Irony: Defined at Last

For Christmas, I bought Josh a book called How to Live With Your Neurotic Dog. It was cute, tongue-in-cheek, and easy to read. He's not a big reader, so I thought it would be something he could actually get into. I think he got about halfway through it. Before I got a chance to read more than a few pages, we underestimated our dogs.
We've been hiding magazines from them since they eat them and shred them all over the living room, but they've never messed with books. Also, they usually only ate stuff that was on the coffee table, not the end tables. I was gone for less than an hour on Monday, picking Josh up from the airport. In that time, the little f'ers managed to tear up the hard cover and shred the insides to little bits. They sure taught us.
How do you live with two neurotic dogs? Give 'em back and buy a guinea pig.

Boobdropping

Boob is out of the office all week at a convention. The VP had been saying all along that if he hadn't learned our system by this week, she was going to send someone else because it would be a waste to have him there. Sure enough, he hasn't learned the system (because he's a boob) and they sent him anyway. This would bother me a lot more if it didn't mean I was free of his boobery for a whole week, but it just goes to show what a bunch of half-assers and liars that I work for. No wonder they like Boob so much.

One of the nicest things about having him gone is being able to talk without worrying about him in his office eavesdropping. It's not even that we're talking about bad things, it's just that he has to comment on shit we're saying or try to get involved. It's really the worst kind of eavesdropping. In its mildest form, when someone is just listening in out of curiosity, it's annoying but tolerable. The next level is a little worse, when someone is listening so they can gossip about it later. The worst level, Boobdropping, is when someone is listening so they have an "in" to start a conversation with the talkers later on.

A couple weeks ago, I was saying that I was going to be in Minneapolis to one of my coworkers in a polite, conversational tone. Later, Boob came out and said, "So, whatcha doin in Minneapolis?" My period was over and I was in a great mood, so I didn't tell him that it was none of his goddamn business. He does stuff like that all the time. When we were discussing what to bet for our brackets (we settled on a 6er of tallboys. I love tallboys), Boob practically tripped over his short little legs rushing out to find out if we were starting a pool. We lied and said no.

I just realized that Boobdropping might not be the best term for this, but I can't think of another. Boobdropping is more what the woman who trained me in customer service did to me when she'd type around me. I'd always try to get out of the way and offer my chair, but she was too quick. Before I could move, I had two arms around me and a boob resting on each shoulder while her freakishly long nails clickity-clacked away on my keyboard. I can still here that raspy, nasty cough in my worst nightmares. Sometimes I wake up screaming. She's the one that misused fetish ("I have a staple fetish." Dirty!) and said "coolie beans" and "anyhoozie". She's been gone at least 8 months, but it seems like yesterday that I was back in my customer service chair, being boobed and coughed upon.

Damn It

I don't think I've ever turned down a Starlite cheeseburger before. Then I read this.

It all started Saturday night, when my brother was flippping through channels. He stopped at a program about the treatment of pigs. It was the most horrible thing I've ever watched in my life. I was half in the bag, so I didn't really dwell on it after he changed the channel. The next day, I had a big fat cheeseburger (with bacon, naturally) from Convention Grill. It was freakin' delicious.
When I got back to Crapids, I decided to look at the goveg.com website to get some ideas for some vegetarian dishes, since we eat meat at least 6 days out of the week. Instead, I ended up reading page after page about the horrendous conditions in stockyards and slaughterhouses. The worst part was reading about how happy the pigs were to get in open air and sunlight that they bucked and jumped and ran around like happy dogs. And that when cows solve a problem (yes, people give cows problems to solve), they are visibly pleased with themselves.

It's not so much killing an animal and eating it that bothers me so much. If I knew that a cow had a happy life rather than one on a concrete floor in a 4x6 cage that ends in a 110 degree ride to a painful and terrifying death, I might not have as much of a problem enjoying a nice Steak de Burgo. Josh did some searching on the internet and found "cruelty-free" places to buy meat, where the animals live normal lives on lots of land and get to graze, roam around, raise their young, etc. That doesn't bother me as much. I used to be against hunting. Now I'm starting to think that hunting is one of the only humane ways of getting meat.

I don't know what's going on with me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew all of this before but didn't care. I wonder if it's the same reason that St. Jude's Children's Hospital with all the little bald cancer kids makes me bawl for a solid ten minutes after it's over. Whatever this is could be a total phase, but for now it's annoying. I don't enjoy caring. It makes things less fun and less delicious.

Poop Eyes

We had a three hour meeting with Boob on Thursday. It's almost cute the way he thinks he's actually our boss. After the meeting, I had 3 emails and two missed calls from Josh. I checked my hotmail, and he just said that he had done something bad and didn't want to tell me over email. He also said I would be getting something new. I automatically assumed the worst and figured he had lost one of the dogs, and rather than looking for it, he was just going to get us a new one.
After a few rounds of phone tag, I finally got him on the phone. Apparently, after he flushed his morning poo, he moved my brush from the sink to the shelf right above the toilet. A few things shifted, and my glasses fell into the flushing water. He reached in (yes, he put his hand in the toilet. He claims the poo was already gone), but it was too late. My husband flushed my glasses down the toilet. I can't make this shit up.
I really loved those, and I know Josh did, too. They were my naughty librarian/dirty secretary/ militant lesbian glasses. I was wearing them at least 2-3 times a week, something I hadn't done since I started wearing contacts when I was a freshman in high school. It makes me sad to think of them in a pipe somewhere, floating in all the neighborhood's poo, wondering what they had done to deserve such a filthy end. Josh said we could get someone to come out and drag our pipes, but even if that didn't break or scratch them, I don't think I could bring myself to put them on my face. Even if we boiled them in bleach for a week straight, I wouldn't be able to think of anything but where they had been. People would call me Poop Eyes and there wouldn't be anything I could do about it.