anything other than constantly fake-apologize to the president when I say mean things about him. Because I know he’s listening all the time. I can just hear him now. “Hey, Laura, you gotta hear this crazy woman in Richmond – she’s trying to convince her husband that WHAM! actually put out some good music.”
Then, this morning, I read this article about the new driver’s license that will soon be coming our way. The government can dress it up with pretty names and claim that states can pick and choose the parts of it they want to use. It’s a national ID card, plain and simple. I am not ok with this, and you shouldn’t be either.
My bronchitis is actually walking pneumonia. Or so I am told.
It appears that even though a person has watched ER for fourteen years, including the terrible Africa episodes and the one where Romano gets offed by the same helicopter that in previous seasons chopped off his arm, this does not mean she can override the results of both an x-ray and a blood test and tell her doctor that there’s no way she has anything but a bad case of bronchitis. OR SO I AM TOLD.
I got an email the other day asking me to write less about my dogs and more about personal things. So there you go – I am the only person in America who cops to watching every episode of ER from the pilot. Not only do I admit this fact, but I also often feel I am now qualified to diagnose my own illnesses and perform a tracheotomy using a ballpoint pen and a pocket knife.
I don’t even like the show anymore, but tune in ever week out of habit, committment, or possibly because I’m hoping for the surprise return of TV’s Dr. Doug Ross.
I have always wanted to name a dog Gus, after Odysseus’s loyal dog, Argos. This is what happens when you are a huge dork.
If you don’t know the long version of this lovely and classic story, you can read about it here.
The short version is that Odysseus left town for his unintentional 20 year journey right after he acquired Argos as a puppy. While he was gone, the poor dog was neglected and starving and basically left for dead on a pile of manure, but the pooch was determined to wait it out for his beloved owner no matter what the cost to his personal well-being. When Odysseus returned home in disguise, Argos was the only one who recognized O (Odysseus, not Oprah) and wagged his tail, trying valiantly to get to his master. Odysessus, though he could not get to Argos, recognized his dog’s unending loyalty, even after abandoment, and this big tough Greek warrior was brought to tears by his dog. Argos then dies, having fulfilled what Homer called “his destiny of fate.”
There’s no more perfect name for the scrawny, sickly, little furball my husband picked up in Kansas City one year ago today. He’s not the smartest, he’s not the biggest or strongest, he’ll never win any obedience contests. I have no doubt, though, that Gus would sit for 20 years on a pile of poop just waiting for me to come home and scratch his head. That’s just the kind of guy he is, and we love him for it.
Last year, I made some pretty serious resolutions. I thought I’d spend a minute checking to see if I kept any of them.
My only real resolutions for 2008 are to drink more water and eat less dairy . I started today, and thus spent the majority of the day in the bathroom, wishing I had a big piece of cheese. I’m not sure how successful this will be, as in the middle of a desert, with no water bottle in sight, I would still reach for the manchego.
Best wishes for a happy and hydrated 2008 to all of you!
