i stepped in great dane poop & lived to tell about it

*this post is dedicated to my sister-in-law heather who hasn’t been feeling well lately and could sure as hell use a good laugh.

my sister-in-law heather–the very same one i’m writing this post for–lives on a friggin hillside in washington, PA. don’t ask me why but she does. i swear every time we drive up her driveway i almost have a heart attack. it’s that steep. after we park, i ask holly if we have the emergency brake on so many times she gets this close to elbowing me in the mouth. yeah every trip to heather’s starts off really well.

washington, PA is a unique place in that every single person in western pennsylvania actually calls it “washington, pee-ay” as not to confuse it with our nation’s capitol–what, with all the cows grazing all over the place, i can see how that’d be really confusing–or washington state, which is about 4,000 miles away on the west coast practically in canada.

over the weekend, on sunday, holly and i drove to washington, pee-ay to meet her family at a mud pit and deep-fried food festival disguised as a christmas arts & crafts fair. after eating a late lunch at the washington, pee-ay reb robin (reeeeeed robin. yuuummmmm. sorry, every time i think about red robin i have to sing their jingle), holly went with her mom, twin sister, niece and nephew to some outlets. since i kind of hate shopping (that’s my gay gene rearing its boat-shoe-and-chino-wearing head), i said i’d rather go to heather’s to hang with holly’s gram, who was going back to heather’s, too, and who is fabulous.

holly politely asked me to drive our car back to heather’s. i snapped at her that i didn’t want to b/c the country roads are too damn windy and i’d get lost and maybe even have a panic attack following her sister to the house and i didn’t know where my xanax was. (total lie. i’ve kept it in my bag ever since i flew to san fran for nicole‘s wedding. i know exactly where the hell it is.)

c’mon, babe, she said, her impatience growing. it’s only like five minutes away. that way i can go in the car with my mom.

i said no until holly was good and pissed and then i said yes. i do that a lot even tho i shouldn’t.

i managed to follow heather and her gram back to the house on the windy roads without having a panic attack. we got up to the house and i was like oh beejesus, the driveway. i had totally forgotten about the damn driveway.

well here we go, i thought as i gunned our pearlescent white rav-4 up the hill. (yes it really is pearlescent white.) tho it kind of looked like a rolling turd considering how much craft fair mud was on it.

there were all these damn cars in the driveway so i had to park on the grass. i chose a bad place to park. at that moment i didn’t realize just how bad it was, but from the outset i knew it wasn’t a good idea but i didn’t know what else to do. i felt like the car was going to roll over and tumble down the hill. i rolled down the window and asked her husband if it was an ok place to park. he told me to watch out for the dog shit, which i assumed meant the car wouldn’t flip.

whatevs, i thought. i can a handle a little dog poop. hell, i live in southeast baltimore. home of loose pit bulls that crap in the middle of the sidewalk.

i got out of the car, careful not to let the gravity of the hillside slam the car door on me. (note: this has happened before. it’s not pretty.) i got out to look at the car and see about this dog poop.

i should note that they have a great dane. her name is lena and she is enormous. i love her deeply but she scares the hell out of me. we’re basically scared of each other. i walk in the house and she runs from me. and when she comes near me i run from her. it’s like a game except we’re both scared for our lives.

anyway, her poop was so big it literally took my breath away. i’d never seen dog poop that big in my life. kind of hard to miss, i thought. not gonna step in that. no way no how. i am totally in the clear. you’d have to be a major idiot not to see that.

i walked back around to the other side of the car to help gram up the hill. and then it happened. i put my left foot down and slipped. it happened so damn quickly it was like i stepped on a banana peel. it was like a cartoon.

whoooaaaaaaaa, i said, feeling like it was happening in slow motion. i had to grab heather’s arm to stop myself from tumbling down the hill and in the process almost took down heather, her baby and her grandma.

“that is some serious mu-,” i said, turning around to look at the mud i surely had stepped in.

it wasn’t mud.

i had stepped in the world’s largest pile of dog poop. in my new boots.

there was massive streak of great dane poop about two feet long leading from where i was standing at that moment straight back to the car. and it was deep.

a shiver went down my spine and then i got goosebumps. i was trying very hard a) not to gag and b) not to curse as there was an impressionable baby in front of me, not to mention holly’s 82-year-old grandma who doesn’t know what a cursing sicko i am.

instead of bursting into a tourette’s-like stream of swearing, i shook off my nausea and let out a very unsatisfying  “oh man.”  it was very hard to hold in all that cursing and i think i injured myself in the process.

i wiped my shoe off in the grass but i don’t even know if i got it all off. nearly a week later, there’s still something on my left boot. it could be craft fair mud, i’m not even sure.

i’m trying to figure out how to end this story. i feel like there should be a moral. i guess the moral of the damn story is that it’s easy to step in dog poop, even when it’s so big it’s basically visible from space. don’t think it won’t happen to you.

heather, i hope you enjoyed this story and that it made you feel better. i’d put in a smile “emoticon” here but the damn blogging software i’m using will turn it into a cartoon smiley and then this looks like a ‘tween blog. i love you and i still love lena even tho she’s the size of a small horse and her poop is huge and i stepped in it and almost fell down a hill and when i see her i want to suck my thumb while rocking back and forth in the corner.

important sidenote!

i’ve been nominated as “Best Lifestyle Blog” AND “Best Personal Blog” in the Baltimore Sun’s annual blog competition!

for Lunch at 11:30 to win, you have to VOTE for it! every day! (yes, you really can vote everyday!) so click on the icon below, register (it takes like 10 seconds to register) and then choose Lunch at 11:30 for both “Best Lifestyle Blog” and “Best Personal Blog.” then write it in for “Best Overall Blog.” xxo!

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you can call them “field mice” if you want to

don't fall for it! it is STILL a mouse. i know it's in an orange but it will bite you!

when i was a little kid–i think i may have been in second grade–i did my homework over the weekend and then promptly lost it. i noticed this sunday night, the most dreaded night of school-aged children, and proceeded to have a mini meltdown.  

“i don’t want to tell my teacher i lost my homework!” i told my parents, completely panic-stricken that i was going to get in what us kids called “big trouble.”

“tell your teacher you misplaced it,” they told me calmly.

misplaced, i thought. wow. that sounded so much better. yes, that would work, i decided. i would tell the teacher–actually, i think it was a student teacher–that  i misplaced my homework. it was much more mature and refined. i once knew where it was, but now i didn’t. which meant that i misplaced it and did not lose it like the irresponsible second grader that i was.

i took a deep breath, dislodged my wedgie, and told the student teacher that i had “misplaced” my homework over the weekend. i swear to this day i think i saw her try to hold back a smile. thinking back on it, i’m surprised she didn’t let out a laugh, too. what second grader comes into elementary school saying she misplaced her homework?? me, obviously. but it worked and i felt better. she gave me another worksheet, and i redid it. case closed.

i’m telling you this story b/c i crack up when people change language to make things seem…not so bad. take “field mouse,” for example. now that we’ve dealt w/our fair share of mice, it always cracks me up when people see/find/catch a mouse in their house and tell people that it is/was just a little field mouse.

i used to go for the whole field mouse thing before i moved to a rowhouse that shares walls w/who knows what. but as a tried-and-true resident of southeast baltimore, i’m not falling for it anymore.

i hate to break it to you, but a mouse is a mouse, folks. just like a roach is a roach and not a “water bug.” the mice we occasional caught in picturesque suburban new jersey look exactly the same as the mice we catch here in downtown baltimore (well, except for the gang tattoos…). 

if saying field mouse makes you feel better b/c it makes you feel like it came from a farm or is actually a talking cartoon mouse or just, you know, accidentally wound up in your house b/c it got sidetracked from the field it was crossing, so be it. but i say a mouse is a mouse is a mouse (even if it’s in an orange; see above). ugh, i can’t believe i ever had rodents (hamsters) as pets. of course i used to have lizards (ok, just chameleons), too. i also used to pick up worms. a lot has changed with me since the early/mid 80s.

as for the word “misplaced,” i don’t think i’ve used it since second grade. (if i ever go to england, maybe i’ll use it there. seems like a place where they’d use that word.) and i really don’t get many wedgies anymore either. in case you were wondering. which you probably weren’t. just saying.

i can’t take this wildlife anymore

srsly. aren’t ppl living in cities, like, not supposed to come in contact with animals? as in: we go out to the country to look at animals from far away and giggle and gasp about how cute and fluffy they are? right? right? THEN WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO DEAL WITH SO MANY FRIGGIN ANIMALS IN THIS CITY???!!!

what’s w/the wildlife, huh, baltimore?? what the hell‘s with the wildlife? there are CATS sh*tting on our ROOF, ppl! our roof!! tell me how this is even possible? (i know. they’re climbers. but humor me here.) they use our backyard as a friggin litterbox. they. are in. our. WALLS! our walls!

the rats burrow under our gates. they even gnawed thr way thru the concrete as it was drying when we put in our patio. the mice, oh you know about the mice. oh and there’s dogs running loose, too. german shepards and pit bulls (that could easily–and very gladly, i’m sure–tear me apart). i’m telling you WHAT. i used to really like animals before i moved to baltimore. but now i’m srsly rethinking  this, as the animals in this town are determined to ruin my life.

around 7/8 or 9pm most nights we hear some thumps and then some eery scratching in the ceiling, sometimes the walls. the first time this happened i was *alone*. holly was in class and i’m telling you i thought i was going to die. or lose my mind. or run out into the street (which would only have me running back in the house for a myriad of reasons). sometimes it gets so loud i think whatever it is is going to appear splat in the middle of the bamboo floor and start hissing at me. like, pop out from behind the fridge and gouge my eyeballs out. if you heard it i swear you’d feel the same way.

at first we thought that maybe it was a giant (gulp) rat. (oh G-d no. pls.) then i thought maybe it was a raccoon (we had a family of those suckers “move in” above our porch in nj when i was growing up) but we really don’t have those here. (the rats probably eat them. you think i’m joking? yeah, i’m totally not.) we don’t have squirrels in our hood, either. (again, the rats prob. scared them away. nothing fluffy and cute allowed in east baltimore.) we’ve decided it’s probably a cat. or cats. b/c i swear, just when i think i’ve seem *all* of them, i find a new one perched on our fence, skulking in our alley (tho i try to spend as little time as possible there since i was propositioned by a daytime (female) hooker who was smoking something in a metal pipe and asked me if i had a husband and what my name was. pls, i know, i know) or peering at me just under the roman shades covering our back french doors (and scaring the s**t outta me in the process).

i have alotta cat lover friends, so i’m going to try not to get too mean in describing my frustration w/these friggin felines. but i will say that i’m going to call animal control stat. if  you know me and you’re reading this and want to adopt one, well c’mon on over! i’m sure if you hang around long enough (and are fast enough. those suckers can ruuun) you can grab one and take it on home. good luck w/that, tho. good friggin luck.

friday dogs!!!

i will now take a break from sharing the perpetual crisis that is my life to introduce a couple of my very very favorite ANIMALS!

i am a huuuuuge fan of dogs. i want a puppy sooooo badly, but, as holly constantly reminds me, “now isn’t the right time.” (at which point i sigh loudly and say i knoooooooooow.) in the meantime, i shower love on the wonderful dogs of others.

first, there is Thunder. he belongs to the fabulous danielle, and i swear he’s part human! this dog has a soul, i tell you. he should work in a hospital, that’s how sweet he is. he loves everyone (esp. me, i like to think! but he generally just loves ppl who love him). we saw him last night, while eating a ridiculously delicious vegan (!? i know, right?? sooooooo good) feast. he greeted me with lots of kisses and presented me w/his paw numerous times w/out me even asking! he also rested his adorable head on my lap, and generally made me feel awesome and loved. and there is nothing in the world like true-blue doggie love.

here he is:
(taken with my cellphone camera, which doesn’t have a flash.)

awwww *thunder*

also there is Lex, dog of andrew. this dog (a long-haired mini dachshund) is so cute ICED (i can’t even deal). i was lucky enough to meet him as a puppy, and hearing his little paws taptaptap on andrew’s wooden floors was just…sigh. unbearably cute. and seeing proud daddy andrew hold him under one arm, omg. again, can’t deal.

andrew recently recorded a quick game of fetch w/lex and posted it on youtube for folks like me to watch ten times over. turn up your volume!

cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!

TGIF, everyone! woof!