And Thus, Another A-Hole Was Created

My dog is an asshole.

Specifically, my dog Nixon is an asshole. (I'd hate to lump all of my dogs into the asshole category, although, they do all have their asshole tendencies. But today I'm just focusing on the dog that is currently the most assholish.)

Wait. Am I allowed to call my dog an asshole?

Or is it like calling your kids an asshole, which is generally frowned upon, even when they are being assholes? Because lately, my teenagers have been rather asshole-ish. I've chalked it up to hormones, puberty and the fact I have clearly not spent enough time establishing dominance over the wildebeests I call my children.

But just because my teens have taken to acting out with some assholish-like tendencies, I want to be clear I'm not actually calling them assholes. Because that would be bad.

My dog however, is still an asshole.

Also, assholey? People who park in handicapped spots who do not have a handicapped parking permit instead of doing what other people do: Park in the Expectant Mothers/Parents With Small Children stalls. Because everyone knows those stalls are for people with asshole-ish tendencies to abuse.

Wait. That was probably a bit assholey of me to say. For the record, I've never parked in one of those stalls. Mostly because they didn't exist when I was pregnant or raising small children and also because I imagine I'd feel like an asshole if I did use that stall. What with the whole not being pregnant or having small children and all.

But I'm getting off topic. This is supposed to be about my asshole dog and not assholes in general. Because let's face it, if I don't narrow this down I could be ranting all day about asshole behaviour because the world is filled with asses. And ranting about the assholes of the world really only makes you turn into an asshole yourself.

And I think it's safe to say that nobody likes assholes.

Not even asshole dogs who spend the entire night changing positions by flopping heavily on the bed just as you manage to fall asleep from the last time they bounced you awake and then demand to go outside to bark at the invisible rabid squirrels who are apparently planning a hostile take over of the world if you judge by your dog/s insanely alarmed barking right under your bedroom window.

To make matters worse, your dog knows that you can only sleep if he's tucked up against your side because his breathing is the only thing that can lull you into a non-conscious state in your husband's absence and when you don't roll over to pet your dog's belly until your dog falls asleep he will in turn refuse to lay down beside you. He will instead jump off the bed and pace around your bedroom, with the sound of the clickety-clack of his toenails acting like the doggy equivalent of Chinese water torture and you will slowly lose what is left of your sanity as you beg the universe softly to allow you to just go the fuck to sleep.

Because that's all you want to do, having been deprived of it all week long by the sickness of your youngest child who was actually incapable of going to sleep and who didn't actually intend to keep you awake for two straight nights as he softly sang "Mum, mum, mumm, mummma" over and over again into the baby monitor, keeping you awake as you listened to it. It's not like you could turn it off either because everyone knows bad things happen when you turn the baby monitor off.

And when he wasn't chanting his adorable little chant he was kicking his wall, 'thump, thump, thump' over and over again, like a disabled child's equivalent of Chinese water torture for his mother all the while playing with a stupid musical toy that would chime out the irritatingly annoying melody of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" over and over again until you've heard that melody so many times you are sure it is echoing in a permanent loop inside your head.

But your asshole dog knows all of this and doesn't care.

Which leads to the third straight night of you getting absolutely no sleep and as you sit here, wide awake and exhausted, ranting about the assholes of the world, your asshole dog is laying in a patch of sunlight, on your bed, snoring loudly because he didn't sleep at all last night as he was too busy keeping you awake.

Thoughts of smothering the assholes of the world will run through your head as the tune "Mary Had a Little Lamb" haunts you.

That's when you will realize that your asshole dog hasn't just turned you into a sleep deprived lunatic. He's turned you into a sleep-deprived asshole.

God. My dog is a dick.

There is No Winning When You Play Against Me

So remember how once upon a time, we had a ridiculously ugly couch that my children slashed with knives and the dogs puked on and how I was so very tired of furniture which looked better out on my lawn than in my house that I stupidly allowed my husband to purchase a leather couch with no wifely supervision?

And now, in my small living room there sits an oversized, overstuffed, hideously coloured sectional couch. A new couch that may actually look worse than the original piece of crap we were trying to replace.

So ya. I still have that couch. And 18 months later it is still ugly. And slightly uncomfortable, although that just may be my broken down old back screaming at me and not an actual reflection of this monstrous couch. Everything is uncomfortable when your back is not bendy.

My husband insists I've been not so passively aggressively punishing him ever since he bought that ugly couch. Of course, I will absolutely admit (and have already) to punishing him when I purchased my chair. But in my defense, this is a chair worthy of purchasing. It is beautiful. It is comfortable. It scares my aging father and small children alike.

It is the BEST. CHAIR. EVER.



I love this chair. It makes me happy. As long as no one is sitting in it. Because if you are sitting in the chair then I can't appreciate the fully awesome power of its upholstery. This chair isn't furniture. It's art.

My husband calls it the bane of his existence.

Whatever. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

But after purchasing my chair to make up for his couch, things reached a stale mate. I no longer felt the need to adjust the balance of the furniture scales because in my mind they were fully balanced.

And really, who ever wins in a furniture war? Besides me, that is?

But Boo, he is convinced I'm out to get him with my decorating tastes. In his twisted mind, I've got nothing better to do than think of new and creative ways to torture him with tchotchkes and knick-knacks and colour schemes.

If I didn't know better I'd tell him he needs to adjust his tin foil hat.

But here's the thing. I've got years worth of evidence to prove to him that I've always had a bizarre decorating palate. Only he was too distracted by my cute face and small arse to notice.

What does it say about him that he's just now noticing my taste for the bizarre? (Let's gloss over what it's saying about the size of my bum, shall we?)

I mean, when we first started dating my entire bedroom was a shrine to Elton John and John Wayne. I was 16. I surrounded myself with images of an arthritic cowboy and a flamboyant queen. The only thing that would have made my room any cooler was if I could have gotten my hands on some life sized statues of my boys and posed them together.

And then there was the time I hung my husband's taxidermied deer head over our headboard and wrapped Christmas lights around its antlers. Because I needed a night light.

I'm not a stranger to strange. Which means, neither is my husband since we've been together for so darn long.

I mean he didn't blink when he came home to find this in our bathroom:

What else was I supposed to do with an empty Crystal Head vodka bottle? 

Nor did he twitch when the UPS man delivered this:

My brother likes my cookie jar. Because he has taste.

Okay, so he did dig in his heels when he walked in the door and saw these staring back at him, but I can only presume he was only upset about them because he wanted to purchase them as a gift for me and I went and stole his thunder:

There is nothing weird about paper mache animal busts hanging over an ugly couch. Nothing at all.

But he also freaked out when I put up a crucifix made of dead people's faces, a plaster statue of a dead Chicken Little and put an actual alligator head in my living room. And yet, I'm positive he'd miss them all if they disappeared. Just like I know he'd miss the creepy little tribal statue I keep at the front door, the bong I bought in Mexico because I thought it would look awesome on our dresser (and IT DOES) and the collection of human teeth I have framed in our closet. (It's not weird. It's our kids' baby teeth. I'm not completely creepy. Sheesh.)

He's even grown fond of the dead gopher earrings I like to wear on our date nights.

I still think I need a dead bird head necklace to match my earrings, Boo.

Okay, maybe fond is too strong a word.

Still. I think I've proven my point. My tastes, albeit strange, have always been so.

Which is why, I want it on record that my latest purchase which was delivered earlier today, was not in any way, an attempt to annoy or anger him.

I just figured the spot above the flat screen television he bought even though I asked him not to because our old television worked just fine, looked a little empty.

So Boo, when you come home and see this staring back at you every time you go to turn on the television, just know I was filling a decorating hole.

I'd have hung a real moose head above the television, but damn, those suckers are BIG.

Just think of how awesome he's going to look wearing a Santa's hat during the holidays.

And maybe be grateful that I couldn't find a life sized statues of Elton John and John Wayne to bring home. Because I totally looked for them.

Waiting to Inhale

It was one of those hot summer afternoons where the heat bounced off the sidewalk in blurry waves. I was fourteen years old and unsupervised and my best friend Jojo and I had this wild idea to hang out in her back yard pretending we were grownups.

After walking to the nearest gas station to each buy a pack of cigarettes and slurpees, we shuffled to her house, the heat licking at our backs and I remember wiping beads of sweat off my brow and onto the cotton dress I was wearing.

We set ourselves up in the shade of her back yard, with our slushies and smokes and we  each ordered our own pizza.  I ordered mushroom and pepperoni she chose ham and pineapple.

We paid the delivery boy for our pies, feeling very much like the grownups we hoped we were and then got down to the business of relaxing adult style in the shady city yard.

We each lit a cigarette and grabbed a slice of pizza and we alternated between smoking and chewing, each bite a little more toxic that one before.

I never finished my pizza that afternoon, or my pack of smokes. I managed to make it through half a pizza and almost as many smokes before I turned completely green and had to run to the bathroom to empty out the contents of my stomach. The heat made me feel worse and the nicotine thrummed in my veins, making me even more nauseous than the greasy cheese and fried pepperoni did.

To this day I refuse to eat pepperoni on my pizza.

And after that sweaty sick afternoon I was zealous in my proselytizing against the evils of nicotine. There was no way I would ever be a smoker and I sneered at those who inhaled the noxious tar with obnoxious disdain.

My body was a temple and for years I pampered it. I was an athlete, who watched what type of food I consumed and made sure to never pollute my body with either the carcinogens of cigarettes or the evils of alcohol.

For 16 years I was obnoxious about it. That single afternoon as a 14 year-old-chain smoker clung to my memory the way cigarette smoke sticks to skin.

And then it happened.

My son died. And I lost my mind in an ocean of pain; the waves pulling me under, only to push me up again for a breath before pulling me back down.

I wasn't coping, or healing or even really surviving. I rather just existed at the very bare minimum. I was completely numb to everything and everyone, devoid of any sensation at all.

And then someone exhaled their stinky second hand smoke into my face as I was inhaling.

And my eyes watered and my lungs constricted and the world tilted slightly.

It was, for the first time in almost a year, that I felt something, anything, at all.

It was the day before the first anniversary of Shale's death. On the day marking his actual passing, I went to a gas station and bought my first pack of cigarettes since that hot summer afternoon so many years ago.

I've been smoking ever since. I told myself that it was likely better than drinking, or losing myself in drugs, both of which held a certain appeal after my son died. I just wanted to feel. I started chasing joy as I breathed in my nicotine fix.

I started to finally, at long last, heal.

Smoking is BAD yo. I don't recommend it. Even if I do so love it. Call me Captain Hypocrite

Hindsight being 20/20 and all, I understand now that I was already in the healing process when I inhaled my first cigarette. And if I had waited just a bit longer, I'd likely be in the same relatively healthy headspace I'm in now only minus a nicotine addiction.

But those cigarettes, they were sweet. And some of them, I'm sure, saved my life as surely as they shortened it every time I inhaled. I didn't just smoke, I savoured. I enjoyed every cigarette I lit up as I rediscovered who I was.

But like a sweet dessert, or a great vacation, all good things come to an end and I knew my time as a smoker had run out. My husband, god bless his cotton socks, puts up with a lot from me but even I couldn't blame him for not wanting to kiss someone who smelled and tasted like an ashtray. My kids, preoccupied with sudden death, worried endlessly that I was puffing my way into the grassy patch we've reserved next to their brother.

And so began my quest to quit. For over a year, maybe two, I'd suffer through the agony of trying to quit only to announce my defeat with a sweet long drag of nicotine and tar. I never lasted more than a week or so without giving into my cravings, listening to my demon. I'd stopped telling people in real life and online that I was quitting smoking because I knew I'd eventually fail.

I don't know what changed. Maybe it was finally understanding that I actually liked smoking and enjoyed it when everyone around me told me I shouldn't.  Maybe it was allowing myself the promise that if I made it to 80 years old I'd march myself to the nearest gas station, buy a pack of my favourite tarsticks and smoke myself to my death. Whatever it was, something clicked in me, allowing me to toss away a half pack of ciggies and not look back since.

I still want to smoke. Every day. And let's be honest here, holy hell this was, is, hard. I can't imagine struggling with an addiction to alcohol or drugs because I am fairly certain I'd never be sober. Quitting cold turkey was probably the least fun thing I've ever done next to burying my child and waxing my own bikini line.

Enough days are now behind me, all of them without cigarettes, that I now want to add another nicotine free day to my history more than I want to smoke.

That's something, I suppose, even if it means inhaling just isn't any fun any more.