STICKY DOORKNOBS

Lower Flags, LOWER!

With all due respect to my good buddy Eric over at Fire Ant Gazette, if you're gonna run a picture on your blog of yourself in your crossing guard days, you better be prepared to go all the way.

From this day forward, life is changed

Oh no. The Boy has located and begun to use dad's cologne. And he, like, apparently knows why guys use it. All of a sudden like. Last week he didn't care how his socks smelled. Today, I'm afraid the heater will blow up because of the abundance of guy smell fumes in the house. Please pray for me.

Dumb doggy habits leave me scratchin' my head

I'm a dog person. Always have been I guess. About the only cat I could ever tolerate was Goldie, a poor tabby my wife accidentally backed over with the car several years ago. The auto-feline accident didn't make the papers. It was a subcompact car and Karen just kinda nicked Goldie's rear left-quarter panel. The cat limped around for a few weeks and we remain to this day convinced that his hitch was more pronounced when we were watching him, some sort of sympathy, "Feel sorry for me, you would-be-murderers" plea from a cat.

Goldie still lives today. He still flinches at the sound of jingling car keys. But he won't come back to our house, even though we ask, beg and plead, and insist we'll put no more tire marks on his backside if he'll just give us another chance. But no, Goldie spends his days sitting on the sidewalk directly across the street from us, staring at our house all day, like some freak horror cat from a Stephen King novel.

Enter Zoe. Zoe is our dog, a lab-mastif mix we think. Beautiful, loving, kindhearted, energetic, playful. She is a part of our family just as great dog owners insist the best dogs are. I love Zoe, and I don't easily or often profess my adoration for four-legged creatures. But Zoe's a great animal we obtained from the SPCA rescue facility out on Fairgrounds Rd., on Sept. 10, 2001. Since that day, she has seemed to have a unique way of communicating with us through her eyes and paws.

As much love as I feel for our family dog, I can still not quite figure out some of her odd, and frankly, sick habits. I know dogs are supposed to do these kinds of things. But I refuse to accept them.

We've taken Zoe to Midland's new dog park a number of times now. And she has a lot of fun. So much to do. So much pee to smell.

Which is where my problems with dogs begin. I'll just say one thing: when people meet friends at a ballgame, or when we have an important meeting at work, I'm so glad we don't start the proceedings by sniffing the other people in the room. We humans are so judgmental, a few odors and we'd be forced to cancel EVERYTHING.

I canNOT understand the joy dogs derive from the greet-and-sniff process. Surely there's a better way to get acquainted: comparing sticker-in-paw stories ... near-misses-by-cars stories ... gossip about the ugliest dogs that ever walked down the back alley. SOMETHING other than smelling another creature's hind quarters. It's one thing I've never quite comprehended about our canine friends.

The other thing: smelling other dogs' pee. There are NO toys at the dog park. NONE. But we really don't need any. I tried to throw Zoe a tennis ball the other day so she could fetch it and we could play. She couldn't break herself away from smelling pee in the grass long enough to bring me the ball back. Shows me where I rate.

If smelling backsides weren't enough, what's so darned interesting about smelling pee? And what are dogs thinking when they smell pee in the grass"

"HEY! HEY! HEY! Dog pee here."

"And a dog peed here."

"And here."

"And here. ... Geez, it's EVERYWHERE."

"Hey, here too. What's the deal?"

"Nope, no pee here. BOR-ing."

"Ooooooh, more pee here."

"And here."

"And here."

You smell one tuft of grass with dog pee on it, seems to me like you've pretty much smelled 'em all, wouldn't you think? But what do I know, I'm only a two-legged human.

Dogs. I can't figure 'em out. But I love 'em. Well, at least the one.

Twas An Icky Night Before Christmas

   It happened. You can't make this stuff up. It was Christmas Eve. The Boy had been hurlin' for a couple of days and we had come to the conclusion that what he had was probably more than a 24-hour bug. (Gee, wonder what tipped us off?)

    We set out for the doctor about Noon on Christmas Eve. He x-rayed The Boy's insides and found some sort of blockage. The doctor did not prescribe Pepto-Bismol. Bad doctor.

    We took our time getting to the Walgreen's that night, me trying to convince myself that whatever ailed him had run its course. Seven o'clock rolled around and ... and ... and ... another quick sprint to the bathroom.

    "Argh!" I believe was the word out of my mouth. Or something similar.

    Mrs. P and I headed to the drug store, down to our humiliating last resort, but what we found there refreshed us because what we had gone to pick up was really quite depressing.

    It was 8 o'clock. Walgreen's was the only store open. Everywhere we turned there were husbands picking up last minute "meaningful" gifts. I've never seen so many back massagers and George Foreman grills move in such a short time.

   And there we were. Not shopping for Christmasy items. But even with what I stood in line holding, I felt better about myself than those guys buying last minute Ginsu knife sets. My God, it takes me MONTHS to plan a Christmas list for my wife. I would never stumble into a store with four hours to go to buy a miracle broom.

    We walked up to the counter and were greeted, with minimal joy, by a worker who obviously would have rather been at home playing a Santa Claus video game than checkin' me out.

    "I'm sorry you're working man, but at least you're not the daddy at my house tonight," I said, tossing down suppositories and latex gloves.

    He said nothing. Obviously, he was severely lacking in the sense of humor department.

   We bought the stuff and made for the house. Let's get this over as quickly as we can, I said, knowing there was no "we" in the equation. I was flying solo on this baby.

    "What if he's allergic to latex?" Mrs. P asked me on the way home.

    "I ain't gonna be in there long enough for him to develop an allergy, dear."

    Twelve hours later, he was free of the blockage. And so was I.

    It was a Christmas Eve unlike any other.

   See ... You can't make this stuff up.