Fries With Mayo

Most nights of the week, I take care of my neighbor's puggle.  It's a nice arrangement: I take out the puggle when neighbor's at work, neighbor takes out the HyperHund while I'm at work.  We have a deep and meaningful relationship. If you are not familiar with puggles, you are missing out.   Puggles are touted as expensive "hybrid" dogs, which makes them sound like they run on bio-fuel (which, if you count goose poop as bio-fuel, they do), but it really means they are mixes of two dogs who should never ever be allowed to suggestively bat their eyelashes at each other. Don't get me wrong... the puggle is great.  But a puggle is the result of a carefully-thought out planned mating between a dog whose main goal in life is to sit on laps, snort and eat (pug) to a dog whose main goal in life is to sniff things and then see if they fit in his mouth (beagle).   The result is a cute, floppy eared dog that sometimes snores, spends a lot of its...

You know how you see those bored housewife type characters in t.v. shows, and they're always reading trashy romance novels or watching soap operas? That's me, except that instead of soaps or romance novels, I faithfully read the Craig's List pet section every day, several times a day.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I already have two cats and a dog.  Getting another dog would effectively reduce the chance of my ever getting married to about .5% while raising my chances of becoming a dog soccer mom to 99.9%. While occasionally I do come across some awesome English Shepherd dogs, I have found that most people breeding dogs and selling the pups have awesome creative writing skills.  This leads to some fabulous ads, of which I will now share the highlights. (Please go to the bottom if you cannot decode these.*) Gotti Line Blue Baby Pet Bulls : $400.  Excellent with kids, dogs, and other animals.  Very playful. Purebred Sharpies : $250.  Super cute and ...

When I was in second grade, I had a friend I'll call Jack.  We girls all thought Jack was pretty super cool because he didn't think we were gross and also, he liked to play Barbies with us instead of playing basketball with the boys.  Nothing is cooler when you're seven than a boy who will play Barbies with you. Jack and I became good friends because of my awesome collection of Barbies, comprising several of my mom's old dolls from the 60s.  I also had some pretty sweet Barbie furniture , including a swell potty-chair for the baby Barbies, so Jack and I became inseparable.  When I look back on this, I feel a bit used. Nevertheless, Jack would come over regularly, and my mom would even let us play Barbies in my room. I will never forget the day Things Changed.  I was in the midst of dressing Ken in his pastel blue shirt and matching pink tie, when Jack, who was busily undressing Barbie, gave me a conspiratorial look. "Do you know where babies come fro...

When I got my dog off Craig's List two years ago, I was told he was some kind of German Shepherd Lab Mix, maybe-and-we-can't-remember?  Apparently, every dog on Craig's List and in every dog shelter is a German Shepherd mixed with something.  Those German Shepherds... watch out for them.  Lock away your pretty girl dogs!  Here comes a German Shepherd and he looks like a player... I digress (again, are you shocked?).  I figured that this pup was the perfect dog for me because a) I like Labs, and b) I like German Shepherds, and also c) our family had owned both and I knew their energy levels and felt I could cope with them. HAHAH!  That's funny!  You know what else is funny?  My dog isn't a German Shepherd Lab Mix.  He's mostly English Shepherd.  And lastly, the most hilarious part about all of this is that his energy level is just like that of a German Shepherd Lab Mix, if that German Shepherd Lab Mix happened to be on speed. ...

For some reason I can't understand, things don't happen to me like they do to everybody else.  I'm the one who, when everyone orders soup, gets the bowl with, say, someone's severed digit in it or something. Dating then, has been intriguing for me, and has never "just happened" like it does to normal people. As an example, we will slide back in time to my pre-knee-surgery days, when my Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings were spent in two-hour kung-fu classes held on top of the university parking garage. My brother's friend, whom we shall call Ernesto (although that is certainly not his real name but I doubt he'd want me to reveal his true identity 11 years later), would bum a ride with me to class because he lived Far Away From Class, which is also where I lived.  The ride took a total of 45 minutes each way. Ernesto and I had secret crushes on each other, but could not possibly admit our love because my brother was his best friend.  So w...

It rained a lot yesterday here in my area.  The creek behind my house flooded its banks and took over the whole park.  Even the footbridge was completely submerged. When I took the HyperHund for his morning walk today, he stopped abruptly with his nose in a puddle and jumped back several feet.  Upon closer inspection, I noticed a foot-long catfish under his nose, in all of one inch of water, its back out of the water and its gills flailing to try to absorb whatever it is fish need to get from puddle water. The whole back area of the park was covered in dead catfish from the river overflowing.  They were actually harder to see than you'd think, because they were not moving, were roughly the color of mud, and mostly because they were dead-but-not-yet-stinky. In this small puddle that was slowly drying up, though, were two live, roughly 5 lb. fish (I could tell they were alive because they were right side up) and one dead roughly 5 lb. fish. Now, I am not some p...

I am friends with several guys in their 30s who mistakenly believe that a Zombie Apocalypse would be Flippin' Cool.  These guys are also looking forward to 2012 with a vengeance, settling for an apocalypse without zombies but secretly hoping that somewhere along the way the zombies will become involved. Of course, in this fantasy, these guys are the strong, the survivors.  They are the ones shooting zombies left and right with enhanced, double-barrel potato guns and post-apocalyptic slingshots.   They are are not the ones who, as soon as the zombies come out of the ground, are the first to have their brains slurped down like a 7-Eleven Slurpee in the middle of a group of prepubescent baseball players on a 90 degree day because they accidentally tripped on a rock in front of the first zombie to un-die. In reality, a zombie apocalypse would be Darwinism at its finest.  Only the very strongest would survive.  You get migraines?  While you're suf...