I Got Nuthin’

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La Loco Laundry

Classes are finally over and I’ve been grading finals and trying to catch up on all the things I’ve put on the back burner — hell, more like an unplugged crock pot — for the past month.  Like laundry.  When I find myself spritzing my jeans with Febreze, it’s time to suds the duds.  But, Innernetz, I really, really hate going to the laundromat. I’d rather take a kindergarten class on a field trip to the DMV after giving them jellybeans and espresso for breakfast. 

Things were getting desperate, however.  Besides the Febreze, I was also down to wearing Mr. Dingo’s boxer briefs while using band-aids to hold them up.  So off I went to the laundromat thinking that it couldn’t be as bad as I was expecting.  Hahahahaha!  Oh come on, Innernetz!  You know me by now.  Of course it could!

There were two empty machines in the back of the laundromat. I dumped my clothes onto a table and began sorting when a shadow emerged from the corner.  It was Yoda’s evil twin.  Short, swarthy, and with his face wrinkled like a two-pack-a-day Shar-pei , his sudden presence at my elbow startled me.

“Drop something you did?” he croaked as he timidly handed me my bra.  At least I think that’s what he said.  His garbled words oozed past broken yellowed teeth that tap-danced like drunken tombstones in his puckered mouth.

“Thank you,” I said, noticing a wet thumbprint on my C-cup.  He glided backward into the shadows as eerily as he had appeared.  I held my bra away from my body in case the disgusting propagated.

I had just started a load and settled into a chair to mock my students’ papers when I felt a bony finger tap me on the shoulder. I looked up expecting to see Pervy Yoda but no, it was Bod-a-lish-us.  Bod-a-lish-us was wearing an ultrasheer body stocking and fuck me stilettos.  Let me say that slowly: Body.  Stocking.  She woke up that morning, cracked open a plastic egg she’d been saving since 1989 when she was thirty pounds lighter, and, with the aid of a crowbar and shoehorn, strong-armed the sheer burnt orange “suntan” abomination over her calves, thighs, and hips until she reached her armpits.  Then, the body stocking depriving her brain of any oxygen, she looked in the mirror and declared herself flabulous.  She looked like a radioactive hotdog.  And she brought her own buns.  Bubbly, puffy, crusty buns.

Bod-a-lish-us waved a container of laundry detergent in front of my face and asked, “Me use?”

“Sorry,” I said shaking my headwhile prying my container of detergent from her purple three-inch acrylic nails. 

Tears brimmed at the edges of her heavily kohled eyes.  “Me use?” she repeated pointing to a laundry cart with a small load of hoochie-mama accoutrements.  Damn, I thought, if I don’t let her use my detergent, what is she going to wear to work tonight?  Besides, the body stocking was obviously her laundry-day outfit.  Letting her wash the rest of her whoredrobe would be like a public service. 

Sighing, I said, “Okay, but please use just a li—”

“Gracias!” she said.  Her tears dried up like a sunbathing raisin contemplating its deferred dreams.  And then waving her talons, she summoned three kids who entered the laundromat rolling one of those SUV-sized granny carts.  And there went my laundry detergent. The Bod-a-lish-us brood opened and slammed washing machine doors and swung from them like low-hanging crotchfruit.

I had just taken my seat and opened my gradebook when I was again disturbed by a poke at my shoulder.  It was Pervy Yoda handing me another of my bras. 

“Drop something you did?” he said, giving me the side eye.

This was just too creepy. 

“Get away from me, you fucking freak!” I screamed.  Inside my head.  I searched for the manager.  I found her watching a telenovella in a little room at the far end of the laundromat as she reverently stroked the coin-changer strapped to her belt.

“There’s a guy back there stealing underwear,” I said. 

She sighed and, without taking her eyes off the screen, yelled something unintelligible over the din of the TV.  I smugly waited for Pervy Yoda to levitate to the front of the store.  He would’ve gotten to us sooner but for the disruption in the force as three Bod-a-lish-us muffpuppets cried out in glee and raced through the laundromat on laundry carts slamming into washing machines.

When he finally reached us, Pervy Yoda and the manager shouted back and forth at each other in tongues until the commercial break was over.  The manager threw her hands up in the air, tossed a few words over her shoulder punctuated by an occasional “Ayiii!” and then went back to her show.  Pervy Yoda slunk back to his hole.

“That’s it?” I asked.  “Aren’t you going to kick him out?”

“No miss.  No worry.”

“But he is stealing underwear!”

“He stop, miss,” she said. “He here with one of his children and their mother,” she explained, pointing toward the Bod-a-lish-us brood.

Fuck this, I thought.  I stormed back to my washing machines, took out the wet clothes, and left.  I’d buy a bucket and scrubbing board before ever going back there.  Once home, I stomped to the bathroom.  And then I opened my laundry bag to hang up my wet… dental floss thong, fishnet thigh highs, and cupless bra.

These weren’t clothes.  These were pieces of fabric held together by fairy dust and surface tension.  In addition to my own clothing, I had stolen Bod-a-lish-us’s undies.

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Like A Rock

*cough* <waving away dust and cobwebs> *cough* Day-um, y’all, it’s all dusty up in here!  It’s not that I’ve forgotten about you, Innernetz.  I’ve missed y’all tremendously, but if I didn’t focus on the freelance writing, copyediting, and tutoring jobs I rustled up for some extra cash, I’d instead miss things like electricity and food.  The past month was an exhausting pattern of workworkworkworksleepwork.  I’m not complaining — well, yes I am because that’s what I do — but this last month has been full of the suckage and no bloggage.

But I’m baaaccck, and I know you are just orgasmic with relief.  I’ll give you a minute or two to compose yourself and change your panties.  Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

I had a break this weekend when The Cougar came to visit.  She took one look at my pasty pallor and prescribed large doses of Vitamin Daylight.  It took a while for her to crowbar me away from my desk, my ass having molded perfectly around my chair cushion, but once that was accomplished we headed to the park with Dingo Girl for a tasty but hasty dingolicious picnic. One of the paths that meandered up a steep hill took us along a massive vertical rock face jutting drunkenly out of the ground like Mel Gibson at The Passion of The Long Island Iced Tea. As I walked to the edge of the path so that Dingo Girl could do her bidness, I suddenly heard The Cougar say, “I’m going to climb that rock! I bet I can see most of the park from the top!” The next second she was scaling the smooth precipice like Spiderman with a sand wedgie.

“Come down!” I called.  “What are you doing?! Are you crazy?!”

The Cougar continued to climb.  “Take a picture!” she yelled.

My heart thumping so hard it sounded like Kirstie Alley in Wal-Mart flip-flops, I fumbled in my messenger bag for my camera.  Dingo Girl was pacing around my feet, whimpering.  By the time I found the camera, The Cougar was another five feet up.  She paused to wave at me.

“Don’t do that! Get down here!  You’re going to break your neck!” The Cougar responded by giving me The Cougar equivalent of the finger — she stuck her tongue out at me.  And kept climbing. 

I started to put the camera back in my bag when I felt a tug on Dingo Girl’s retractable leash.  She had started up the rock after The Cougar.  Dingo Girl, however, not having grasped the fine art of climbing 80-degree rock cliffs, shifted into reverse, going up the rock face ass first. I dropped the leash, crossed the path, and walked to the rock to get her down.  She crab-walked just out of my reach but not before planting a saucy lick on my nose — Dingo Girl’s version of the finger.

Dingo Girl halted her upward progression about twenty feet up where the rock veered even more sharply up the side of the hill and sat down.  She somehow remained stuck to the side of the rock, jutting from the cliff like Pinocchio’s nose at a Tea Party rally.  I started to scale the cliff to save her.

“Mom!” I yelled.  “Call Dingo Girl to you.  She has to keep going.”

Hearing the panic in my voice, Dingo Girl began to get nervous.  She began to whimper.  And then howl.  It was a long, high-pitched wail.  It sounded something like I’msofuuuuuucked! I’madognotamountaingoat! She started to slide.  Pebbles, dirt, and bits of moss kicked up by her struggles hit my face like a rice-substitute at a very environmentally friendly wedding.  Here comes the bride.  Too bad she died.

My feet couldn’t find purchase against the slick moss.  Motherfucker!  Motherfucker!  slip, slide, whack! My knee crashed against the rock.  Motherfucker!  Still, I made slow progress toward Dingo Girl.

“Grab her!” I yelled to The Cougar.  She reached for Dingo Girl’s collar and…missed!  Dingo Girl slammed into me.  For the first time in years, I thanked the Universe for my big thighs.  More surface area to hang onto the promontory of death.  I managed to catch Dingo Girl, her head trapped between my knees and her butt in my face.  I breathed a sigh of relief but now I had a freaked out dog trapped between me and the rock.  And I was on a rock!  No, I was on the side of a rock!

The Cougar carefully scooted toward us and got close enough to wrap her arm around Dingo Girl’s back end.  We slowly moved up the remaining five feet or so in fits and starts like Frogger, The Epilectic Edition.  When we finally reached level ground at the top of the boulder, The Cougar and I flopped onto our backs, breathing heavily, and picking dog hair out of our mouths.  Dingo Girl went to pee on a bush.

“Well,” I said to The Cougar, “we made it! Thank you for that exhilarating experience!”

Then I grumbled something only marginally obscene.  You couldn’t even see the entire park from the top.  Too many trees!  I called Dingo Girl over and then turned toward her.  She was still rustling in the nearby bushes so I went to get her.  I didn’t want her near the steep edges.  I pictured her jumping over the edge and The Cougar jumping right after her because that looked like fun, too.

When I reached Dingo Girl, I realized that she had found a staircase carved into the rock.  The stairs led down and around the rock to a point about thirty feet in front of the spot where The Cougar had decided to climb.

And that, dear Innernetz, is how I lost my voice.

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Call Me Dingo Fierce

Things have pretty much sucked since my last post, Innernetz.  With so much going on it’s been difficult to write with blinding tears and snot running all over the keyboard and whatnot.  Everything I wrote sounded like, Waaaaaaa!  Waaaaaaaaa!  Moving sucks!  Waaaaaaaa! I hate living in the ‘hood! Waaaaaaa!  We’re broke! Waaaaaaa! See how boring that gets after a while?  I tell you waaaaat, I was sick of myself.  I needed something to take my mind off of my pathetic pity party and the unsettling feeling of just seeing my new neighborhood on Cops. 

And then, then Innernetz, I got an email from the folks over at Noble Works Cards.  They asked if I’d be interested in hosting a giveaway on my blog.  Giveaway?! Hells yeah, I’d be interested in a giveaway!  One lucky and creative As I Was Saying reader is going to get a $25 gift card to spend on some of the hilarious, irreverent, and often downright offensive Noble Works gift cards, mugs, calendars, and memo pads.  Could anything be more perfect for you, Innernetz?!  But simmadownnow, bitches.  You gotta work for this. 

Here’s how this is going down.  Head over to Noble Works Cards and take a look around. Pick your favorite card and leave a comment to this post telling me what card made you pee in your pants, who you’d send the card to, and any additional comments you’d write on the card before dropping it in the mailbox.  You have until Saturday, February 13th at noon (because I’m not rolling outta bed before then) to submit your comment.  On Valentine’s Day, I’ll announce the comment I love the most.  And Voila!  You have a $25 gift card!  How easy is that?

You wanna know how easy it is?  Here’s a card I ordered for Mr. Dingo’s former employer with the $25 gift card Noble Works sent to me for hosting the giveaway.  And here’s my P.S.:

I hope that you get syphilis of the soul from all the people you’ve fucked over and that the dried piece of jerky you call a heart is absorbed into your lower intestine like a cancer and passes through your anus like the hardened piece of shit you are.

Dingo

I wonder if I should sit on it for a day or two?

But Innernetz, my absolute favorite purchase is the St. Bitch the Fierce Magnetic Memo Pad.  I love this memo pad.  It’s a legally recognized license to be the fashion police and to launch a citizen’s arrest all wrapped up in one delightfully robed visage — St. Bitch the Fierce.  I can’t wait until they get here.  I will be a superhero!  I can write wrongs and right wrongs.

My first citation will be given to the baby mamas and their crotch fruit who live directly above me.  How shall I put this?  Oh yeah, I hate them.  Hate.  Them.  The never ending noise. Sweet baby jebus, the constant noise!  Are they wearing cement shoes?  Why are they running around in circles for hours and hours every single night?  I mean, shouldn’t the little semen demons be in bed by 8?  But the running, jumping, and screaming continue until 2 or 3 in the morning.  Are they herding sheep before they count them?  All that running simply reminds me that polio once played an important role in child care.  And then there’s the music.  I may have been able to forgive the loud thumping bass that rattles the three-inch-thick steel security gates over my windows but I cannot forgive the desecration of the King of Pop and Billy Jean.  Aren’t there copyright restrictions that prevent Menudo wannabes from singing “Billy Cheen es not my luvah.  Cheese jussa girl says dat I am de juan”?  Really, Baby Mamas?  Is that the song you really want to have on repeat?  I know, I know, many of you are probably saying, “Oh Dingo, have you tried talking to them?” Silly Innernetz, do you want me to get stabbed in the face?  Because a knife sticking out of my face would not be a good look for me.  And that’s where my St. Bitch the Fierce memo pad comes in handy.  I can anonymously leave them a polite note asking them to respect their neighbors and STFU.  I should get a good citizen award but I’m already a saint and it would be a sin to be so greedy. 

Two nights ago the thumping and jumping reached Def Con 4.  My earplugs whimpered in defeat.  And then, it happened.  There was crash that shook the ceiling and sent Dingo Girl running for cover.  All was quiet for about five seconds and then there was keening and howling like a pack of drunken coyotes on a Spring Break bender.  Holy shit.  I wasn’t sure what to do.  Should I bang on the ceiling?  Call an ambulance?  The po-po?  No, I St. Bitch the Fierce had an even better idea. 

Running into the bedroom where the crying was the loudest, I climbed on top of the dresser.  I was only six inches away from the shrieking and crying.  But it was six inches too far.  I stretched up on my tippy toes.  My calf muscles, still sore from the move, groaned in protest, but this was important.  I was not going to stand by and do nothing.  Bracing my hands on the wall to give me some leverage and traction, I was just three inches from the ceiling.  Three scant inches from ground zero.  I didn’t hesitate.  I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with air, and shouted:

HAHAHHAHAHAHWOOOTWOOOTHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHTAKETHATMUTHAFUCKA!!

And for five blissful seconds, the yelling, crying, and music stopped.  I held my breath.  Fuck.  And then I breathed a sigh of relief.  I am St. Bitch the Fierce.  And I don’t care how obnoxious you are, you wouldn’t stab a saint in the face.  Would you?

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And Then . . .

Christmas blew like an enthusiastic whore with razor blade braces.  As I was shopping among the holly jolly holiday lights at Victoria’s Secret and deciding between the comfortable cotton jammies and the brittle acrylic slip that looked as if it had been Bedazzled by blind kindergartners, Bob Cratchit Mr. Dingo was in a nondescript office holding a slip of another sort.  It was pink.  Yes, the Tuesday before Christmas, Mr. Dingo lost his job.  We’re fucked.  The holidays have been spent deciding whether our bed will fit under one of the city’s main bridges and scouring the internet and classifieds for apartments we can afford with frequent flyer miles and an adjunct teacher’s salary (Hahahahahahaha! *wipes tears from eyes*).  We eventually nixed the bridges because there’s no Innernetz.  In spite of all the hype, there are no habitable bridges on the Information Superhighway.  I can live without cable, and electricity, and running water.  But who can live without Innernetz?  I love you, Innernetz.  I really do.  I also love writing comments I never post and sending emails I regret ten seconds after cutting the umbilical cord.  Besides, there’s no Starbucks under any bridges in New York City.  Not yet, at least.  Still, having investigated the bridge option, I now know where all my Starbucks Friends come from. 

So, that’s my Christmas post. 

And here’s my New Year’s post:  Happy Fucking New Year. 

Moving on….

About a week ago, as I sat in front of the computer screen transfixed by our bank account — what does it mean when all the numbers are preceded by a hyphen? — Dingo Girl had just about had enough.  She wanted to play.  She wanted to walk.  She wanted to run and be free of my foul mood and my phone calls canceling things.  Now, Dingo Girl, she’s my chill pill, my Paxil, my shred of sanity, my mutually co-dependent canine compadre.  Dingo + Dingo Girl = BFF4EVA!  Walks with Dingo Girl are never run-of-the-mill.  It’s more like run-after-squirrel and run-after-child-eating-cookies.  Her favorite thing, though, is run-through-puddles.  After the previous week’s rain, I knew the park would be the muddy stuff of a redneck Bubba’s wet dream — dirt so soggy it demands that monster trucks pull tractors, that bikini-clad women wrestle, and that you take your boots off to keep them from getting dirty.

Cresting a hill, we found a stream that had overrun its bank and covered the path.  Fallen trees icky with moss, fungi, and the rest of nature’s enormous assortment of snot blocked one side. The other was a steep drop off into a used condom- and beer-can-infested pond.  There were only two choices: through or around. The wall of logs looked stable, but that was as misleading as an Enzyte commercial.  I kicked the center of the gnarly mass and the log jam shifted.  Something scurried underneath.  I couldn’t really see it, but it looked like it glanced at the ring on my finger and whispered, “my precious.” Oh, hell to the no!  Dingo Girl, we’re turning around.  Dingo Girl gave me the “Bitch, puh-leeez” look as I backpeddled from the Leaning Tower of Nasty.  Mouth open and tongue flying, Dingo Girl cannonballed into the middle of the puddle.  And disappeared.  She vanished.  I looked around me to see if anyone had seen the thirty-pound dog in the fifty-pound body disappear but also half expecting Dingo Girl to be behind me, shaking her paws in my face and telling me I just got freaked.  But I was alone.  All alone.  Dingo Girl had pulled an Osama bin Laden on me without so much as a bark goodbye.

I could hear Gollum sliding around under the Leaning Tower of Nasty, but the puddle was still.  I searched the sky.  There had been a meteor shower over New York City a month or so before, and strange, flashing lights had been spotted all over the place right around Christmas.  That could only mean one thing: alien zombies.  “Give me back my dog you big-headed, one-eyed, undead motherfuckers!” I screamed at the UFOs hovering overhead. 

And it worked!  Suddenly, the surface of the water broke.  That little overflowed puddle was much deeper than it looked!  Dingo Girl emerged on the other side of the puddle sputtering blach, blaaach! blaaaaghhhh! and snarling at the water. 

Ha!  Served her right.  Puddles are one thing.  Total submersion without her wetsuit and fins is another.  She was one mad dog. 

I started to climb over the Leaning Tower of Nasty to get Dingo Girl when my disorder surfaced like a floater.  I was FUCKED.  At the pinnacle of the heap, one foot darted to the left.  I caught my balance. Then, my other foot went right. Leftrightleftrightleftright.  My feet slipped in an increasingly rapid rhythm until I was doing the hillbilly hoedown, knees up to my ears, hands flapping and arms waving like a pew-jumping Pentecostal on So You Think You Can Dance.  The more I tried to regain my balance the more I looked like a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man.  And then the logs shifted.  Gollum was coming!  I was running in place, trying to keep up with the rotation of the logs to keep Gollum from nibbling on my fingers — highkneeshighkneeshighknees — when suddenly my ass hit the log pile and I slid, branch by anal probing branch, until I landed on my back in The Puddle That Ate My Dog.  Dingo Girl whined and pawed at the ground. 

And then, something finally began to go my way. 

Unfortunately, it was the Leaning Tower of Nasty.  It creaked and groaned and swayed toward me like a withered old nun with a ruler in her hands.

Just then, the water moved.  The water didn’t ripple.  It moved.  By itself.

I was on my feet and by Dingo Girl’s side faster than Britney Spears speed-dialed her attorney after she woke up married to Jason Allen Alexander.  Dingo Girl and I were both sputtering blach, blaaach! blaaaaghhhh! and snarling at the water until, suddenly, Dingo Girl turned and ran, leaving me at the edge of the underwater portal to another dimension.  I turned to chase her.  As I turned to go, out the corner of my eye, I saw something slither out of the puddle into the pile of rotted wreckage.  I’m not joking.  It was not human.  Not animal.  Not my imagination.  Dingo Girl barked again.  I followed her in my water-logged boots — squishsplatsquishsplat.  You won’t get us, you big-headed, one-eyed, undead freaks, I muttered. 

Not today, anyway.

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