At least he’s a reader?

28 Jul

Alan and I were 12 hours into a roadtrip this spring when – having exhausted all reasonable topics – I asked, “What percentage of people do you think have pooped in a car?”

To his credit, without missing a beat, Alan simply said, “I wouldn’t even know how to begin answering that.”

“Pretend it’s an interview question,” I suggested. “You know – like how Google asks people impossible questions just to understand how they solve a problem?”

After a pause, Alan engaged. “OK. So I think we need to put some parameters around this, because I’ve got to assume that pretty much every baby has shat in a car. Are you specifically asking about adults? Pooping in a car as an adult?”

“Yes. And you raise a good point. I think we need to narrow the age range, because after a certain age it’s probably pretty likely you’re going to start doing it again. So maybe we say between the ages of 16 and 65?”

“You’re talking about people shitting themselves, right? Not using a toilet in the back of a bus or an RV or something?” he clarified.

And with that, we were off to the races. It’s only in hindsight that I realize I was preoccupied with the wrong question. Had I thought to explore something more useful on the topic of cars and poop, I would’ve added four more letters to my question. I should have been asking, “What percentage of people have pooped in a carport?” But those were more innocent days.

…

I live in Richmond’s historic Fan District. The streets are generally lined with some combination of row houses and standalone homes that date back more than 100 years. Unlike many of my neighbors, I’m fortunate to have off-street parking with a covered brick carport in my back alley. Until Friday, I viewed it as a massive asset because – in addition to parking – it provides a nice spot to throw a party if ever the weather doesn’t cooperate for an outside soirée.

While I’ve been viewing it as something of a “bonus room,” apparently someone else had similar thoughts – but in a very, very different direction, as I discovered on Friday morning.

I started that morning with a pep in my step. It was almost the weekend. It wasn’t raining for the first time in a week. It wasn’t miserably hot. I was off to meet friends for pickleball before work. Life was grand.

… Until I swung open the gate from my backyard to my carport and saw pages of a book crumpled up and scattered across the pavers next to my car. Thinking one of the recycling bins in the back alley may have lost its lid, I naively walked over, intending to tidy things before heading to pickleball.

And then the smell hit me, and the penny dropped. This was not some random litter that had blown into my carport. This was makeshift toilet paper and it was covering up a pile of human excrement. Right next to my car.

At some point in the night, someone had ducked into my carport and let loose. I’d like to think it was a case of gastric distress, with someone facing a panicked emergency seeking out a relatively private spot to find relief. I imagine a poor college student with undiagnosed IBS wondering what hit him, as he scrambled through his book bag looking for something to clean up with, finding only his tattered and underlined copy of Camus’s “L’Etranger.”

While I’m clinging to that – dare I say, optimistic? – version of events, my worry is that my carport has just been designated as a public restroom by the people who panhandle at an intersection a few blocks away. Abiding by the “broken windows” theory, I was quick to clean the mess and bleach the floor of my carport.

As I cleaned, I couldn’t escape the harsh blaze of the motion-detector floodlight above me. Which made me wonder: had the person who squatted there waited for the light to time out, or had they been spotlighted as they shat? It seems like illumination would have offset the privacy the person sought – but depending on the level of emergency, perhaps it was a situation where there was no room to adjust the plan once it was underway.

Later in the day I traded notes with the previous occupant of my house for an unrelated reason.

Her: How are you doing?

Me: Great, other than someone taking a dump in my carport last night!

Her: Oh, that happened to us when we lived there too!

Me: Once or multiple times???

Her: Just once. Right before we moved. They wiped their butt on my husband’s car.

Say what?! How is that even possible?

I guess the lesson here is this: it could always be worse. I could now be driving a Prius with pinstriping. I’m just lucky this person had a book in their bag, and that they were willing to part with a few pages, though it certainly brings new meaning to the phrase, “shitty taste in literature.”

…

I bet Alan is already dreading our next roadtrip.

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On being “too efficient”

30 Jan

I pride myself on being efficient. Sometimes to a fault.

I once tried to insert the metallic sun-screen in the windshield of my car before I had finished parking.

You would think I would learn, but that desire for efficiency is a MONSTER, I tell you.

And so it was that – at 6am – I decided to combine two “not so fun” tasks in an attempt to create efficiency and get a jump on my day.

Dressing to exercise, I went into the bathroom and started coloring my hair. One of the reasons I do it at home is (in addition to being cheap) that I can’t stand the idea of sitting in a salon for an extra hour while waiting for it to process. At home, I can generally knock it out in 40 minutes, including the 30 minutes the color actually needs to sit on my hair. But those 30 minutes when it’s sitting? Feels like such a waste of time.

So this morning, in my stroke of brilliance, after applying the color and setting the timer for 30 minutes, I got on my bike and dialed up a 25 minute Peloton ride. I mean, if I have to sit around for 30 minutes anyway, I might as well knock out a workout, right?

I was feeling pleased with myself until around the 8 minutes into the ride, when “my collarbones started to glisten” (which is the Peloton instructor’s delicate euphamism for “started sweating like a pig”). I wracked my brain: does my HEAD sweat? I honestly couldn’t remember. I knew my FACE got sweaty, but I wasn’t sure about my head.

Compulsive as I am, I decided to finish the workout, come what may.

I soon had confirmation that my head does, in fact, sweat, and without a mirror, I found myself hoping that what was trickling ever so gently down my forehead was simply sweat, and nothing more.

Workout complete, I went to shower and rinse the color out of my hair. I stopped to look in the mirror. Looking back at me was Rudi Giuliani.

I shuddered, feeling something akin to empathy for the man. I might not like him or respect him. In fact, I might think he deserves to do long, hard time in prison. But for once, I teetered on the brink of understanding some tiny sliver of his brain. Because in those dark veins of dye running down his forehead on that press conference, I finally understood that I had caught a glimpse of a fellow Efficiency Queen.

And now I’m thinking back to every time I’ve told a client that “a strength over-done becomes a weakness.” As it turns out, efficiency isn’t always a desirable thing.

Just ask Rudy.

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So this happened…

30 Aug

My house is 110 years old, so I expected to deal with some “things” when I took it on. Crooked walls and windows, fragile plaster, a dirt crawlspace, uneven floors, and rag-tag electrical that needed to be brought up to code. I had what I’d like to think were reasonable expectations.

One thing I had NOT baked in my equation: squirrels.

Yeah, I know, squirrels are everywhere. And when you have an enormous willow oak over your backyard, you’ll probably see a lot of them. Totally fair. But let me tell you where I wasn’t expecting to see one: IN MY LIVING ROOM.

That’s right. Tuesday I was upstairs working and I heard a noise downstairs. At first I thought that one of my Command Strips (velcro for hanging artwork without nails/holes) had broken loose and dropped a picture on the floor. But as I started down the stairs to investigate, I heard more noise. For an instant, I thought someone was trying to break into my house, and because I lean toward the “fight” instinct ready than the “flight” instinct, I went charging down the stairs at full tilt – only to arrive in my living room and see a terrified squirrel scrambling around the top half of my living room window, dashing itself against the glass in a bid to escape.

As soon as it saw me, it fell down the window and scrambled up into my fireplace, making it clear where it had arrived from. I took stock of the situation and decided that the best approach was to try to help it escape, so I opened the window it had been trying to use and removed the screen. (This was the most stressful part of the operation because I had two large spiders living between the glass and the screen, so I needed to relocate them without ending up with spiders in my house. I managed it, and then left the window open for the squirrel.

Instead of taking the invitation, however, the squirrel started scrambling around inside my fireplace. I assumed he had remembered how to climb and was reversing his way up the chimney, leaving from that direction. After a few minutes of upward-sound motion, it got quiet, so I assumed he escaped. To be sure, I decided to close off the fireplace. I broke down a cardboard box, taped it across the opening, then propped my cast iron fireplace tools against it for reinforcement.

I then took on the nasty task of cleaning up squirrel scat. Because that squirrel, in its panic to escape from my house, had absolutely shit its brains out. And then stomped in it. And tracked poopy paw prints from the fireplace to the window, across the windowsill, up both sides of the window frame and even on the glass. It was a literal shit-show.

I’m pretty picky about cleanliness, so it took a good hour to wash everything down and then disinfect it with Lysol. As soon as I was done, I called a chimney company and scheduled them to come out on Saturday to check all my chimneys and cap them to ensure this never happened again.

Except it did.

The very next day.

It was 4pm Wednesday and I was upstairs in my office on a video call with a client. Halfway through the call, I heard a noise downstairs. I tried to remain focused on my client, but I couldn’t help but wonder: was the squirrel back?

I tried to reassure myself that what I was hearing was simply the tape releasing on the box as it had time to relax. But then I heard a little bit more. “Do you mind if I put you on a hold for a second?” I asked my client. “I have a situation I need to investigate.”

I ran downstairs, and sure enough, the squirrel had punched the box loose and was halfway up my window again. Apparently it did NOT climb its way out the night before, but had instead been lurking in my fireplace, waiting for another escape attempt!

As soon as it saw me, it ran back up into the fireplace, just as it had the day before. I replaced the box, flipped my coffee table on its side and pushed it against the box to ensure that the squirrel wouldn’t break loose again while I was on my call, and then I went back upstairs to finish my coaching session.

“Oh sorry about that,” I explained. “As feared, I have a squirrel in my living room.”

To her credit, my client took that in stride. Though it also makes me wonder if this seems like the type of person I am – the type who just regularly has a squirrel in her house?

As soon as the call ended, I called ASAP Critter Removal to see if they could send someone, and then headed back downstairs to try to remedy the situation myself. I decided to double-down on the idea of giving it an escape route, so I opened the window and lined up my coffee table (still on its side), a large box and a few other items to help “corral” the squirrel toward its preferred exit path. I then loosened the tape on the box covering the fireplace, and waited.

It felt like the squirrel and I were in a standoff, so I decided to recreate the prior conditions and go upstairs so it would have its space to come out, unthreatened. It was so hard sitting upstairs, listening for sounds of a squirrel. But finally, I heard what sounded like the scramble of a rodent. And then I definitely heard the sound of a squirrel trying desperately to get itself up the window.

Curious to know what was happening, but not wanting to scare the thing back up into the fireplace, I gingerly made my way down two stairs, where I could sit and observe without interfering. What I saw confirmed that squirrels are not very smart. The squirrel was, in fact, trying to go out the window. But instead of running out the open part at the bottom, it had again scaled the entire window and was throwing itself madly at the top half of the glass.

Channeling all the patience of a fisherman, who knows that waiting is the game, I stayed on the stairs, watching. Finally, my patience paid off. The squirrel lost its grip and with a cartoonishly squeaky sound, slid down the pane, landing on the windowsill, where it finally noticed it could escape. It sat there for a beat too long, apparently trying to decide if it could make the jump, so that’s when I lost my patience and came charging down the stairs, scaring it through the window and out onto the sidewalk.

And wouldn’t you know, that squirrel sat there chirping and scolding me for at least minute, as if I had some how wronged it, not saved it? The nerve.

I quickly closed the window, initiated my cleaning protocols for the second day in a row (this squirrel might not have eaten for 24 hours, but it still had plenty of excrement to handle), and then – just to be safe – re-barricaded the fireplace, this time with a large, tight-fitting screen and a table.

About this time, I got a text back from ASAP Critter Removal, telling me they could have someone out to me in 45 minutes.

“I think I just handled it,” I wrote back.

“Do you want us to come out and check your chimneys for you? We could do Friday at 5pm?”

I explained that I already had a chimney company coming out on Saturday, and that I was hosting a dinner on Friday night.

Their sign-off/advice, “Cool. Sounds fun. Go nuts!”

That cracked me up, but it’s likely I’m just slap-happy since this is the third time in two weeks I’ve had an animal hanging in my window, crapping itself. Good times. Or as they apparently say in Richmond, “Go nuts!”

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Oh Lady Dum-Dum.

21 Aug

Back in 2020, the year that will live in infamy for all it unleashed on us, my cat Miss Moneypenny died unexpectedly. At the height of the pandemic, Alan and I were living like hermits and not seeing anyone, so she was my primary source of companionship most days. Combined with the fact that she was an awesome cat – friendly, chatting, easy going, snuggly – losing her left a big hole in my world.

So I did what pretty much every expert will tell you NOT to do: I rushed out and adopted myself another cat, precisely 30 days later. Based on only two data points, I believed that torties were the sweetest breed of cat, so I went on Petfinder and found one that had just been rescued from a kill shelter in North Carolina and was being fostered in Arlington. She looked very similar to Miss Moneypenny, but – at only 7 lbs – about 3/4 MMP’s size.

Because this was peak-pandemic, there was no opportunity to meet the cat before adopting. Instead, I got to “zoom” with her one time, then I showed up with a carrier and the next thing I knew, this little terrified cat was mine. She spent most of the first week flattened between the wall and my desk, only sneaking out to eat and use her litterbox at night when I was asleep.

This was the opposite of how Miss Moneypenny arrived on the scene – she had jumped out of her carrier and straight onto my bed, purring and friendly. This new cat quickly let me know that there is no such thing as a “replacement” pet.

The good news: by the end of her first week, the new cat had warmed up to me and was – while still very skittish and prone to wedging herself behind my desk when I wasn’t around – very snuggly. The bad news? We hadn’t yet landed on a name for her. Alan and I had very different thoughts. Artemis. Diana. Pancake. Nancy Drew. Ramona Quimby. Nipsey Hussle. I’ll let you guess which selections were mine.

In the end we – I – went with Ramona Quimby because, like her namesake, the cat was pesky and a bit prone to trouble. If a rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet, then I now worry that I may have hexed myself when naming her, because Ramona is quite a little handful.

For starters, she’s a one-person cat. While Miss Moneypenny was a friend to anyone she met, Ramona Quimby only has eyes for me. She follows me around and sleeps under my chin, but if another human – except Alan – enters my house, she quickly retreats to hide in the closet. She might warm up (barely) over time, but at best she tolerates other people, and more often hides from them. She’s made an exception for Alan, but we think that’s only because he feeds her when I travel. She might grudgingly allow him a few pets, but it’s equally possible that she will pee on his pillow to let him know she is not thrilled by his presence.

I KNOW!

Anyone who has visited my house knows I pride myself on keeping things tidy and having floors clean enough to eat off. So how do I reconcile that with having CAT PEE ON MY BED?! Well, I’ll be honest. Initially I established a three-strike rule and threatened to return her to the rescue agency where I’d gotten her. But that felt like conscripting her to eventual euthanasia and she really was a sweet cat. So instead, I bought a waterproof mattress cover + pillowcases and rationalized that most people have to deal with children peeing the bed (often frequently and in the middle of the night!) so what is an occasional accident by an otherwise very sweet (and mildly neurotic) cat?

I KNOW. My friend Susie tried to convince me to rename her Lady Dum-Dum, but I honestly wasn’t sure whether she was talking about Ramona or ME.

So here we are, almost three years later. Ramona Quimby is a very sweet companion who only rarely pees on the bed. (Honestly, that’s probably how I’ll describe Alan one day, assuming our relationship lasts another couple decades!)

I share all of this as context for my next post, which – by way of foreshadowing – I’m considering titling:

  • A No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Idea
  • Dogs Are a Bridge Too Far
  • Whelp. That Didn’t Go So Well.

Or, if I want to eliminate any suspense, may just be titled:

  • Cat Meets Dog, Cat Shits Herself and Hangs from the Newly-Replaced and Now-Damaged Window Treatment

On second thought, maybe I don’t even need to write that post. If you’ve seen one cat evacuating its anal glands while launching itself vertically, you probably can finish that story.

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Summer Shovin’ – Happened So Fast…

8 Aug
SUMMER SHOVIN’ – The Pink Slay-dies vs. The T-Birds, July 29, 2023

The last few weeks were super hot in Richmond – we had temperatures in the high 90s and the humidity easily bumped us up into the hundreds. I’m obsessive about hitting 10k steps per day, so this meant I was usually out at 6am trying to log my miles, water my plants and do any other outside activities before the mercury started to climb.

The heat still hadn’t broken by Saturday when Alan came over, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to sell him on any outdoor events (I had my eye on the free production of “Something Rotten” at the Dogwood Dell amphitheater). We rarely hit any crowded indoor events (apparently I’m the last living human who believes covid still carries any risk?) but I decided to see what was on offer that might involve A/C…

Which is how we came to be seated rink-side at Richmond’s Convention Center for – drumroll please – ROLLER DERBY. As you’ve probably intuited, the Convention Center does NOT actually house a skate rink (or velodrome, for that matter). Rather, they create a rink by taping the lines whenever there’s a match. We had no idea what to expect, other than women on rollerskates and presumably some pushing, and we were not disappointed.

We did, however, quickly realize that we knew NOTHING ELSE about the sport. After each team’s introduction, which consisted of them taking laps huddled together in a crouch with each woman popping up to clown when her name [Beast! Sigmund Feud! Baddy Long Legs!] was called, they quickly got down to business.

Each round starts with the two teams creating human barriers, trying to lock the other team’s “jammer” in place so she can’t skate away from the pack. We surmised that scoring occurred when the jammer made it out of the pack and was able to lap it. This means that each time they come around and approach the pack, they have to try different tactics to get through. Sometimes their teammates would be able to help create an opening for them, but more often they had their hands full trying to stop the other team’s jammer from getting through.

It sounds simple, but I’m not exaggerating when I say we watched the scoreboard quickly climb to a 68 point tie and couldn’t figure out what either team was doing to wrack them up. We resorted to googling “roller derby rules” at the first intermission. (Roller derby has two 30 minute periods with a 15 minute intermission. At this match there was a band set up that played and kept the crowd pumped while the athletes rested.) And in case you’re curious, they get a point for every member of the opposing team that they pass.

Only marginally related: when I started to reflect on rollerskates, I felt like there was a well-known joke in the corner of my brain that I couldn’t quite pull. So I googled, and found that there IS, in fact, a rollerskate joke that (pun intended) seems to do the rounds. Maybe you can think of it?

If not, in closing, here it is (sorry, not sorry):

Three men at the pearly gates….

Three men have died and arrive together in the pearly gates.

St. Peter asks the first man “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

The man proudly answers “Not once in 40 years of marriage.”

“You are a good man” St Peter tells him. “Here are the keys to your brand new Porsche. ” He Revs the engine and drives off.

St. Peter asks the second person “Did you ever cheat on your wife?”

The man shrugs his shoulders sheepishly “Uh, yes sir. But only once at a party when I was drunk!”

St. Peter hmms… “Well we have all erred in our life. Here are the keys to your Buick.” And the man, grateful he’s not being sent to hell, hops in the car puts it in gear and drives off.

The third man is sweating bullets. Before even hearing the question he falls down on his knees and begs forgiveness. “I’m sorry St. Peter. I cheated on my wife many times. I was a traveling salesman, I had a woman in every city, on every business trip, at every airport and field office in the lower 48 and most of Europe. Please, Please forgive me…“

St Peter looks in the book and reflects. “Alright. The good news is you can come in. The bad news is here’s your Bicycle. You have reaped what you have sown.”

The man sighs, and starts peddling, weaving back and forth a bit. He comes to the first guy in his Porsche, on the side of the road crying.

“What the hell do you have to be crying about?,” he asks. “I’m tooling around heaven on a rusty bicycle, and you’ve got a sports car. What gives?”

The first man blows his nose and looks up. “My wife just went by on one roller skate.”

AND SCENE.

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