Pees Be With U

First off, I’d like to congratulate the Priers on the birth of their baby boy. I realize such a pronouncement on a blog steeped in sarcasm and profanity lacks a certain sincerity, but I really do mean to congratulate them.

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So I went to Home Depot yesterday for the first time since we’ve been here and the first time in like 12 days. I knelt on at the threshold and said, “Forgive me HD for it has been over a week since my last purchase.” I didn’t really have anything to buy; I just needed to go be among my people for a short while. Yes, it’s a new town, but I felt like I was hanging out with the same old crew. There was Bob the Plumber, Rick the Electrician, Andy the One-Armed Carpenter (unfortunately his business has been cut in half since the accident), and Horatio the roofer/mason/landscaper.

The place was an absolute madhouse. Granted, I never typically went to Home Depot at 2 in the afternoon on a weekday, but there were so many people I thought for a second they were giving away free Oxycontin when you purchased 4 sheets of plywood or something. I only ever had Oxy once when I went to the wife’s medicine cabinet looking for a Tylenol and accidentally took a little of the Poor Man’s Heroin, and I didn’t really need any plywood, but I thought I’d check it out just to see. Turns out, they weren’t giving anything away for free; it was just that busy. The problem was, with all those people there I couldn’t figure out who the fuck actually worked at the Home Depot and who was just wearing a Tony Stewart NASCAR shirt because damn near everybody had a Home Depot logo on their person.

On my way home from HD, I passed a car that had the letters “G-S-U-S” spray-painted on the side. I was as confused as you are until I realized I was in the Bible Belt and apparently the Hooked on Phonics belt as well.

I wanted to laugh at the guy for driving around in a rusted out old car, but then I realized I was the one without air conditioning, driving around with the windows down, sweating my ass off. It’s so hot down here they have a different sort of heat index. Yesterday it was just Hot as Balls. Today is Sticky Underwear Hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be a record-setting Bellybutton Puddle Hot. Apparently that’s what happens when you perspire so much the sweat collects in your bellybutton like a little puddle. Fortunately from all the salty sweat stains I’ve been seeing, the Tony Stewart NASCAR t-shirts are extra absorbent, so at least they don’t need to worry about mosquitoes nesting in their navel.

Speaking of hot as balls… We went to the pool yesterday where I observed some pretty remarkable things:

1.    1. A young couple, sunbathing next to the pool, both drinking 22 oz. Pabst Blue Ribbons. I can only imagine the thought process that led to that purchase: “Sweet G-sus, honey, they’re selling doubly-deuce PBR’s, two for $1.99. That’s like a dollar and a half each!”

2.   2. There was another dude frolicking around the pool and at first I thought to myself, “why on earth is he wearing a sweater vest in the pool?” Turns out he was just that hairy. I immediately had second thoughts about getting in the pool after that. I had visions of myself getting all tangled up in his man sweater like a dolphin in a tuna net.

3.   3. We saw a pretty husky dude roll in with his big old cooler and plop himself down in the corner of the pool on the steps in the shallow end. I’m not sure if that was the prime pool real estate or what, because dude didn’t budge for over an hour. In fact, he just sat there drinking Miller Lite after Miller Lite and smoking cigarette after cigarette. 5 beers and 10 cigarettes later, I wanted to get up and just punch the guy in the throat for being so unhealthy. Not to mention a fucking camel couldn’t drink that much and go that long without peeing in the pool.  At least I took comfort in the fact that he was going to wake up this morning with a beet-red sunburn from his belly to his receding hairline with two crescent-shaped smiley face tan lines under his man boobs. I’m going down to the pool today just to see him come back and try to even that sunburn out… Then I’m going to punch him in the throat for being an idiot.

4.   4. Nashville is known as the Athens of the South (Athens, Greece for all of you geographically challenged Ohioans who think the locals would be so audacious as to coin themselves the Athens, Ohio of the South), but I never expected to see anyone sporting the Euro banana hammock here. Worse than that, it was neon green. Like, construction-worker-neon-green, as if to say, “Slow down while checking out my junk, fines are doubled in this area.” 

Man vs Wild

In the process of looking for a new house, it’s inevitable that you’ll come across several domesticated house pets.

While we’ve been lucky enough to avoid the crazy, exotic pets like boa constrictors or tarantulas, our experience, as you can imagine, has not been without adventure.

The crème de la crème for us came the other day. Typically when you go look at a house the owner is nowhere to be found. It’s better that way. You want to see the house for what it is and not be influenced by the pesky owner touting all of the great updates and remodels they did.

Excuse me, lady, but this color is not “mocha brown”, this is “cat diarrhea brown.” I should know, I was just staring at it 8 hours ago when I should have been sleeping.

Therefore, it was very much out of the ordinary when we approached a house in the East Nashville neighborhood and our realtor informed us the owner would be home to let us in. Sweet. As you can imagine, I especially love keeping my sarcastic comments to myself as I’m walking through a house for the first time.

Wow, isn’t this cute. There’s a huge mural over the fireplace that says, “Love is a gift from God.” With crappy décor like this, selling your house is going to be a miracle from God.

So we were met in the driveway by said owner with a small black dog on a leash. She introduced him as a good dog, just a little psychotic. I chuckled politely but looking in the dog’s eyes I could tell he actually was a fucking psycho, like, “What the fuck are you looking at, bean pole! If this bitch didn’t have the collar so tight around my neck right now, I’d be coming at you like a fucking spider monkey!” She went on to inform us that her presence was necessary because she rescued animals and the house was full of them. Fair enough, rescuing animals is very admirable*.

The house was nice enough, if not overly cluttered with animal leashes and cages and bowls and toys and just about everything else sold at Petland. All of that aside, I made my decision not to buy the house when I wandered into the small mudroom off the back patio and a dog the size of a grizzly bear jumped up onto the back door, “Fuck! I just shit my pants!” I shouted. I’m not lying – standing on its hind legs this dog was looking me straight in the eyes through the window.

I made a hasty retreat out the front door where the owner and Psycho were hanging out. “I hope the puppy at the back door didn’t bother you. He’s deaf.”

Puppy? If that was a fucking puppy then you better get the hell out of this house because Paul Bunyan is going to come looking for his dog before too long and, I’ve never met the guy, but I’m pretty sure he carries a fucking axe.

Deaf??? If that dog was deaf, how the fuck did it hear me roaming around the mudroom? Or maybe it didn’t hear me; maybe it just smelled its afternoon snack wandering around on the other side of the door.

I was ready to split but the owner insisted we see the backyard; she just had to put Bear inside real quick.

The backyard was nice enough with a cute little water treatment. The basement had outdoor access from the backyard, so while we were there, I figured we’d check it out. The owner simply had to let the dogs out of the basement, but no worries, they were entirely friendly.

Entirely friendly they may have been, but they were also bigger than the grizzly bear I ran into early. There were two massive Great Pyrenees, which apparently is a breed of dog and not the offspring of the Wampa Ice Creature from Star Wars V, The Empire Strikes Back:

Great Pyrenees

Wampa

The creatures were indeed friendly yet also stupid enough to fancy themselves as cuddly lap dogs as they followed us around everywhere. We couldn’t get away. The worst part was – and by worst, I mean funniest – one of the dogs was a “gooser” according to the owner. I had to dial back into the annals of my lexicon to remember that in elementary school, “goose” was a term used to describe the act of pinching someone’s ass – apparently long before sexual harassment was in vogue. Lacking an opposable thumb, the dog used it’s snout in an effort to goose, and his choice victim was my wife. The 200 lb dog made my 100 lb wife look like a ridiculous rag doll as it continually ran its head into her ass, bouncing her all across the yard. I felt like I was in a slow motion version of the running of the bulls. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

*I say that in all honesty but for me, rescuing animals is like charity – it sounds great, but it doesn’t really fit into my day-to-day schedule.

Ring of Feces

Going into this, I knew the 500 sf apartment was going to be cozy, but one thing I wasn’t prepared for was being woken up in the middle of the night by the smell of cat shit. I mean, literally, my olfactory nerve was so assaulted that it stirred me from my sound sleep in order to dispose of the still steaming pile of turds in the litter box. Laying there, trying to go back to sleep, it occurred to me that provided I don’t die, my time over the next few weeks and months until I find actual employment recognized by the IRS will only truly be productive if I team up with the wife to publish a study in the New England Journal of Medicine to prove that the root cause of sleep apnea is the brain making the Kevorkian decision to close off the air passage and risk death rather than allow anymore cat-shit-infested air into the lungs.  Of course, in order to prove this I’m going to need to do extensive research to make sure CSI hasn’t already done this in one of their episodes:

Grissom: “What’s the cause of death, doc?”

Dr. Robbins: “Well, Griss, the autopsy is clear, this was death by asphyxiation.”

Grissom: “So we have a homicide on our hands…”

Dr. Robbins: “Not so fast. I found trace amounts of an odd substance lining the alveoli’s in the lungs. I sent a sample over to Hodges in the lab.”

Grissom: “And???”

Dr Robbins: “Felis Catus Faeces*.”

Grissom: “Huh???”

Dr. Robbins: “Cat shit…”

Grissom: “Cat shit!?!”

Dr. Robbins: “Indeed, cat shit. It would appear the victim died in his sleep. The smell must have been so repugnant the air passage chose to close itself off, voluntarily suffocating him. So unless you can determine a motive for Sprocket the Cat**, this is a case of subconscious suicide…”

After I publish that study, I’m going to petition ASHRAE to add specific requirements for the amount of CFM to be exhausted from a bedroom if there is a litter box within 50’. I think 2000 CFM would suffice***.

 

 

 

*Further proof that Wikepedia is the greatest invention since the bidet: I wanted to look up a more professional sounding word than ‘feces’ and came across this interesting little tidbit: “Due to the nature of feces, several synonyms have developed. Of these, some are generally used as profanity (such as shit and crap) while others have been deemed inoffensive (such as poo, poop, and dookie). Other terms (such as dung) are normally used for animal feces rather than human feces.” That sounds like something I’d write.

**I didn’t make up the name “Sprocket,” it was the actual name of a cat we saw in one of the houses we toured. Personally I would have named it “Vaseline” because its fur was all gross and mangy like it’d just taken a bath in petroleum jelly or something. I’ll have more on the relationship between pets and looking for a new house later. 

***For the none-mechanical engineers, I need to explain this joke, which incidentally is always the sign of a great joke – having to explain its humor: ASHRAE is an organization that has essentially written the code governing the heating and ventilating world. Part of the code sets minimum requirements for the amount of fresh air that’s required to prevent the air in the room from getting contaminated. In relative terms, public and private restrooms are required to have 50 CFM of air for each toilet fixture, which is to say, Ed’s shit is roughly 40 times more toxic than a normal human’s. This is the part where you laugh.

On The Road Again

Greetings from Nashville. Sorry I haven’t written sooner, but I’ve been really busy.

Anyway, I thought I’d fill you in on how the move went and how our transition to southern living is going.

The drive down was full of drama* that started before we even left Columbus. I was driving the Jeep while Sara and her sister were following in the Civic. They got lost before we even got out of Grandview when I went straight through a light and they inexplicably turned right. 15 minutes later they caught up to me on the highway when I received a call from the wife, “we have a problem!” Now, this wasn’t in a kind-doctoral-bedside-mannerish tone like, “Mr. Smith, we have a bit of a problem with your lab results. I regret to inform you we’re going to need to remove your colon.” Rather, this was in a red-terrorist-alert tone suggesting, “holy god! We have a problem that is going to result in you bursting into a ball of flames and dying an agonizing fiery death!” Apparently smoke was billowing** out from under my car.

We pulled off the road and smoke was in fact billowing** out from under my car along with the distinct smell of burnt oil. I quickly consulted my do-it-yourself mechanics manual, which told me to walk into the gas station and ask the attendant where the nearest real mechanic was located.

The mechanic was under-impressed with my situation, suggesting that at my recent oil change, they overfilled the oil causing a gasket to burst, which led to oil leaking all over the underside of my car then dripping down onto the hot exhaust pipe which resulted in the smoke and the smell. Putting it in terms my wife could understand, it was like going to BW3’s and eating 32 boneless chicken wings when you were really only hungry for 12 or 13. Inevitably something’s going to give way and liquid will be leaking out your underside for a few days. Smoke may result depending on how hot the wings were. In short, I was safe to drive to Nashville provided my engine didn’t run out of oil***.

To further the drama, in order to transport the cat over a distance of 400 miles, we gave him a dose of Kitty Zanax – a sedative capable of knocking him out for upwards of 8 hours. It did just the trick… until we arrived. Apparently an 8-hour cryogenic nap is all the rest a cat needs because he was up all night long and worse yet, it hs completely reversed his schedule. Now I have a fucking nocturnal cat. He literally sleeps all day and plays all night, usually on or around my face. It hit a tipping point the other night when I woke up to find him humping his mouse on my head. The lesson learned here is, I need some Kitty Zanax

Nashville has been great so far, even though we get lost every time we leave the apartment. I figured out that in order to find my way around, I need to start thinking like a Tennessean. The three major roads around the apartment are: 1) Hillsboro Pike – A hilly, treeless road; 2) Woodmont Avenue – a wooded, flat road; and 3) Hillwood Blvd – You guessed it, a hilly, wooded road. When Sara starts working next week, I’m going in search of the Beer Freeway, Topless Lane, and Milf Creek Drive. I’m just kidding about that last one.

The only other major adjustment, as everyone warned, has been getting used to the country music. I mean, I expected to hear it just about everywhere, but I didn’t really expect to hear it in every store and restaurant I walk into. We were at a very nice steakhouse with the in-laws the other night when we heard, “She Thinks My Tractor is Sexy.” Well, I think her toothless grin is disgusting, regardless of how awesome your tractor is and I’d rather not think about either while I’m enjoying a 16 oz. t-bone. 

At any rate, I hope all is well. 

 

 

*Please note that many of the details have been embellished for added dramatic affect.

**Substitute “wafting” for “billowing” for actual description of events.

***As of this e-mail, I have yet to have my car fixed… I’ve been really busy.