Live each moment as if your ass is on fire
2006-04-18, 12:42 p.m.
We didn�t make it to The Hangin� Tree. Instead, we spent Friday evening in the delightful company of the Larrupsons, in another smallish town not far away from ours (please note that in my vernacular, �far� and �ours� do indeed rhyme. Think �far� and �ahrs�). We found a spot that had $1 beer and half-price appetizers, and thus we commenced our Friday night eating extravaganza.
EATSTRAVAGANZA!
EATSAPALOOZA!
ORGEAT!
We ate and ate and ate, and then we moved to another place, and ate some more. The effect of all that eating was that the $1 beer had little or no effect, and that�s the way I like it. I like a good beer buzz early in the morning to fade in and out, as if I�m metabolizing the beer almost as quickly as I�m drinking it. �Almost� being the key word.
Saturday, DW played golf and I lounged around the house. I was NOT hungover � I had a sinus hangover. My sinus headache of Friday had condensed into a pocket of, geez, I dunno - pus? - in my right inner ear, and it was a bit disconcerting, and required lounging and napping on the couch with the dogs.
Think of all the things that use �lounge� as a modifier: pants, lizards, singers�how many more am I missing? Picture our house full of lounge pants, lounge lizards and lounge singers, and THAT�S how much I lounged.
(I do not know what a lounge pant is.)
When the inner-ear pus dispersed about 2:00, I got a fire lit under my ass (fun digression: yesterday in traffic, I was behind a car sporting a bumper sticker that read �Live each moment as if your ass is on fire�*) and started cleaning house.
About 4:30, THANK GOD, I was rescued from the drudgery when DW called: my presence was being requested at our friends� house, where all the golf boys had gathered. It was me and guys for a while � just like high school! � and then the rest of the cool girls started showing up.
It was fun, relaxed, and much wine flowed because these friends are wine afice affish affes likers. Again, I enjoyed my dranks with ample food (big-ass pizzas from Papa John�s) and managed to metabolize as I went along. What says class like a 10,000-bottle wine cellar served up with Papa John�s pizza? Not much, I say.
I woke up Sunday completely forgetting it was Easter, and THAT, my friends, is bliss, pure and simple. LG was with his dad, and he�s too old for an Easter basket or Easter Bunny presents, and did not expect anything, and what�s more, I tried to go grocery shopping Sunday afternoon, having again forgotten it was Easter Sunday, and the store was closed, so I couldn�t get the boy anything for Easter even if I had wanted to, unless I had planned ahead, which HELLO. No.
Our church is not only laid-back and casual, but it is also very non-traditional in that religious holidays are recognized for what they are: pagan holidays turned into Christian holidays in order to encourage the conversion of the early pagans into Christians.
Mind, we are all free to celebrate whatever the hell holidays we want, and there were plenty of girls in their foofy Easter dresses (I was in jeans and a t-shirt, as usual), but that was the first indication I had all morning that it was Easter.
I digress, but we had the best Easter Sunday I�ve ever had. GONE were the itchy dressy dresses from days of yore. GONE was the goofy Easter basket sitting on the dining table. GONE was the obligatory Easter egg hunt.
All we did was take our dogs over to my in-laws and eat Popeye�s fried chicken and sit by the pool watching the dogs and little children swim together.
We very gently deposited Miss Piper into the pool, and while she doesn�t seem really crazy about swimming like my sister-in-law�s golden retrievers, she is a very fast swimmer. She has webbed toes. I wish I had webbed toes. She swims like she�s on a mission from GAHD � she�s in, and now she must get OUT.
Piper went for a second swim when she was chasing one of the other dogs around the edge of the pool, and managed to cut a corner a little too close, and went right in the drink. She swam the length of the pool and climbed right on out, but we were laughing.
I said to DW, �Hey, she just pulled a Laura! �Woo hoo, y�all! Look at me! I�m crazy! Whooops!� SPLASH.�
And I think that was our weekend. Why is it that the really fun weekends are the boringest to talk about later? Nobody got hurt, nobody threw up, there were neither drama nor angst.
Since I didn�t come around yesterday because of a short work day (teenage boy at home alone due to school holiday � not to be trusted for too long), I�ll tell you about yesterday. It seemed really good at the time, but now in retrospect, it�s really dull.
1. Worked a short day.
2. Stopped at grocery store on way home: spent $175.
3. Took Piper to vet for another round of shots.
Miss Piper is now 31 pounds, and is covered for all the major dog diseases. In addition, we got her the first round of the rattlesnake vaccine, something that is fairly new, at least around here. We take her back in a month for the rattlesnake booster, and then she�s good for a full year against rattlesnakes AND copperheads.
The first r-snake shot yesterday was $25. I would expect that #2 will be the same or less. $50 to protect my little baby against rattlesnakes, and YES Miz S, we�ll get Beans the rattlesnake shots, too. We just don�t take the two dogs to the vet together because, well, I don�t even have to tell you.
(Beans is psychotic, that�s why. While Piper is all about trying to French kiss the veterinarian while he�s giving her a shot, Beans is all long talons scraping on vinyl floor tile, eyes bulging, looking for any means of escape.)
EEEEnyway, this shot protects the dogs against the effects of the venom. No swelling, no necrosis. No sloughing off of, say, a foot when they get bitten.
So why wouldn�t somebody get their dogs vaccinated against rattlesnake venom? I don�t know. ASK MY MOTHER.
Yep, my parents have 114 (or 14) dogs living with and amongst them, and when I was telling my mom about the rattlesnake vaccine, she was very, well, she said things like �Mmm hmmmm, might be worth checking out.� This is on the heels, no pun intended, of one of their very favorite dogs recently suffering a rattlesnake bite on the foot, their not being sure she would make it PERIOD, and now not being sure she�s going to keep her foot.
Mmmmhmmmmmm, might be worth looking at. MOTHER. I know life is rough on the goat farm, circle of life and all that, but shit, $50 per dog to make sure they don�t die from or lose a foot to a rattlesnake bite? Sure beats having to dig another dog grave out there in the rocky soil.
And I would like to leave you with one last word: MULTITASKING. If you rearrange the letters, you could be MULTISKATING, which sounds like a lot more fun to me.