Incredible!

I identify with Mr. Incredible a little too well.

It's not just that I'm a tall, blond, ripped God of a man (featuring the voice of Craig T. Nelson, thankyouverymuch). Nor is it that I'm married to a redhead (who fortunately doesn't sound like she's got a mouth full of shit--no, I'm not a big fan of Holly Hunter, how did you guess?) who has a bit of junk in her trunk, and who can stretch to fit any situation...if you know what I mean.

It's the entire family structure that I identify with. Right now, I'm one mistimed early withdrawal and a dye-job from having the same family as the Incredibles...minus the super powers, of course (dammit). I think about this every time I watch the movie; big blond guy as the dad, redhaired wife, older daughter with the dyed hair, younger son who is fast, and then baby Jackjack (otherwise known as the mistimed pull-out).

Even though I'm happy with my current employment situation, I did used to work for an Oompla-Loompa with a high-pitched voice who I would have loved to have thrown through several walls at my old job. Just thought I'd add that to the mix.

Recently, too, I've been sitting around thinking about the good old days. Back when I was a carried a bit more of an athletic frame, when it wasn't so difficult for me to get back into my old costume. Whatever that means.

I'm also missing that best friend that I can hang with and reminisce, since all my "good old days" friends live in the midwest. I suppose there's my friend Joe, but when we hang together we "reminisce" about the various attractive women at the eating establishment we are currently visiting. And lawn care. We talk about that maybe too much...

And I think I'm going to start calling him "Joezone".

Damn, I'm clever.

With all that said...I'm now waiting for an invitation to zoom off to an exotic location--all expenses paid, of course--where I can enjoy fruity drinks, a tropical climate, scantily-dressed women and even fight some giant robots, if need be. If you need me, I'll be down at the yard lifting Pullman cars to get back into shape.

Or staring lasciviously at the younger waitresses down at the restaurant with my buddy Joezone. Either way, just leave the info an the plane tickets in a manila envelope on my desk, and I'll get around to it eventually.

The Most Couch-Loungingest Time of the Year

Well, we are fast approaching another Christmas, my friends. I've bitched and I've parodied my way up to here, but this past weekend's snow and the extra twenty-five pennies I found in my car this morning so that I could buy coffee at work have put me in the moodiest of holiday moods. And so, I thought maybe I'd set aside the dick jokes and the drooling over large breasted women for just a moment and reflect on what the season is truly about: Holiday specials.

Now, my friend Joshua, Master of the Technical Parent and all-around nice fellow, has a little Tuesday event he calls "Top Five Tuesday" wherein he lists five things that he likes and gives a short description of them. Since Tuesday was reserved for me electronically and mentally stroking myself talking about my birthday and the end of the world, I was too full of myself busy to participate.

Well, better late than never.

Unless we're talking about ovulation cycles.

Anyway, since I'm a day late on the whole Top Five Tuesdays thing, I thought I'd break my top five down into two categories: favorite animated holiday specials and favorite holiday specials.

Five Favorite Animated Holiday Specials:

5.) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: There's just something about clunky stop-motion animation that gets me. Well, at least here. The rest of the Rankin-Bass stable kind of sucks. Except for their version of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, but those aren't stop-motion animated. Anyway, there's probably a lesson to be learned in there somewhere when Rudolph takes the high road and doesn't rub it in everyone's faces that he saved Christmas. Way to be an exemplary humble little reindeer, Rudolph. Especially since your name means "famed wolf".

4.) Mickey's Christmas Carol: While I'm not a big fan of the Disneyfication of stories, this one works for me. Probably because Mickey himself is just a supporting character. Oh sure, it's his lame little kid that melts Scrooge McDuck's heart, but we all know that it's really Pete's cigar smoke what changes Unca Scrooge over from the miserly old bastard to the generous and lovable grandfather figure in the story. Tragically, the story of Tiny Tim drowning when he tries to swim in Scrooge's Money Bin is buried on the back page of the papers.

3.) A Charlie Brown Christmas: I know I might have given Chuck the old run around a couple of days ago, but at the heart of it, Charlie Brown just wants us to remember the spirit of the season. And he's got a point. Everyone's pretty dickish the other eleven months of the year, can't we at least be decent during the month between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day? What's that? Not while we're stealing each other's parking spots at the mall? Fair enough.

2.) How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Boris Karloff's voice really makes this for me, but overall it is the ultimate story of redemption that doesn't involve lightsabres and big, black breathing apparati. I wonder what it would sound like if Karloff read it in Latin! *shivers down my spine* Not to mention, my favorite color is green and I think Max is perhaps the ultimate name for a dog. Put all that together and stir in some Chuck Jones animation and that's a recipe for awesome.

1.) Phinneas and Ferb Christmas Vacation!: Maybe it's that the shine hasn't come off this new holiday special, but I sat and laughed through the whole thing. Whether it was Frosty getting his smarmy ass creamed by a snowplow in the opening scenes or the little cut-scene references to A Charlie Brown Christmas or the not-so-subtle O. Henry "Gift of the Magi" subplot, I loved the whole thing. I even got a little teary-eyed when Perry the Platypus gave Doofenshmirtz some almond bark. Okay, so the tears were because I was laughing so much. Bait and switch, baby. Bait. And. Switch.

And now for the live-action holiday specials! Bring on the eggnog and brandy!

Top Five Favorite Holiday Specials:

5.) White Christmas: No holiday list is complete without the Binger's White Christmas on it, be it holiday special or favorite songs. It's charming, it's heartwarming and it's just a fun movie to watch. It sort of gets your right here. And by right here, I mean in the "...sisters, eh? Why don't you ladies drop those feather things and let's get going" gland. Plus, thanks to White Christmas, every year, I aspire to have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since the Binger tap danced with Danny fucking Kaye.

4.) Miracle on 34th Street: This makes the list because I watched it a lot as a kid. Back then, the miracle of this thing called a "VCR" was new, and my father, being too tight economically-minded bought blank video tapes and then we recorded the Christmas specials off channel 55 out of Fort Wayne. Problem was, he didn't want to deal with those commercial bullshit (my dad, so Charlie Browny), so I would have to sit there with the remote and push pause to avoid having the commercials in the recording. So, yeah, I watched this a lot. Nice to see the USPS can deliver a shit ton of letters to the courthouse but they can't get my wife's fucking last Christmas present to me on the day that they promised. Cock knockers.

3.) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: Did I mention something about the Binger tap dancing with Danny fucking Kaye? I sure did. And when Santa squeezes his fat ass down the chimney, he's going to find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse. I've seen this movie a lot, too. It's stuck with me. Now, if you'll pardon me, I've got some work to do. The shitter is full.

2.) Die Hard: What? It's Christmas effing Eve. There's an exploding helicopter, a platoon of dead Germans, plastic explosives tied to an office chair, Alan Rickman playing an evil German (as if there's any other kind), and Notre Dame playing football against USC...though why we're playing the Trojans on Christmas Eve still kind of confuses me. Let it Snow... is playing as the end credits roll. Plus, you know that the kid Reginald VelJohnson shot was Urkel! I'm so fired up, I'm going to have to go find this DVD somewhere. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers.

1.) A Christmas Story: Could it have been any other choice? We dorky white kids with glasses growing up in Indiana have to stick together, and while I didn't grow up during the depression nor did I ever ask for a b.b. gun for Christmas (I got a .22 when I was 12), I just have a connection with Ralphie that's primal, gutteral...maybe it's the blond thing, maybe it's the glasses, maybe it's the hounds (my brother had a pack of hounds), maybe it's the love of romance languages (fra-jee-lay), maybe it's just that the family kind of reminds me of mine, but I love this movie. The building where I went to kindergarten could have doubled for Warren G. Harding elementary, and while I grew up outside of da Region where the movie was set (before it became the armpit AND asshole of creation), I can still appreciate the story. Plus, I had a friend whose last name was Farkas when I was a kid. No lie.

So, there you have it, folks. My top five animated specials and holiday movies. Feel free to dissect and discuss all you want.

I would be remiss if I didn't add this little bit for your viewing pleasure, however. Given the year we just went through, I think this is a touching tribute to a fallen star. Plus, it mixes movies and puppetry, so it's kind of like this post.

And, if I don't see you before Friday, Merry Christmas.

Pruny Fingers Do Not Fond Memories Make

So, this is the week in which Americans, living up to our cultural stereotypes, begin to prepare for days of celebrating the largesse of our agricultural endeavors in a manner most gluttonous: by eating until we want to puke, laying on a couch, putting a hand in our pants Al Bundy style, and falling asleep in front of a football game.

As much as I like to eat, you'd think that Thanksgiving would be one of my favorite holidays. This is not so. I don't hate Thanksgiving, but it's about my fifth favorite holiday, ranking behind Easter but above Memorial Day.

I realize this is about as Unamerican as you can get. Since I'm a simple creature (boobs, bacon, good!), the reason I dislike the holiday is pretty simple, as well. I fucking hate doing dishes.

Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one who did this growing up, but we would pull a multi-meal Thanksgiving. It wasn't just the Thursday that my family worked their way toward the third ring of Hell, but we took in the entire weekend to celebrate the harvest. Thanksgiving wasn't just a day to celebrate the goodness that God or whatever the hell deity was tied in with Samhain in my house. No, it was a motherfucking experience. An extravaganza of culinary delights, if you will.

On Thursday, we'd go to my grandmother's house. This would be my paternal grandmother. Now, my father suffered mightily from middle-child syndrome, and as such he was the consummate dutiful child. Since I was his oldest son, this meant that, by some sick and twisted application of the associative property, I was the dutiful grandson. Never mind that I wasn't the oldest--though I certainly was the wisest and handsomest--I was still the one roped into standing there with my father washing up the dishes from our holiday repast. *shudder* I've seen things done with gravy that are unfit to discuss in polite company.

It wasn't just the rinsing and drying and stacking and putting away of dishes that got to me. No, since my father needed to impress, I was also elected to help scrub the kitchen down. If it wasn't clean and dry enough, my father was whipped up into a Drill Sergeant-like furor. The towel would crack against my ass and I'd be back down on the floor, hands-and-knees aching, using the toothbrush to scrub up every last drop of wayward gravy.

Where was my mother during all this? In the other end of the house, discussing how awful the dinner was with my aunt. My uncle was passed out in a recliner, football flickering on the television. My cousins and brother were in the back of the house, playing board games (one thing grandma definitely had was an abundance of board games to entertain us). So, it was just me and dad, working KP.

Friday would roll around, which meant that we would have our second Thanksgiving meal, at home. After my maternal grandmother had died, we invited my grandfather to come eat with us, which he was all too happy to do. Usually, somehow, my aunt and uncle would also show up. Again, we'd sup and fill our guts full to bursting. And, after everyone was finished eating, while they were sitting around the table, still licking the sauces from their fingers and smacking their lips in fully congratulatory style, celebrating that they were, in fact, better than the potatoes and dressing that they had just devoured, my father would begin gathering up the dishes. Since I was the oldest child, I got drafted into helping. *sigh*

My mother and my aunt would retire to the living room, where they would sit and talk about how great the dinner was. My grandfather would join them. My uncle would pass out in a recliner, football on the television, another hapless victim of tryptophan's vicious soporific effects. My brother and cousin were off playing video games.

This left me and my father to do the dishes. Our kitchen was tiny, and so we had no dishwasher. And, after all, we were gracious hosts. Make some coffee, pour some wine, and clean these dishes up. While everyone else celebrated and enjoyed themselves, I stood in the kitchen, a damp towel over my shoulder, my fingers slowly absorbing the scalding hot water which I used to rinse the soapy dishes. I'd stack them in the drying rack until it was full, and then I'd wipe them off and put them away. My father still scraping and scrubbing the dishes clean in the sink to my right, I would look out the window and wonder just what part of the holiday was supposed to be happy.

You better damned well believe that, when my wife and I were looking for places to live, we found one with a dishwasher. That way I could load it up after the dinner was finished and go pass out in front of the television while football flickered at me, fully reveling in the over-indulgence of the day. More importantly, my fingers weren't all pruned up. Now, that's a happy holiday in my book.

Fluffy and the Rabbit

Damn, guys. I didn't mean to make everyone cry over my dead dog. Look, if it makes it any easier, she was an old dog. It was her time to go. She was well past the point where you could teach her new tricks. Plus, I'll admit it: she had picked up that old dog smell. You know what I'm talking about. The one where you pet her and then the smell of dog permeates your palms and sticks with you wherever you go. You can be driving back to school and be like "When did I leave molding, rotten socks under the heater?" and then you realize that the smell isn't gym socks gone wild, but rather it's the stink of the dog you patted on your way out the door still clinging tenaciously to your flesh. Yeah, that's what she had adopted. Nice dog. But she stunk.

Better? All those tears dried up? No? Fine.

Let me tell you about my cat. Everyone loves a little pussy story.

Oh, and by the way. I believe it was Adrienzgirl who said she liked me because I'm a dog person. Well, sorry, but I'm not. Don't get me wrong. I like dogs. I love dogs. In fact, here, let me give you another stupid dog story.

I was walking out to my car a few months back in the early spring when I heard some sort of jangling sound off my port side. I looked up and saw a fat beagle waddling toward me in that stupid way that only hounds can pull off and yet they still look adorable. Being that I've been around dogs all my life (well, most of it, anyway), I knew to offer my hand to Stupid Dog so that he could see I'm not a threat. The only problem is, when dogs sniff my hand to see if I'm friendly or not, they don't smell "good guy, might have spare sausage, should make him friend," they in fact smell "sucker". That's what Stupid Dog did. He sniffed my hand and immediately rolled over onto his back to show me his belly. Dawwwwwww! How can you deny this? So, I reach down and pet him. And he's a fantastic, fat beagle and he's all like "Look at me, I'm a fantastic, fat beagle. Don't you love me? Don't you want to shower me with sausages?" And I got done petting him and I said, "Well, Stupid Dog, it's time for me to go. I've got an appointment to keep." And Stupid Dog looked up at me with eyes that said "Where's the fucking sausages?" And I looked back at him and saw his tag. So, I looked at the tag. It was from someone in my neighborhood.

Since they were on the way, I loaded Stupid Dog into my car and I drove his fat, worthless ass home. Because I'm a sucker like that. To top it off, I rolled down the fucking window so that he could hang his head out of it and sniff the breeze. Most likely in search of sausages. Finally, I took him home, but instead of just dumping him out, I carried his fat ass to the door, rang the bell, and returned Stupid Dog to his rightful owners. He was so happy to be home, and his family was happy to have him back. He gave me one last look that said, "Thanks, but next time, don't forget the sausages."

See, I'm a sucker.

The thing is, I like cats, too. As much as I love the dopey companionship of a dog, I love the fuck-you-I'll-slit-your-fucking-throat attitude of cats. I like it when they stare at me from the windowsill, visually giving me the finger. I like the way that they climb up onto the bed and get in your face and purr loudly and say "The sun is up, Asshole, and you are, too! I'm going to sleep all day today, but you sure as fuck aren't going to sleep in on my watch. Now, up and at 'em. And open a can of tuna, Ebeneezer. I deserve a treat."

Yep. I sure do like cats.

Anyway, my first cat was Katy. My mom, um, liberated her from her hair dresser as a kitten. Her hair dresser had about ten thousand kittens running around the farm, and she just sort of shoved one of them into her purse on the way back to the car, figuring that Lisa would never miss one out of ten thousand cats, right? Turns out, Lisa didn't. And so I had my first true pet. I named her for a character in a book I had checked out from the library that very same day! Clearly, fate and the gods were telling me that I was going to be the proud owner of a cat. For about a week.

The dog from up the street killed her while we were away one weekend at the Lake. I came home to find her little body there in the driveway where she had been mauled. Fucking asshole dog.

My second cat I found in an old shed out behind the house of an old lady who lived two houses behind me. She was a black-and-white long-haired cat. I loved her immediately. I named her Fluffy. Because she was. She was really fluffy. Her hair was so long and so thick and so unruly that, in the winter when her coat got thicker, she would get these massive hairballs around her neck from where she would turn her head and such that I couldn't brush out--no matter how hard I tried--so that we had to wait until the spring when she started shedding for them to fall off. The only problem was, they would be so massive and they'd lay there in the grass and get all wet with dew and rain that you'd be walking along and think that you had just happened upon an aborted kitten. I'd always sort of shriek and step back and then realize "Oh, it's just one of Fluffy's hairballs". And then I'd throw it away.

Fluffy lived a pretty luxurious life. For about six months. And then the dog up the street mauled her. Fucking asshole dog. Except, this time, he didn't kill my cat. He just broke her leg. And, well, my parents, being the kind-hearted souls that they are, decided to shell out the money to have her leg fixed. Hooray! A happy ending. For once.

Fluffy was a pretty good cat, too. She was an accomplished hunter. Only problem is, she'd bring me her trophies. I can't remember the number of times I would be out in the driveway, shooting free throws, and here would come Fluffy with some dead bundle of something-or-other in her mouth, a big dumb grin on her face, and then she would lay it at my feet. The free throw stripe in the driveway became some sort of sick and twisted trophy room for the cat, or a mausoleum for various rodents, birds and lagomorphs from the yard. It all depends on your point of view.

Not knowing what to do, I'd pet her, tell her what a good kitty she was, and then I'd scoot the dead little thing over out of my way and continue on practicing. She'd finally take the morsel and go sit on top of my dad's car and eat it. "That goddamned cat's on my car again!" he'd scream as he came running out the back door, shooing her off.

I loved that cat.

She apparently had a taste for rabbit. One spring while I was in high school, a rabbit was hanging out in our side yard. My mom would watch it frolic and play in the early evening light. Then, one day, while she was sitting on the front porch, doing her duty and diligently watching the neighbors, she saw Fluffy coming through the yard, dragging something huge. Turns out, it was the rabbit. But, the rabbit was SO big, she had a hard time moving the body. Plus, she had only mortally wounded it and was apparently looking for me to show me the kill. I went out there and she was like "Look at me. I'm so proud of myself." And the rabbit said "I'm not dead yet." Okay, sorry. Tasteless, I know. So, I yelled for my dad, because I knew she would need help getting the rabbit up onto his car, so I figured he could help her.

"Oh no," my dad said, and then he did the unthinkable: He took the rabbit away from her.

Oh fuck, was she pissed. Have you ever seen a cat stomp off mad in a huff? She actually managed to do it. She stomped around the yard for a good thirty minutes, meowing loudly. And not a pretty meow. She meowed in that pissed off way. And it was constant. And, apparently, she could hold a grudge because, after she initially quieted down, she would sound off again whenever someone turned on a light inside the house. She was not happy and she was going to let everyone know about it.

Evidently, this was the final straw (the first straw being the arrival of Meg, whom she detested, because Meg thought that cats were subservient, and in case you haven't noticed, cats serve no masters). I could almost hear her little voice, amidst all the meowing that night, saying, "I bust my ass to bring you all the finest dead small animals that I can find in the yard, lay them at your feet, and then when I rid the yard of the evil leporine menace, and this is how you thank me? With a yappy little...dog...and by taking away the prize I worked so hard to ambush and kill. Well, fuck you very much. I'm going to go find an old lady to live with."

And so she did. She moved out. Took her ball and went home. Er...to a different home. She went and lived with an old woman up the hill. Every so often, she would show up on the front sidewalk. She'd look in, see that we still had the dog, and then mosey on her way with a sassy flick of the tail and the best feline cold shoulder she could offer.

So, there you have it. I'm not a dog person. I'm not a cat person. I love both dogs and cats. I'm like a paradox wrapped up in an enigma with an outer coating of contradiction and punctuated with a question mark.

And yet, despite all that, I still smell like a sucker.

Nut-Meg

I'm not really here today, True Believers. I'm spending the day in a small room with twenty-four other people as we hold our quarterly meeting with our client. They are feeding me, but let's not forget what Milton Friedman held near and dear: There's no such thing as a free lunch. So, I probably won't be getting around to your blogs today. I'd apologize, but I'll be too busy spending the evening massaging my poor, sore buttocks. The chairs in the main conference room ain't so comfy, if you know what I'm saying. And if you don't, well, they make my ass hurt.

In lieu of telling you more about my backside, I thought maybe I'd tell you about my dog.

When I was in the fifth grade, we adopted a shelter puppy. She was pure mutt, a mixture of Yorkshire and Scottish terriers. From the moment my mom picked her up out of the kennel at the animal shelter, she loved our family. My mom named her Megan. She named her litter mate Mandy and my aunt adopted her.

While Meg was a pure, loving dog from the moment she came home, she also eight pounds of crazy stuffed into a two pound sack. She was a good kind of crazy, though, except when it came to not being on a leash or a chain. Then she'd go batshit and run as far and as fast as she could, not caring about me huffing after her. We always found her. Except for that one time. However, when we woke up the next morning, she was in the garage--wet, muddy, exhausted...and still batshit crazy. We were glad to see her and pissed that she took off, all at the same time.

It was this batshit crazy streak that led us to call her Nutmeg from time to time.

Obviously, she loved to run, and she was fast. I'll give her that. Her true talent, however, was in her leaping ability. Whenever someone came home, she would dance on her back legs and paw at you with her front. However, whenever someone from the extended family--my aunt, my cousins, my grandfather--came to visit, Meg would leap out of her skin. She'd jump shoulder height because she'd be so excited to see you. This amused my grandfather to no end. "Leapinist damned dog I've ever seen," he'd chuckle.

Like any true dog, she was a good companion. Whenever I would come home from college, she'd be there to greet me. She'd always climb up onto my lap when I'd sit down and hunker up next to me in bed when I'd finally crawl in it at night. I'm not sure, though, if it was true canine love, or if she just wanted a nice warm ass to snuggle up against at night. See, my mom and dad had a waterbed while I was young, and my mom would yell at Meg when she would get up on the bed and walk around while my mother was trying to nap. So, Meg became adept at scooting herself around to get up right next to you, to maximize the amount of warmth she'd siphon off your body.

One night, I came home from grad school for no particular reason other than I needed to escape South Bend for a few hours. I was having one of those tough nights where I was struggling to get over the Ex-, and booze and porn just weren't cutting it. This was a long drive through the night with the windows down and a mix tape of emotionally dark music from the 90s kind of night. Around two am, I found myself on familiar roads and, with fatigue setting in, I made a couple of turns and I was soon creeping down the tree-line avenue that my parents' house rested on. I still had a key to the house, so I crept inside as quiet as possible and decided I'd sleep on the spare bed downstairs.

Meg was there to greet me, her tail wagging more slowly than usual, her old bones creaking as she followed me to the pallet. I took off my shoes and helped her up onto the bed, fearing that she was too old to make the jump. I pulled a blanket up over myself, curled up, and felt Meg take her usual position right behind my legs and under my ass. She hated it when you farted on her--again, much to my grandfather's amusement--and yet this was her preferred sleeping position for the night.

As much as she hated you breaking wind on her, she loathed water. She hated bath time, she hated to be left in the rain, and she hated being squirted with the hose, which was her usual punishment for crapping on the floor. Outside and squirted with the hose. When I was in high school, we got a pool, and Meg wouldn't go near it. Except, she liked to sleep on the deck beside the pool in the sun. Unfortunately, this is where she met her end.

I don't remember how old she was when she died. She was about thirteen or fourteen, but like I mentioned, she was slower, didn't jump so well. She had grown a bit surly in her older days. She didn't like kids nearly as much as she had when she was younger. When we brought my daughter down to her grandparents house, Meg pissed on the floor where her jumper was and Cookie's socks became soaked in dog piss. I wasn't exactly happy, but I also wasn't going to beat the dog nor squirt her with the hose. I thought of it as a canine equivalent of an old man bitching about you playing on his lawn.

Anyway, my mom threw the dog outside because she was going nuts over squirrels in the yard--her hatred of squirrels in the yard was only surpassed by her hatred of cats in the yard. So, Meg went up onto the deck to sleep in the full midday sun. However, when my mom went to get her later, the dog wouldn't come, and she couldn't be seen. My mom feared the worst. My dad came home that night and looked around the pool area for her, and couldn't find her. They figured she had run off, but feared the worst...

Since it was early summer, the thermal cover was on the pool, obscuring the water. I won't drag it out, but Meg probably climbed up onto the deck, had a heart attack, and fell into the pool. It was, without a doubt, the most ignominious way in which my dog could shuffle off this mortal coil. My mom, ever the lady, made my dad go out and pull back the solar cover, and there she floated upon her watery grave. My dad rescued her and buried her out behind the garage, in the same area where my first cat Katy was returning to that dust of which she was originally formed.

The other day, when I was having a particularly rough afternoon, I laid down to take a nap when my wife came home from work. As I pulled the afghan up over myself, I began to drift off to sleep and, for the first time in years, I had a sort of waking dream about nutty old Meg. I dreamed that she was there, beside the couch, looking up at me with her liquid brown eyes, waiting for me to fold my legs up so that she could take up her position under my ass. It was kind of odd, but in a happy sort of way. I patted my hip once--the sign to welcome her up with me--and then fell into that blissful couch sleep that I coveted so much.

Oh, and I never swam in that pool ever again.