It never fails that the dogs find a way to make me work just a little bit harder, especially when I'm trying not to. Last fall, I bought them these 30 foot tie outs so they could go out the back sliding glass doors to pee. Since then, I have untangled those nice long cords at least three times a day every day. So basically, in an attempt to make my life easier by giving them some freedom, I have added approximately 1,620 extra minutes of useless work to my life. And counting. Last night, I opened the sliding doors to call Maggie back into the house after she peed. She walked toward me, tethered to her 30 foot long pain in my ass and then stopped. She sat down and looked at me helpless and expectant. She was stuck on something. Again. So I had to trudge out into the cold again to loosen her snag. When I approached her, I saw what it was. She was caught on a turd that had frozen to the concrete patio.
When I got back in the house, I caught a whiff of Mandie and it got me thinking. Mandie is like the kid at school that nobody wants to sit by. She is stinky all the time. I'm actually glad she doesn't have any little doggie friends because they'd likely make up rumors about us, like I'm an alcoholic and have men in, or we have bed bugs and lice because I never clean, or we live among large piles of trash because we cannot afford the waste removal bill.
You know, our house actually did start to resemble this scenario just last week. I threw my back out, so order and civilization in our household came to a screeching halt. Chris did his best to feed and bathe the baby, take the dogs out to pee and feed them, but it was rough going for everyone. I'd say we all barely survived Armageddon.
My room especially, at least the immediate vicinity around my bed, started to look like the inside of a crazy bag lady's grocery cart. A dish, a bra, a few half empty bottles of fluids that all serve different uses, hair pins, a razor, ice packs, tissues (mostly used), a bucket... the list goes on. Chris told me that it never takes very long after I become bed ridden for a barrier of stuff to develop around me, making it almost impossible to get to me. Maybe there's some psychology there. I don't know. What I do know is that, for about six days we were slowly sinking into a pile of items that just could not find their way home.
Finally fed up with trying repeatedly to claw my way out of a bed that resembles a tar pit, I went to join the group in the living room. It had been days since I had sat with my family on the couch for an evening of relaxation but my back was feeling better. As we sat and watched TV, one of those commercials came on, advertising a pill to cure a bodily function "discovered" by some researcher with too much time and a load of extra government grant dollars . This new disorder that has just recently been "diagnosed" is called Acute Urinary Leakage (AUL), otherwise known as "I sneezed and I pissed myself."
It's like Fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is an imaginary, or should I say "indeterminate" disease that was "discovered" when baby boomers fell into denial about the aging process. So, it's really just a fancy word for "Hey! Your body hurts because you're OLD!" So, it got me thinking. I wonder if I could come up with my own imaginary disorders. Here's some I've "discovered" so far:
1. HBD--- High Booger Density. With this disorder, there really is no light at the end of the tunnel. I mean you are really stuck between a rock and a hard place.
2. EPH--- Extroverted Pubic Hair. This is a disorder that develops when your pubes have grown out of control and peak out from the sides of your underwear.
3. HGH--- Husband Gas Hypersensitivity. This disorder occurs when the sound and smell of your husband's farts become so overwhelming to you that they can actually wake you out of a sound sleep.
4. TAS--- Trumpet Ass Syndrome. When your farts become so loud, they can wake the dead, and usually wake your wife and your daughter who sleeps two rooms away.
5. BCB--- Butt Crust Build-up. This disorder occurs when you become too fat or too crippled to reach your butt. Symptoms include no one wanting to sit next to you and a cloud of stank hovering over you at all times.
These disorders are serious, at least in our home, and we will be watching the TV, anxiously waiting for the day when an ad comes on with a pill that will save us from our anguish. Right now, we're just thankful we can finally put a name to these debilitating disorders.
