shoesonwrong

100 Things Before I Die, Installment 2

1. Plant a garden
2. Get the pop-tab poster framed
3. Eat an ugli fruit
4. Pay off my student loans
5. Devise and use an organizational system for our books/movies/games/music
6. Drink Pimm's Cup
7. Find a good Chinese restaurant in Detroit proper
8. Attempt double dutch
9. Visit Jane Austen's house
10. See the Great Wall of China
11. Throw a rock into a fjord
12. Make a quilt from our various cloth keepsakes
13. Learn point-set topology
14. Listen to all The Beatles albums straight through
15. Kiss the Blarney Stone
16. Find a copy of Octavia Butler's "Survivor"
17. Paint a room red
18. Buy someone a bicycle
19. Write a thank you note to all my favorite teachers and professors
20. Drink a mint julep
21. Sleep on the veranda of a Southern plantation house
22. Make something with Ryan
23. Spend the duration of a really bad storm on the beach
24. Live without electricity for a week
25. Wear fake eyelashes

The Cat's Tail Looks Long Enough To Strangle Him With

When Cassie was a puppy, she was prone to running all over the neighborhood, just eluding my grasp, thinking it was a fun game. One day, she got away in the pouring rain when I was barefoot and she wasn't wearing a collar. After a lively chase around a few blocks while I cursed at her, she stopped half a block from the house, squatted, and took the biggest dump ever. Right in front of a lawyer's office. While the lawyer looked out the window. That same lawyer looked out the window as I, soaking wet and barefoot, carried a mid-sized puppy across the street and back into the apartment. He also watched while I trudged over, soaking wet and barefoot still (shoes? I don't need shoes, y'all. I'm BRITNEY SPEARS.), and picked up dog poop from his lawn in the pouring rain.

So yeah, we've had some really special moments. I've been happy that lately our pet missteps have been in the privacy of our own home. (I don't count the Momo Backlash of Ought-Eight because I DID NOTHING WRONG. I MAY DRAG HIM AROUND AGAINST HIS WILL IN A HARNESS 9 HOURS A DAY UNTIL HE'S DEHYDRATED AND HAS A BALD SPOT, BUT I DID NOTHING WRONG.) Sure, the cat has tried to kamikaze out the window and the other day, the dog wandered into the closet, stepped into a pair of my underwear that had fallen out of the hamper, then got all her feet tangled up in them as she tried to escape/wander around the apartment so that she hogtied herself with my underpants, but these things happened in the privacy of our own home.

I think you sense where this is building to, right?

I opened the apartment door for a second -- a SECOND -- and the cat was off like a shot down the stairs. Fortunately, he's unable to push hard enough on the door at the bottom to escape. Unfortunately the same is not true of the dog, who pushed past me in a cat-chasing frenzy. At this point, I had just woken up and was only wearing a tee shirt that didn't really cover my various, uh, widgets.

The long and short of the story is this: I ended up throwing on whatever clothes I could find (which did not include a bra, sadly) and chasing a ginger dog and marmalade cat around the outside of the house, hissing death threats at them, and fervently hoping all my neighbors were either asleep or still drunk.

It's moments like these that I'm almost happy we have decided to give Cassie to my parents when we move to Detroit. Almost.

At least if I'm running around Detroit half-clothed with a crazed look, it probably just means the job didn't pan out and we've taken to the hobo lifestyle.

100 Things Before I Die, Installment 1

1. Live overseas in a manner similar to the locals
2. Take Ryan to the Monterey Bay Aquarium
3. Read Cryptonomicon
4. Live above the 20th floor
5. Watch someone I knew when they were a baby get married
6. See an Olympic event in person
7. High-five any member of any royal family
8. Skinny dip in the ocean
9. Live a vegan lifestyle for a month
10. Get a bachelor's dog -- the laid back kind of dog who is just a big, dumb, friendly doofus
11. Learn how to make a quilt
12. Steam clean the carpeting twice a year
13. Eat at Vace's in D.C. again
14. Ride an Elephant
15. Take shoes to the cobbler
16. Eat at Carnegie Deli in New York
17. Sell the car and use only public transportation
18. Meet Paul McCartney
19. Make a elephant-centric mobile and hang it over my bed
20. Get a copy of an Ursula K. Le Guin book signed by the author herself
21. Sleep on a beach in a hammock
22. Scare a clown
23. Donate blood
24. Visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters
25. Watch Battlestar Galactica: Razor

Internet Exploder and Job Interviews

I have a topology exam on Wednesday. Well, considering he just told us TODAY about it, it's more like a pop exam. Which is the same day that Ryan goes in for his final interview in Detroit at Geektopia. So we have to reschedule our Topology exam AND I have to reschedule my Capstone quiz because we're staying Wednesday night down there so we can either apartment hunt on Thursday if he gets the job or fulfill a suicide pact by jumping off the Comerica Building if they reject him because I CANNOT HANDLE ONE MORE STRESSFUL THING.

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about Ryan's amazing job interview for the amazing company that is filled with amazingness, but you know what would be more amazing? Having a little more notice about the interview. I mean, it's not Burger King, and we are not migrant workers (although, if the grad school thing doesn't pan out, I am open to that). This is supposed to be a real people job with real people things like health insurance, a salary, and a Four-Oh-Wunk.

It is decided that I have a wicked sinus infection (and hence the DYING the past few months), and it's settled in the left half of my head and chest, in the general throat, ear, and that sinus cavity above my boobs area. Right side of the head, absolutely nothing. I can poke and prod and  NOTHING. Left side, I wince when AIR bounces off it. My glands are swollen, there's all sorts of mucus, and the earwax -- oy vey, the earwax.

Also, I am in this computer science class that is the epitome of lame. I have to do an online IT lab, and it REQUIRES Internet Explorer. Gee, something that takes forever, is indescribably easy, AND requires the use of the world's worst browser? SIGN ME UP RIGHT NOW THIS VERY INSTANT. I was working on it at home until Internet Exploder decided to just completely wonkify itself and display every single page on the internet correctly except the IT lab ones. This has persisted even though I managed to use Voodoo and forcibly rip IE off my computer and then reinstall it. So now I have to work in the labs with all the other commoners, where it smells like industrial cleaner and freshmen.

I hate my pets

Every stupid morning the stupid dog is let out by Ryan while he's showering and stuff. She's outside for about 30 minutes before he lets her back in and then goes to work. Only after she has been put back in the house (THIS HAPPENS ALMOST EVERY DAY, PEOPLE) does she realize suddenly, "Oh, yeah, I forgot to POOP."

So she whines outside the door to the bedroom where I am still sleeping. If whining doesn't wake me, then she tries yelping. If I manage to remain comatose through THAT she then BEATS ON THE DOOR. Not, like, scratches at it or anything. There's no claw involved. This is straight up, pad to door, repeated slamming.

I finally wake up and let her out while calling her every variation of the term "turd", she runs outside and poops, and then I go back to sleep. Unless I have a class. Like today.

Seriously. What is wrong with her? She is smart enough to know basic commands, recognize names, and know approximately what time to start looking out the window to wait for Ryan to come home. Yet she can't remember to TAKE A DUMP? There is something wrong with her. It's not mental retardation, but it's not not mental retardation, you know?**

Plus, she's got the cat doing it now. He whines outside the door and paws at it like a needy little tool in the mornings until I pick him up, where he proceeds to sit on my head like a hat and lick my hair. Again, not not mental retardation.

*Not really. Except sometimes really.