New Year's Resolution: Pick Up Dog Shit

I have been a dog owner for a year and a half now. I have been a two-dog owner for the last 11 weeks.

I have never picked up dog poop in my own yard.

Stop! Now before you go getting all judgy judgy on me, I'd like to point out that during the time when we only had Coconut, there were only very small turds scattered around the yard, and most of them were sucked up by the lawn mower, and I don't think that anyone other than me has ever stepped in a pile while back there.

If you're still in the mood to judge, judge this: I bought this contraption

this morning, and then spent an hour walking the yard like a grid and scooping up every last solitary frozen piece of dog shit. I even scraped up the smashed-in ones!

I filled two entire large plastic grocery bags, and honestly, I was surprised by the weight of them! I had to fight the urge to bring the bags into my house and put them on the scale!

Which, oddly, brings me to this:

Alex's worst insults for people always tend to have "bag" tagged onto the end. Dickbag, Assbag, the ever popular Douchebag... you get the point. I asked him about this once, and he said that calling someone a bag of something is even harsher than calling them just that one undesirable thing.

I never really thought about it again until today. A shitbag is WAY worse than one single shit.

Productive

This weekend was a mishmash of drama and extreme laziness and actual construct...ivity(?) and luckily it was busy enough to, for a few moments anyway, take my mind off the hemorrhoid that is My Job.

The drama part began with a phone call at 6 a.m. on Saturday from my brother. He had been in a car accident on the way back from Atlantic City. His friend had fallen asleep at the wheel, the car was totaled, and because of where my brother was sitting, he endured the brunt of the crash. Thank goodness that only added up to 3 staples in his head, some whiplash, and a bunch of cuts and bruises, because from the sound of things, it could have been waaaaay worse.

So I drove the hour from my house to a hospital near AC (they hadn't made it very far) and played the part of the Good Sister, promising not to tell Mom and Dad before he did, and then screaming at him for spending 6 safe months in Iraq-- a war zone, and then coming back to New Jersey and almost killing himself. Idiot.

P.S. The most entertaining part of this whole thing was when his roommate, D, had to push their female friend, A, unscathed, sporting a hospital gown and disconnecting false eyelashes, out of the hospital in a wheelchair because she was still too drunk to walk.

When I finally returned home, 4 hours later, I slept for another 2 hours and then went to my parents' house so my mom could help me with my resume. I scored a free Omaha Steaks cheeseburger and made my way to Kelly's, where Coconut had a chance to play with her new puppy. It made me reconsider a second dog, because she had so much fun, got out so much energy, and I didn't really have to be a part of it. Then again, I would have to be a part of buying twice as much dog food, giving twice as many baths, and cleaning up twice as many "accidents." So the jury is still out on that one.

On Sunday, Alex and I worked more on the garage. This seems to be a never-ending project, as we have spend many Sundays out there, and still do not have a beautiful, HGTV worthy organized storage space. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the day was when we brought our bags and bags and bags (I'm not exaggerating-- there were about 20) of old clothing to the clothing drop dumpsters in the grocery store parking lot.

Ethical Question for Y'all: If you are absolutely too lazy/busy/saddled down with the loads of laundry containing clothes you are currently wearing, do you:
A. Donate bags of dirty clothes, unsensored for worn underwear, in the hopes that someone else might decide to wash them and some less fortunate people will be able to purchase your expensive, designer-but-too-small-clothing?
B. Throw everything away because otherwise someone would have to dig through your clothes, and will inevitably touch a pair of your dirty underwear, and that's just unsanitary?

Alex insisted on A. I want to state for the record that my bags of clothes were clean and contained not a pair of underwear, dirty or otherwise.

After the donation, we went grocery shopping, and I purchased the ingredients for The Last Macaroni and Cheese I am Attempting, I Swear. If this doesn't work, I am spending the rest of my life with Kraft and Mom's (when she makes it and I happen to be around).

Stay tuned-- I'll let you know how it goes.

Shiny

It is so beautiful outside, and I know that's an obvious statement to make, but seriously I can't ignore it. I used one of my Leave Early passes today to get the hell home, and you'd think I'd be spending this time outside instead of blogging, but... actually. I can be outside blogging. Be right back.

Okay, so maybe this is not instant messaging, and there was no lag between the time you read that last paragraph and this one, but whatever. The point is, I filled a water bottle and brought my laptop outside, and I am now sitting on my patio enjoying the sun.

*****

On Sunday, Alex and I worked on cleaning out and organizing the monstrosity that was our garage. We didn't get it all finished, but we made a lot of progress. We got rid of a lot, and once we get some shelves, the actual organizing part should go pretty smoothly. Also, there is a sort-of attic over our garage in which we found a previous owner's Playboy videos. Score!

*****

What might one do when a shot glass mysteriously falls into the kitchen sink drain and then gets chopped up by the garbage disposal? I can tell you what I did, which was to reach in gently with my yellow rubber gloved hand and pull out the big pieces. I am hoping the baby shards will just work their way down into the pipes...

*****

Kid-Bit


ChowDownKid: Is that bottle glass or plastic?
TA: Plastic.
CDKid (who is 7): Oh. I thought it was glass. It looks like a forty.

I'm a Rambling Girl

I'm counting down to summer, not only because I'll be rid of my class, but also because Alex has agreed to bankroll me for the two months I'm not getting paid. So I will officially have two glorious months OFF. No part-time gigs with low pay and weird hours or nice pay but more kids and Icannotwait. Alex is lobbying for a Laundry Clause, wherein I do his laundry due to the fact that he is supporting me, but I think that since I do have some summer savings, and he will only be supplementing about 1/3 of my income, that perhaps I will only do 1/3 of his laundry. In fact, I think I will do the third that we both use, like towels and sheets, which I do now anyway. I swear, if I didn't wash them, we'd still be using the same dirty towels from the day we moved into this joint 11 months ago.

And speaking of moving in, something we never did when we planted ourselves here was Put Things Away in an Organized Manner. The garage has been so packed with stuff that it might as well be a storage locker. Imagine that commercial where the car pulls in to the perfectly carved out space in an overcrowded garage, except ours is worse because no car would fit.

So on Sunday, we got a-cleanin, and I am impressed with our progress. I of course went through about an hour when all I did was snap at Alex because cleaning puts me in the worst mood ever, and then he snaps back at me about "why are you yelling? this was YOUR idea!" and then I feel guilty and shuddup until I can see actual progress and become remotivated. Really, the high point of the day was crawling around in the attic space above the garage and discovering a couple of early 90s Playboy videos, but I also enjoyed actually being able to see the floor when we were done.

Sidenote: Does your boyfriend have scads of rediculous things that he refuses to throw away because he thinks his stuff is awesome? I'm talking really not-awesome stuff, like Bart Simpson dolls and naked girl rubix cubes and picture frame clocks that feature a photo of Ex Girlfriend and 8,297 novelty lighters... Just wondering.

I thought I'd be rambling about a lot more stuff, but it seems that I must be off to work now. It should be a decent day because I will be spending it out of my classroom, writing IEPs for next year. I wish I could get some kind of internet service aside from that supplied by my district, because I would SO bring my own laptop and spend the day wasting time. I guess that's why I can't.

Improving Home

Perhaps the best thing that came out of hosting Thanksgiving dinner is that it was just what we needed to finally organizing our disaster of a house. And let me just add in there that I would have been game to do it much earlier, but was having my own secret in-my-head standoff with Alex, because if HE wasn't going to do it, I sure as hell wasn't going to either! Hmph!

So yeah, Thursday morning, we spent about 5 hours cleaning-- actually cleaning-- the house, moving boxes around, EMPTYING boxes, putting things where they are supposed to be rather than where we left them during our last pretend attempt at organization (such as my shoerack, which was supposed to be in our closet room*, but was actually in our guest room because I moved it when I built the closet organizer and never put it back). (* Incidentally, my grandma, who just saw the house for the first time, proclaimed that we should call it our Dressing Room, not a closet room. It's that functional now.)

It is not totally done, but it is at a point where 1) I am not embarassed when people come over, and 2) doing things like painting is actually possible. Incidentally, with my parents' help, we have painted two of the three bedrooms! (Erm, and this is a whoooole nuther story. Short version: it took two entire days to paint our bedroom. And then it still sucked, and my dad had to come over and fix our shitty work.) So I am finally feeling like I didn't move into a piece of shit for some guy. As it turns out, the whole disorganization thing was what was really eating at me! There is still a ton to do, but we've made a dent, at least.

*****

A Conversation

Alex: Did you just drink that Rolling Rock so you'd have a place to stick your flower?

Me: ...

Alex: *sigh* Dork.

Desperate Housewife

Since moving in with Alex, I have found that I have serious issues with becoming a "housewife" when I am not actually his wife. It is true that he works 60 or more hours a week, while my hours on the clock are about 35. I get home at 4; he gets home between 10 and 11. I have the two weekend days off, in a row, and he gets Sundays and Tuesdays.

And yet, being the one to clean the bathroom for the third weekend in a row freakin pisses me off.

Even when I lived in my apartment, I had trouble cleaning on a regular basis. My blog entries have chronicled this; my friends and family have witnessed it. Now there are two of us making a mess, joint bills to pay, a dog to take care of, and time and time again, I find myself falling into a wifely role. I do the bulk of the cleaning, I pay the bills, if we are going somewhere, I consider if the dog will need watching and then find someone to do the watching for us.

I am trying so hard not to be a nag, because marriage or not, the nagging is what will truly turn me into a ball and chain. I refuse.

So instead, I do one of the following:
1) I clean and shut up about it.
2) I leave the mess for as long as I can and then start passive aggressively talking about the disgusting state of our house and eventually become so frustrated when he doesn't take the hints, that I end the whole thing in a screechy state of hysterics and tears wherein he becomes so frightened he promises to clean something for godsakes.

I would say that the ratio of the first scenario happening over the second occurs at 3:1, the latter mostly occurring during my PMS week.

And on that note, I have to go clean the kitchen.