What's My Motherfcking Name?

I realized recently that I don’t write about my best friend nearly enough. 

 

Being my best friend means one of two things:  You’re either a dumbass, or you don’t have a whole lot of other options. 

 

In my best friend’s case, it’s the dumbass thing.  Lots of people have wanted to be her best friend, but she chose me.

 

See?  Dumbass. 

 

I have a shitload of options for stories to write about when I want to post about her, but the one that popped into my head today was the One About the Dog.

 

About 300,000 years ago (or at least, that’s how the differences in our lives then and our lives now make us feel), Leigh had moved back to Texas, where she’d grown up, to attend graduate school.  I visited her every year during my summers off from teaching so that I could spend my days convincing her to drink with me instead of studying.  She was a big drunk and easy to convince, but she was also one of those people who managed to pull straight A’s regardless of how much tequila she’d had the night before—so no harm done.

 

One morning, after a night out with all of her graduate school nerd friends, Leigh and I hopped into her car and headed across the city to pick up a friend of hers who had spent the night fornicating with a gentleman caller.  I mean, seriously, that whore wasn’t even married.  Who does that?  I mean, besides me, but it was only, like, 25 times, all with different people—so that hardly counts, right? 

 

When we pulled into the neighborhood, Leigh quickly pointed out a small dog.  “I’m not sure,” she said, slowing down to get a better look, “but that dog looks like Erin’s gentleman caller’s dog.”

 

We had been at the guy’s house for a few drinks the night before, and I was sure Leigh was right.  That was the same dog.  And he was currently digging a monster hole in the neighbor’s yard.

 

“Shit,” Leigh said, pulling over and stopping the car.  “I’m sure he doesn’t know the dog is out here.  I’d better go grab the poor little thing and take him home.”

 

Leigh hopped out of the car, grabbed the dog, and jumped back in.  To this day, I have no idea why we didn’t just walk the few steps to the guy’s house to bring the dog back and pick up our friend.  But for some reason, we decided to drive the rest of the way down the road to the guy’s house, dog in tow.

 

Before Leigh could start the car up again, I mused aloud, “Hm.  He kind of looks like one of the dogs from Snoop’s video…”

 

Leigh’s face lit up.  “He does!” she said.

 

So what did we do?  Well, we did the only logical thing—what anyone in the same situation would have done—I sang the bass and she sang the treble.

 

“What’s my mother-fcking name?” I shouted.

 

“Snoop Do-oggy Do-o-oogg…Snoop Do-oggy Do-o-oogg,” she replied.

 

We continued to sing as Leigh grabbed the dog’s paws and made him dance at the steering wheel.  The dog didn’t mind; you could tell he was having fun.  As we sang and the dog danced joyfully, Leigh began acting as if the dog was also peppering quotes from the old lil Penny Hardaway commercials starring Chris Rock into the song.  We loved those damned commercials and used lines from them constantly back then, whether they fit a given situation or not:

 

 

“Hey, Tyra, you left your toothbrush at my house!”  Snoop Do-oggy Do-o-oogg…Snoop Do-oggy Do-o-oogg! “You can’t guuuuard me!  The Secret Service couldn’t guuuuuard me!”  Snoop Do-oggy Do-o-oogg…Snoop Do-oggy Do-o-oogg!

 

We were laughing hysterically, singing the song and shouting the quotes.  The damned dog was so cute that I had to grab my camera and start snapping pictures of him shouting Chris Rock-isms and dancing at the steering wheel.

 

Somewhere in the midst of it all—we can’t be sure exactly when because we were so busy with the singing, dancing, and picture-taking—we suddenly noticed a small tapping at my passenger window.

 

We froze.  I didn’t dare turn my head to look and see who it was, but the look on Leigh’s face as she sat there, silent now but still holding the dog in some kind of weird Snoop Dogg dance position, told me all I needed to know:  It was the owner of the dog tapping on my window.

 

“Shit,” Leigh whispered without moving her lips.

 

We waited a few moments, the guy looking in the window, Leigh looking back at him, I with my back turned to him still, hoping—hoping against all hope—that he would just walk away so we could restore the dog with some sort of dignity. 

 

To no avail.  He tapped on the window once more—tap tap tap.

 

I slowly lowered my camera and turned to look at him, finding the button to lower my window.  That five seconds that it took for that stupid window to come down were about the longest five seconds of my life. When it had finally lowered all the way down, the dog’s owner looked at me expectantly.  It was as if he hadn’t just had me in his house only 12 hours before for a drink.

 

“Uh…we have—" I cleared my throat.  “We have your dog.”

 

Leigh jumped in.  “I know what it looks like, but we weren’t—"

 

“—molesting him,” I finished. 

 

Okay, let me tell you guys something about me that probably won’t surprise you:  I often make jokes that might go a little too far.  I know, right?  What kind of an asshole makes a joke about molesting a dog?  Well, dammit, I did. 

 

 

And I learned in that second—that very second—that people, especially adoring dog owners, do not like jokes about dog molestation.  Who knew? 

 

Leigh’s jaw dropped as she glared at me, a crazed look in her eye.  “What?  Why would you—of course we weren’t mol—" she couldn’t even bring herself to finish the sentence.

 

This is when I started to babble, because I felt like an idiot and was trying to rectify the situation—which,  I have since learned, seems to happen naturally if I’d only shut the fck up.  But back then, I was still learning.  And still babbling. 

 

“Well, actually, in Spanish, molestarse means ‘to bother,’ so technically, I suppose we were molesting your dog.  If you’re a Spanish speaker.”

 

Leigh was now shaking her head as she glared at me, a mixture of shock, awe, and disgust painted all over her face.  “While that might be true about the Spanish version of the word, Shay,” she said slowly, as if talking to a 4-year-old, “we’re not in Spain…”

 

“Right,” I agreed, nodding my head maniacally as I sensed that the conversation just needed to end and we needed to pass the dog back to the owner and collect our friend and get on with our merry lives—but not being able to do so because my face was red and I was still in babble mode, “Of course you’re right, we’re not in Spain, but we’re in Texas, and a lot of people in Texas speak Spanish quite fluently…”

 

I looked out the window at the owner for some support…I don’t know, a little nod of agreement about the Spanish-speaking thing, a little smile showing that he understood that we hadn’t harmed his dog at all, that we were good people who had only been trying to help when we picked him up from the neighbor’s house because we were afraid he was going to get lost…anything.  Anything.

 

I got nothing.

 

A few moments passed as Leigh and I sat there silently, staring straight ahead.  The dog’s owner stood, waiting, at the passenger side door.  Slowly, I turned back to him, deciding to give it one more go. 

 

“What I meant to say was that we did not sexually molest your dog.”

 

“Oh, holy shit, Shay.  Just shut the hell up!” Leigh finally said, snapping out of it and passing the dog over to me to hand through the window to the owner.  “I was going to say we weren’t planning to dog-nap your dog...” she explained, but you could tell the owner wasn’t listening.

 

He snatched the dog out of my hands, and I saw a few tears of relief slip from his eyes.  He started to run back to his house, and we knew very well that he was headed straight to the utility room to grab the toolbox and get a ruler to measure the diameter of his dog’s asshole.

 

Just when he got to the door, Leigh called out, “Um, just tell Erin we’re out here waiting for her…thanks.”

 

Then she set her stare on me once again.

 

I tried to look sorry for the idiocy that had just come out of my big, stupid mouth, but I was too busy holding in my laughter so she wouldn’t get mad at me and finally wake up and realize what a complete and total dumbass she had for a best friend, her realization leading her to break up with me.

 

But because she’s a complete and total dumbass, too, she just started laughing.  Uncontrollably.  And that gave me permission to let out the laughter that I’d been trying to hold in.  By the time our friend Erin had joined us in the car, we were both red-faced, shaking with laughter that was silent on account of us not being able to breathe, wiping the tears away from our faces as we gasped for breath.

 

“Oh, this is funny to you girls, is it?” Erin asked from the back seat, glaring back and forth from Leigh to me.  “This is funny?”

 

This may not come as a huge surprise, but Erin did actually end up breaking up with us.  We weren’t too sad; we knew it was for the best.  Obviously she didn’t share the same sense of humor as we did, so it was only a matter of time.

 

And the dog?  Last we heard, he was doing fine.  Of course, that was about 14 years ago, the day after the incident. 

 

Apparently Snoop Dogg came on the radio and he threw his little paws in the air like he just didn’t care. 

 

Poop Wars: A Totally (Not) Inspirational Mother's Day Story

My youngest son has been suffering through a few bouts of Explosive D lately. 

 

My husband and I both have to get up early in the morning for work, so the one who gets up with the kids, fixes them breakfast, changes the youngest’s diapers, and does all of the other morning rituals with them is simply up in the air.  Some days it’s the hubs, some days it’s me. 

 

Last Saturday, though, my mother’s intuition must have really been kicking in, because as soon as I heard that first pitter-patter of feet on the hallway floor, I was up.  I hopped out of bed, fixed pancakes (and by “fixed,” I mean I took them out of the freezer and microwaved them), changed the toddler’s diaper and clothes, and helped the preschooler get dressed, all before the hubs had lifted his weary head off of his pillow.

 

When I changed the toddler, I noticed he had pooped, but it wasn’t anything awful.  Just a solid turd that could be cleaned up in one fell swoop.  (I swear this is pertinent.)

 

However, the first thing the hubs did when he strolled into the living room was crinkle up his nose.  “What the hell is that smell?” he asked.  He looked down at our toddler.  “Did you poop, Buddy?”

 

“YEAH!” our little guy answered, already up and running because, like most toddlers, he apparently prefers the squish of the poop between his buttcheeks over suffering the indignity of getting his diaper changed.

 

My husband looked my way.

 

“Did he poop again?” I asked, squinting at my computer to pretend like I was working, even though we could both see that I had Facebook pulled up.  “Well, I just changed him.”

 

The hubs knows what that response is code for:  Knock yourself out, asshole, because it’s your turn.

 

And, to his credit, I didn’t even have to pull the “Um, excuse me, Mother’s Day IS next week,” card.  (How the hell do I still keep getting away with that, by the way?  I’ve somehow managed to batter him down emotionally so much about it that Mother’s Day has been extended to a full week.  Score!)  He knew it was his turn, and he got to work.

 

What came next was one of the funniest things in the whole entire world, mainly because I got to sit at my computer and witness it.  As the hubs set the toddler down to change him and began wailing (the hubs began wailing, in case you were confused), I had to grab my little Harriet the Spy blogging notebook and record what was being said.

 

Because the Explosive D had returned, and it wasn’t pretty. 

 

Here, I’d like to present to you just a few of the reactions the hubs had.  Now, try not to judge as you see a few curse words peppered here and there. We do not curse in front of our children except for on special occasions, and I think you’ll agree that this occasion was special enough, and it was warranted:

 

1.        “It’s leaking out.  Dammit, it’s that kind of poop.  It’s leaking out!” 

Here, he swept his eyes in a frenzied look all around the house, but he gave up when he realized that the preschooler was too busy with an Umizoomi episode and I was too busy with my Harriet the Spy blogging notebook to offer him any sympathy.

 

2.       “It’s everywhere.  Oh, gawd.  Holy shit.”

 

3.       Retching noises.

 

4.       “Sweet Mother of God, is that…is it on your neck?  How did it get there, Buddy?”

 

5.        “I can’t set him anywhere—shit will get everywhere.  I’ll have to change him standing up.”

 

Me:  “You know, they make diapers specifically for kids who are difficult to change.  With those, you actually could change him standing up pretty easily.”

 

Hubs, hope filling his whole being:  “Do we have any?”

 

Me:  “No.”

 

6.        “I don't think I'll ever get this smell out of my nose."

 

7.        Retching noises.

 

8.       “I'm going to be sick."

 

9.       “Did he have a lot of fruit for breakfast?”

 

10.   “Or corn?”

 

I know damned well that the hubs didn’t find any undigested kernels in the toddler’s pile. He just says things about corn to embarrass me because until I was 27 years old, I thought people were joking when they said you could see corn in your poop the day after you eat it.  The hubs thinks it’s HUH-larious to make fun of me about it.

 

I remember it well:  It was the day after I’d gotten a little crazy with some corn cobs at an afternoon barbeque.  I’ve never particularly liked corn, but I buttered, salted, and ate the shit out of it that day.  And the next day, I had proof.

 

I walked out of the bathroom, marveling that what I’d heard all my life was true.  My husband stared at me, not sure whether to laugh or cry at his choice of a wife, and said, “You seriously did not know that you can see corn in your poop the day after you eat it?”

 

I looked at him, eyes still wide in awe over my discovery.  “I seriously did not!” I said excitedly.

 

He just shook his head.  I thought I saw a tear roll down his cheek, and I can only assume that it was a tear of sadness at the prospect of living out the rest of his days with such a dumbass.  “Didn’t you ever eat corn as a kid?”

 

I thought about it for a moment.  “No.  Dad didn’t like vegetables, so he never bought any—unless you count the ones that were included in Banquet frozen chicken dinners, and I always threw the vegetables out of those, anyway.  He just hoped we got them at friends’ houses during sleepovers.”

 

And I know that there are people out there who don’t consider corn a vegetable, and those people can suck a (corn)nut.  I was at a mother’s group one day where one of the overachieving snatch moms helpfully pointed out that corn was, in fact, not considered a veggie in her household, and half of the moms at the table flipped her off while the other half covered their children’s ears at such blasphemy.  Because dammit, corn’s the easiest one to get our kids to eat!

 

Holy SHIT, why the hell do you people let me go on like that?  What the hell was the point of #10?

 

11.    “It smells like a man shit.  Can you smell it over there?”

 

12.    “Seriously, dude.  It smells like a man shit.”  Turning to me.  “Or one of yours.”

 

Me:  “That’s because I used to be a man.”

 

The hubs, hesitatingly:  “You were not.”

 

Me:  “Doesn’t matter, anyway.  Marriage vows.”

 

Let me explain this exchange:  Once, when I told him to suck my balls, the hubs responded very quickly with “You don’t have any balls.” 

 

It made me angry because it was such a quick-witted and accurate response, one that totally negated the bite of “Suck my balls.”

 

So I responded, “Not anymore.”

 

Ever since then, he’s wondered.  It’s the one time I thank the Good Lord in Heaven for the sweet blessings of whiskers and a man voice that He poured on me from above.

 

13.    “What color would you say that is?”

 

14.    “He’s gonna need a bath.”

 

15.    Retching noises.

 

END SCENE

 

A very Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, grams, mother-in-law, and to all of you mothers out there—AND  to all you wonderful husbands (like my sweet hubs) and single dads (like my awesome dad was for several years) who are knocking this parenting stuff out of the ballpark!  We got this…

 

And I know this is a little bit serious and totally out of place for this asshole blog, but I have to give a shout-out to any women who want so desperately to have a baby and to be a mother—I understand.  I was there for 3 very long years.  Trust me when I say that it can happen; with the many different ways to become a mother, there’s a hugely, humongously high possibility that it will happen; and it will be wonderful, shitty diapers and all.  Much love to you on a day that can be hard.

 

 

More Fun When Drinking

The other day, I was chugging away at the treadmill (Have you ever tried to drink while jogging? Makes it so much more fun—and that will be relevant, I promise), reading my trash rags.  I came across this quote from Aisha Tyler:

 

“Sleepovers are wasted on kids.  They’re so much more fun when you can drink!”

 

I gotta tell ya, peeps:  I have seriously sat back during a sleepover at my best friend’s house and watched her kids and their friends run around the house in their jammies while the two of us sat and sipped wine in ours.  And I can honestly remember thinking, “We’re having fun because we’re drinking.  What’s their excuse?”

 

Leave it to Aisha Tyler to put in such an elegant, concise way.  I have been a huge fan of hers since the night she debuted on Talk Soup with her deep, smoky voice.  I remember that she said something I could totally relate to back then, too:  “Excuse the husky man voice.  It’s from all the beer and hookers last night.” 

 

At the time, I nodded my head vehemently.  Yes—that’s what mine was from, too! 

 

That was almost 13 years ago.  So what’s my excuse for my sex-ay man voice now?  Wine and hookers.

 

When I read the sleepover quote from Aisha Tyler, I couldn’t stop my brain from forming a list—it’s what we blog authorettes do these days, you know, because lists are all the rage in the blogging world right now.  So I’d like to present to you…

 

10 Other Things (Plus One Bonus) that Are More Fun when Drinking

 

1.)     Making out with an ugly person.  Just ask any of the drunk dudes I made out with in college.

 

2.)    Dyeing your hair.  When I was about 22—during my first year of teaching—my roommate, an aspiring hairdresser, decided that we should bleach my hair. I decided that she was right.  Actually, I never gave a shit what I looked like back then, so I thought it would be fun to see what happened.

 

What happened was this:  We drank two bottles of wine (each) as she slathered that shit all over my hair, saying things like, “Oh, yes, you must pour it all over the top first and then do the tips later so that it comes out evenly on the hair shafts.”  WTF??  She’d totally made all of that jumbled bullshit up just to make herself sound professional. 

 

But I didn’t give two shits what she was doing—I had wine.

 

We left it on for 2 hours, just to be sure that the yellow would come through enough.  And holy shit, yes, it came through.  It wasn’t that cute Barbie platinum look we were going for, though—it was a bright, Pall Mall-cigarette-box-orange.  Here, I’ll find an image for you just in case you’re not as trashy as I am, and you have no idea how orange Pall Mall cigarette boxes are:

Did I cry?  Hell, no.  I was two bottles of wine deep.  I laughed until I cried, then we called a cab to take us to the grocery store where I’d worked before I started teaching to show all of my old co-workers.  I remember they were all asking things like, “Oh, are you here to get a box of brown to cover it up?” and I would answer, “Cover this up? Hell, no!  It’s too funny!”

 

That Monday, I had slight doubts as I brushed out my flowing orange mane.  Not only did it look exactly like a box of bleach had been dropped on my head (which is precisely what had happened), but several pieces also kept falling out.  Oops.

 

But I had a job to do.  I had to go mold the minds of 5^th graders.  (Holy shit.) 

 

When I got to work, the principals hardly glanced twice at me.  They were used to my dumbass shenanigans.  The kids, however, studied my hair intently.

 

“We don’t know…we almost kind of like it,” a lot of them said.

 

“It’s just that we’ve never seen a hue like that,” others said.

 

“It’s so…Vitamin C,” several said.

 

I teared up at my little geniuses (geniusi?).  “Wow, you guys are so smart!  You know that Vitamin C relates to oranges.  Your health teacher is doing a really great job.”

 

One of my students shrugged.  “No way, dude.  He’s just as ineffective as you are.  Vitamin C’s a singer.  Get with the program.” 

 

3.)     Speaking of which—teaching.  Teaching is an assload more fun when drinking.  Oh, calm down, I’m kidding.  Any literal readers out there might want to find a different blog.

 

Actually, any parents of my former students who are disheartened with the educational system because their kids don’t know a coordinating conjunction from their own asshole but they know how to make a perfect Long Island Iced Tea (my drink of choice in those days)—well, maybe you should find a different blog to read, too. 

 

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks.

 

4.)     Cheating on your husband.  WHOA!  That one hit a little too close to home for some of you skanksters, didn’t it?  Don’t worry—I’m just kidding.  But if you were the cheating type, I’ll bet it’d be more fun if you were drinking.  As would any sex.

 

5.)     Speaking of which, sex.  Sex is better when drinking.  Luckily it doesn’t take that much in my old age.  Two glasses of wine is much more affordable for the hubs when he’s feeling frisk-ay than my collegiate 12-pack.

 

And my low sex drive insures that I’ll never become a sex-driven alcoholic.  We do it once a week, my peeps, usually on Thursdays because that’s the best t.v. night—and the commercial breaks are shorter.

 

We get it all taken care of during a commercial break, then I’m off the hook for another week, bitches.

 

6.)     Eating.  You know that pizza you’ve been dying to eat and then wash down with the Cadbury Crème eggs and ham left over from Easter?  Do it!!  And while you’re at it, go ahead and fry that squirrel that you found on the side of the road and picked up “in case of emergencies.” 

 

Seriously, indulge.  You can worry about it in the morning…if you even remember it.

 

7.)     Telling people exactly what you think of them, i.e., “DIRTY SLUT!”

 

Come to think of it, it’s also better to be drinking when you hear exactly what other peeps think of you.  Trust me, I know:  Had I not been tossing them back, the example above might have stung…and the neighing noises that followed it would have surely done me in.  Ouch. 

 

Neigh neigh, motherfckers, cuz look at me now.  I’m an unpaid, unpublished blog authorette with awful roots.

 

DAMMIT.

 

8.)    Getting a tattoo.  Because that miniature poodle tramp stamp I got one drunken night 16 years ago?  Best decision I ever made. 

 

9.)     Drinking.  Drinking is more fun when you’re drinking.

 

I once dated this tee totaling asshole who would raise his eyebrows to the sky every single time I or one of my friends got up to get another beer.  I also found out that he was having sex with his dog, so maybe that was their mating call or something.  (Okay, that was never proven, but you should have seen the way they looked at each other.  Totally inappropriate.)

 

Anyhoo, I made a rule the second I broke up with him—actually, I made two:  No more douches in love with their dogs in an unhealthy way, and no more tee totaling assholes.  In fact, the hubs knows where I stand:  If he ever gives up drinking, we’re gonna have some marital issues.

 

Granted, we’re not as big of drinkers as we used to be by any means.  Nobody could have kept up that lifestyle without a healthy dose of liver disease.  But excuse me if I like to have a drink without some holier-than-thou beeyatch giving me a dirty look.

 

10.)  Facebooking. 

 

Actually, scratch that.  Scratch that one off hard.  I am so glad they didn’t have that shit when I was a drunken singleton.  SO glad.

 

11.)  Um, pretty much everything.  DUH.