Random Esquire

11:30 a.m.  sunshine. sleep with blanket.

1:30 p.m. move with sun to couch.  take blanket with.

2:00 p.m.  fell asleep mid-stretch.

3:00 p.m.  something on paw.

3:10 p.m.  nope. back to sleep.

Got a bit

of a

wanderin’ eye

issue

goin’ on.

The dog was trying to sleep.  But I couldn’t sleep.  So I got up.  But he didn’t.

So I tucked his lips into his mouth and took a picture.

I’m not going to lie. If it’d been one of you, you’d have a Sharpie mustache right now, too.

Them’s the breaks when you fall asleep first in the house of Random.

1.  You may recall that The Ballerina sometimes says things that one might not expect. Like “You’ve got to own that shit. Like a lazy eye.”  Or there was the time I invited her to dinner and her response was, “I’m only going to come if it has a fall theme.”

The other day, I was bogged down at work and a little stressed.  I received this IM from The Ballerina:

“can i bring you something to cheer you up? scones? a multi-racial prostitute?”

*Blink*

And no, there’s no inside joke here.  She just says things like that.

2.  Lately, I have noticed a lot of ads on television for some organization called: Catholics Come Home.  In the ad, there are images of famous Italian pieces of art in the Vatican, charity work being performed, Pope John Paul with folks, the current Pope, Pope What’s-his-name,…all while a voice over tells you to come back to the Church.  And I found myself wondering why they don’t show a clip of Pope-What’s-His-Nuts getting tackled because, I can tell you, if I knew that shit was going down at church, I might be more likely to attend.

3.  I had a dream last night in which I was seated with my foot pulled up near me.  There was a cut in my foot and I was pulling 5 foot long parasitic worms out of it.  I kid you not.  I was frantically pulling them out and as I did so, I could feel them sliding through my leg and foot, all wet and warm.

I woke up and found that Little Filthy was licking my foot.

He’s sleeping in his own bed tonight.

1.  I watched The Sound of Music last night with a friend.  What a scandalous movie, really.  He stole a nun and then took her on a month long honeymoon.  I mean, I get that she’s got a lot to discover… but a month?  They’ve pretty much guaranteed themselves additional brood.  And at one point, Uncle Max called the children a bunch of “gloomy pussies.”  I bet they re-write that line in modern productions.  It got better when it went all Indiana Jones at the end and the Nazis got their comeuppance. Then I realized that if this whole thing happened in the present, it’d be a reality show.  Nun mom trying to deal with 7 step children… while pregnant.

2.  Little Filthy got a bath.  This has endeared him to me.  Enough that I sent a text message to his mom, Boss, who is currently in Florida with family:

RE: When you comin’ back?

Boss: In a day or two.

RE: Hurry!

Boss: Why for?

RE: Cause the dog is cute right now, how he’s sleeping.

Boss: Ok.  Don’t let him move.  For 48 hours.

RE: He won’t.  I glued him.

3.  My Neighbor was over for a bit yesterday.  She brought Barnabas, her pug, over.  Little Filthy promptly showed him how to remove kleenex from the box.  Neighbor and I gaped as Barnabas delicately tried to pull a kleenex from the box.  She said to me, “You realize who you’re raising?”  I turned to her and said, “Uh oh. Who?”

She said, “Alvin.  You’re raising Alvin.  And my dog is just one of those innocent other chipmunks.”

I said, “Oh, like Simon?”

She sighed and said, “I’m afraid Barnabas is more like…Theodore.”

We’re raising monsters.

Fox and Hound

1.  I heard Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer today.  I just gotta ask, when is there ever a warm, moist air mass moving over the North Pole on Christmas Eve?  Is fog really an issue at the North Pole?  So I decided to figure it out.  Turns out that because the air is so bitterly cold, it takes a really small amount of water in the air before it saturates, resulting in fog.  But not of water droplets – of ice crystals.  And this is not an infrequent thing.  So I guess the song does sort of make sense.

2.  And then I realized that I’d spent far too much time thinking about that.  Because, really, is the fog part where the song loses credibility for me?  Not the anthropomorphic reindeer?  Or Santa or the LED nose animal?   No.  See, I quickly pinpoint the fog and question that.

Sometimes, my brain is useless.

3.  You may have heard – I have a new service that I’m offering.  But you’ll have to visit QT’s blog Friday morning to hear more about it.

Speaking of, check out that little Meg Ryan.

4.  I am the product of miscegenation.  This means that rarely a week will go by when someone does not ask me about my ethnicity.  However, I fully admit that it sometimes gets tiresome.  I would probably not mind except that most people seem to think that this is an acceptable way to inquire about your ethnicity:  “What are you?”

Sometimes, because I have decided to be playfully difficult, the conversation goes like this:

Person: “What are you?”

RE:  “American.”  Big smile.

Person: “No, I mean, like, where are you from?”

RE: “Oh!  Sorry – I’m from Chicago.”  Big smile.

Person: “Where were you born?”

RE: “Ohhh, Minnesota.”  Winning smile.

Person: “But what language do you speak?”

RE: “…English.”  Confused look.

Person: “I meant other than English.”

RE:  “Oh!  French.”

I don’t look French – even though I am 1/4 French.  I do appreciate the curiosity but sometimes, I want to make something up.  So I’ve decided to start saying, “I’m Caraway.  Perhaps you’ve heard of our seeds.”

5.  I realize that I have shifted this posture to Little Filthy. Once, while dining al fresco with the pooch under the table, a man walked by, did a double take at him and clearly wondered what breed he was.  The beast is pug-chihuahua.  The man said slowly, “What….is he?”

I said slowly, “He…is   a     dog…”

I have been blogging for years and the very best part about it has been the readers.  I am impressed and touched by the kindness and consideration virtual strangers have for each other.  It reinforces this hope/wish/belief that people really do want to come together and be with each other in some unique fashion.  So I was really touched when Debra from Rubbermoon contacted me with the idea of creating a rubber stamp… of Little Filthy.

And she made it happen.  Starting now, you can buy a rubber stamp of Little Filthy.  Artist Gretchen Ehrsam drew Little Filthy for the stamp.  And you know what’s even more cool?  All of the profit from Little Filthy stamps will go to the American Cancer Society.  Debra asked me what charity I would like to receive the money and I chose the ACS because…

…because everyone reading this can probably complete that sentence.  That’s why.

So!  If you want a little bit of Little Filthy in your life… please buy a stamp.

To make this more fun for us all, if you buy a stamp from Debra in the next week, I will stick your name in a drawing that I’ll do for a $50 gift certificate to a store of your choice.  Oh, and dude, you get a freakin’ Little Filthy stamp!  How cool is that??

Thank you, Debra.  Thank you, Gretchen.  Thank you, readers.

And thank you, Little Filthy.  You’re a good dog.

I’ve been teaching Little Filthy not to eat kleenex.  He has recently discovered how to remove them from the box.  Would you like to see how it’s going?

I planted a crumpled up kleenex on the end of my coffee table and started recording.  Then I left the room, walked down the hall and into the bathroom and closed the door for about a minute.  He followed me down the hall and watched me close the door.  Then, apparently, he waited a bit before trotting right back into the living room and getting the kleenex off of the table.

You can hear me walk away right at the beginning of the video. Then, if you skip ahead to about :36, you’ll start to hear him trot back and then commit the dirty crime.

This has to stop.  His butt has become a kleenex dispenser of its own.

1.  Wait..wait….before you go in there…let me just explain why I was so interested in the kleenex.

2.  Tell me about this Santa again.

3.  QT, we need to talk about your drinking.

1.  I feel the need for another guys night with Editor.  The ironic thing about guys night is that we talk about women the entire time.

2.  I finished all of my Christmas shopping.  Again, this isn’t because I just couldn’t wait to get started.  More that I see Christmas as a band-aid I prefer to rip off in one quick motion.

3.  Sitcom will sometimes say, “That’s so gay.”  Now, lest you think Sitcom is being derogatory, I will tell you that she is not.  She is nothing if not open minded.  However, if you don’t know Sitcom and you heard her say it, it is possible you might get that impression.  But don’t worry.  You see, every time that Sitcom says, “That’s so gay, ” she follows it by clarifying to anyone within earshot, “I mean ‘gay‘ as in ‘totally lame‘ – not like ‘gay‘ as in the totally awesome homosexual way.”

It makes me laugh every time.

4.   Little Filthy has a new baby.  It’s a moose.  He takes it everywhere.  I put his leash on today, turned to grab my coat and when I turned back, his moose was in his mouth.  I had to explain that the moose did not go outside.  Moose sleeps in the bed with us.

This is a sad, sad family.  heh.