Pug on the Run!

Ah Sunday. A difficult and frustrating week has finally ended. Saturday was filled with grocery shopping, cleaning, and finishing up on some freelance work. Everyone in the family is out of town. I am going to sleep in, get up and linger over coffee, read the Sunday paper, and pick up around the abode. Also, I plan to do something that I almost never do—cook. I am going to make a homemade beef vegetable soup and cornbread on a cold October day. It will be lovely (a word I have never spoken except in derision, but sometimes secretly wish was a possibility).

The sleeping-in part was the first sign of a flaw in my plan. In fact, the pug, Moses, who is sleeping with me in my son’s absence (he usually sleeps in my son's room) has walked, snorted, sniffed, chewed, and stomped about the bed all night. (Oh, I know, non-dog owners will say, “Throw him out!” Well pugs do not live outside my friend!) I try to hide a Benadryl in a piece of cheese, a piece of meat, a filet mignon damn it. Just please, let me sleep! No dice.

I let the dogs out (yes it was me). And as I was doing so, I looked at Moses’ retreating hydrant-like torso. Oh, my God. I am much kinder than most people think; that’s why I won’t describe what I saw, but it wasn’t good. Let’s just say that much ooze was involved. I called the emergency clinic and (WARNING!) these four words of the diagnosis will describe it all: infected, ruptured anal sac. An apparently, and obviously, very painful condition, but don’t judge me. Our beloved pet had been for his annual only two weeks ago and it already takes three people to hold down the ornery little monster just to put in his required thrice-daily eye drops. This new condition can come on very quickly, which it did, and on a Sunday. My Sunday.

I called my son who was at his girlfriend’s college visiting, both of them studying vigilantly at the library I am sure, and told him that he needed to come home a few hours early to help me transport Moses to the emergency clinic. The subsequent trip wasn’t pretty but we arrived intact, though completely grossed out. I warned the nurse that this little smush-faced, curly-tailed animal is a wonderful pet, but a horrible patient. She smiled condescendingly as she, Dr. Doolittle, took his leash and guided him into the unknown of the back office. Several minutes later we heard a frantic cry, “Pug on the run! Pug on the run!” accompanied by the scuffling, puffy, piggy sounds that we match to a fat little bully named Moses. He was quite disruptive.

Once captured, after escaping to the front-desk receptionist’s area, he eyed us with malicious intent as he was carried away. Meanwhile, my son’s girlfriend called to ask about Moses’ condition. He told her the four words and her phone went dead. “I think she hung up on me,” he says. “Can you blame her?” I ask. The nurse charged us an exorbitant amount that we can’t afford. I was then given the impossible task of administering multiple horse pills, hot packs to the rear, ointments, and a syringe ingredient to an animal that has a panel of ten approve his treats.

It is already 3 a. m. and I have spent much time under the dining room table attempting to force a pain pill down Moses’ throat. You simple can’t hold a pug’s nose to make it open its mouth. Did you know that? While I am trying to recover the pill that Moses has managed to spit out from its many delicious coverings, my yellow lab jumps onto the counter and consumes the entire container of shaved turkey I had purchased for the pill-hiding occasion. Even though Moses has spit the pill out several times, he has absorbed some of it into his system and finally passes out snuggled next to me–his personal torturer–on the sofa. This allows me a few moments to contemplate the helluva week ahead of me. Work, bills due without funds, the house is a mess, and oh yes, five different medications and several daily hot pack applications for a dog that makes Hounds of the Baskervilles look like Winnie the Pooh. Oh well, I won’t move for now. Sometimes you just have to sit still and comfort your nasty little pug.

June 1st

When I was growing up, our next door neighbor’s name was June Furst. Once my father dressed up as the invisible man on Halloween, wrapped his face completely in gauze, crept up behind a teenaged boy that came to our door for candy and tapped him on the shoulder. It scared the poor guy so much that he broke the lock on our screen door and ran through our living room. Mom wasn’t pleased because he tracked red Georgia clay all over her pristine carpet. Since this prank worked so well, Dad decided to try a new one. He persuaded Mom to dress up as the invisible man. (June Furst had already seen Dad in the costume.) Mom walked up behind June Furst in the kitchen and grabbed her boobs. June shrieked, “My God David, what are you thinking!?” Of course it was actually my Mom who grabbed her . . . ha-ha.

Anyway, many years later my sister Jennifer was standing in line at a Dairy Queen and the man in front of her said something about June 1st. My sister piped in, “Do you know June Furst? I haven’t seen her in years!” The man turned, looked at her dryly, and announced, “I was talking about the date.”

Once June Furst pulled my mother aside and said, “I think Gail hears a different drummer, if you know what I mean.” In the 1950s this wasn’t a compliment; it was a warning, perhaps a prediction.

Maybe women named after calendar dates should keep their observations to themselves!

Pinvasion of the Pody Patchers

I was on the treadmill watching the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Jack was sitting at his computer yelling at it. I suggested that he “step away from the computer; step away from the computer.” He started watching body snatchers as well. Since I always accuse him of going to the Mother Ship on his many so-called business trips, I asked him if he recognized the town full of pod beings. “Sure, it’s Podtown,” he answered. That was truly a great movie so I suggested that in honor of the movie we should start all nouns, but not pronouns or proper nouns, with a . . . ” “P for the rest of the day?” he finished my sentence. He IS a pod person!

“I’m going to take a phower now,” I said.

“OPay,” he answered.

“No! Okay is not a poun!” I reprimanded.

“Oops, sorry,” he said.

I think his apology was sincere

Sister Act

I went to take my mother to visit my older sister who lives in the North Georgia mountains. I was just staying for a few days because I wouldn’t survive if I stayed much longer. You see this particular sister is always talking about coming to the mountains to relax, but she is about as relaxed as a fight dog on meth. She once seriously threatened to kill me for dropping some ice on her floor. She watches me eat and criticizes me for taking too many bites (more potential for crumbs). She is OCD2 (that's obsessive compulsive disorder squared) and I’m not talking behind her back here. She knows it and likes it, sometimes cleans until 3 a.m. Do NOT get in her way. Do NOT protest when she wants to scrub the tub in your room at 2:30 in the morning. Do not argue when she makes you drive around the mountains looking for a place to buy toilet paper at 4 a.m. (Oh, well, that's another story.)

One of the things that drives me crazy is that no matter how careful I am, I inevitably become the target of her ire. I find it particularly annoying that I can’t even find a way to agree with her.

Her: I really liked such and such a movie.
Me: I liked that too.
Her: Really, you never like those kinds of movies. It wasn’t that good.

Her: I think I’ll buy this. What do you think?
Me: I like it.
Her: It’s actually kind of ugly.

Her: Why aren’t there any police around when you need them?
Me: I know. They’re only around when someone is going two miles over the speed limit.
Her: Well, I disagree. They are pretty busy you know.
Me: You see this is a perfect example of the fact that you argue with me no matter what I say.
Her: That’s not true.

Got My Goat

Uh-oh, my sister Jennifer and I are out running errands again, but so far the day has gone without incident. We’re headed home; we’re almost there, but then I see the goat. He’s standing right at the edge of a major and busy road, just at the curve in the street near a closed-down vegetable stand. Two Hispanic gentlemen are gazing under the hood of an old car parked at the stand, seemingly unaware of the goat. We pull in.

“Excuse me, is that your goat?” I ask, pointing to the animal that now has one hoof on the road.

“Yes, Si,” is the answer.

“Well he’s going to get hit by a car,” my sister says. An auto whizzes by, barely missing the goat.

“Oh, he’s never been hit before,” one man assures us. Well that certainly is sound reasoning.

At our insistence, the older man saunters toward the goat and the younger man yells, “Billy! Billy!” at the wandering animal. (A more unique name for a goat I’ve never heard.)

“Does he come when you call?” my sister asks, wincing at another near miss.

“No not really,” the young man answers. “He loves potato chips. That goat loves potato chips. He’ll eat potato chips all day and he keeps our grass cut. We never have to mow the grass, but he loves potato chips.”

Finally, the older man lifts the goat and places him on the safer side of the gate. We say our adieus, or in this case, adios, and leave.

“Well, if nothing else we saved Billy the goat today,” I observe. “Damn it! Now I’m craving potato chips.”

Squirrels in Everybody's Attic

Husband Jack had been out of town for about three consecutive weeks. I was spending a lot of time alone with the exception of two dogs that insisted on sleeping with me and about a dozen squirrels in our attic who are practicing avidly for the Cirque de Soleil. Sometimes I lie in bed wondering when a squirrel is going to finally make its way through the ceiling and fall on my face. Three weeks ago, Jack climbed into the attic and blasted an air horn for so long that I finally called up to ask if he was still trying to scare the squirrels or if he was calling for help.

Anyway, Jack got to come home earlier than planned and I needed to GET OUT THE HOUSE, so we went out. Jack had been up since 4 a.m. trying to tie up loose ends and catch a plane, so he was wired and irritable. A woman two booths over sat as her baby screamed bloody murder. Jack turned around and glared at her several times, even though I tried to get him to stop.

Suddenly she’s at our table with baby in tow. “Excuse me!” she shouts. “Do you have children?”

“Yes, we do,” says Jack.

“Well I don’t appreciate your dirty looks just because my baby is crying.”

I reach over and kind of pat her arm trying to say without words, okay, okay, take it down a notch.

She shrugs me off, squares off again and yells, “Didn’t your kids ever make noise in a restaurant?!”

“Well, if he did, I took him out immediately,” says Jack (which is true).

“Well my husband is out of town and my baby is teething!”

This information made me beg the question, then why are you here at a restaurant alone with the baby under such circumstances? However, I didn’t want to exacerbate the situation, so I said nothing.

“I bet your kid was really obnoxious in restaurants,” she continued.

“Well, actually that’s not true,” I said.

“I bet it is,” she countered pithily and stomped out of the restaurant.

Never a dull moment. A good time was had by all.