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.

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.

Vermin

The exterminator was just here (the association has him come out once a month) and he said that the huge cockroach I found dying in the corner of my bedroom last week was most likely not a cockroach, but a "waterbug." He blamed it on the torrential downpours we had just before I found it and told me how if you go to a certain local street, you could see thousands of them in the diner parking lot*. Anyway, I'm happy because that means I'm not a slob. Okay, Christine, I know you are "tsk-tsking" right now because you were in my apartment about a month ago and saw evidence to the contrary, but shuddup because it's clean here now and the bug guy said it wasn't a cockroach. And anyway, even if I am a slob, I am not a dirty slob whose nastiness caters to vermin. And I'd say that's some good news.

* Note to Self: Never, never go to that diner...


*****

I hate birds. I just find that whole flying-around-my-head-threatening-to-peck-my-eyes-out-and-
shitting-on-my-car thing very unappealing. Because I live in a semi-city environment, and in an apartment, I've seen my share of pigeons while living here. In fact, there is a nest of them on top of the window air conditioner across the ally from my bedroom, and on most mornings they wake me up if my noisy air purifier isn't on.

Anyway, just now, as I was typing this entry, I noticed water falling right in front of my window. I looked out, and saw that the stream of water was only coming from one spot, and that it looked kind of whitish. I went to the window and looked up, and I saw the ass of a pigeon shaking it's tail feather, drip-dropping its excess shit. Right onto my Welcome mat.

Welcome, indeed.

It Never Ends

Okay, so I was awakened by the doorbell at 10 o'clock yesterday morning, and I'm pretty sure it was the exterminator (a service covered by the association fee, I imagine, since I've never paid for it), and I was too embarassed by the disgusting state of my apartment to let him in. I was too embarassed by dirtyness that might attract bugs to let in a guy to keep bugs out!!!

This is where Mom To The Rescue happened.

A quick call to Mom, and I had a free take-out lunch and someone in my apartment to go through my piles and piles and piles of mail and papers while supervising a kitchen-living room straightening.

This got me on a roll (with mayo and pickles, har har) and I went crazy. I dusted ceiling fan blades, I pulled the knobs off the stove to wipe behind them, I vacuumed the couch cushins! Then, I went to Target and spent about $200* on sundry items to help the cause-- bins to contain the things under my kitchen and bathroom counters, a broom because although the Swiffer is good in the bathroom, it ain't no match for the kitchen floor's crumbs-- and that's actually only about $20 worth of apartmenty cleaning things. The rest of the $200 was on other stuff... a rainjacket, a flexible turner, some black shoes for work, a bedside lamp to match the one I have... whatever. The point is, I went to Target to get cleaning stuff, and when I got it home, I used it!

On the agenda for today: vacuum rug, wash floor, laundry.

Heh. Yeah right.

* Have you ever gone into a Target and spent less than $200? That tends to be my average, even if I just walked in for toilet paper...