Angie Kinghorn

In which Mark takes the dog to the salon

The place where we get our dog groomed is called The Dog Salon.  I absolutely love this establishment.  They are fabulous, and they will do whatever you ask, including hair color.  Seriously.  Last time I was there I saw a pink poodle.  There’s not much I haven’t seen there, including some of the most fabulous ink around.  It’s totally punk and retro cool.

Now, what you don’t see much of at the dog salon is men.  After this weekend, I know why.

We have a bichon frisé, the ultimate in frou-frou dogs.  His name is Teddy, and he’s fabulous.  If he could talk, he’d sound like the wedding planner from Father of the Bride.  Fabulous!!!  Cute, cuddly, furry, wonderful, and unfortunately, now an elderly 12 closing in on 13.  So I’ve started to space out his groomer visits a bit out of respect for the horrible arthritis in his front legs.

This is what Teddy normally looks like:

I know?  Adorable, right?

 

While I can stand having Teddy be fluffy and happy, Mark would prefer that his hair not touch his metaphorical collar and that he have a boot-camp style.  So it gets to a point where he asks me every three minutes if I’ve made an appointment for Teddy to be groomed yet.  Seriously.  He nags me.  And thus I’ve learned two things:

  1. Nagging is actually annoying.
  2. Nagging is a problem easily solved.  If you are the nagee, simple DO the thing the nag is asking you to do.  Voila!  The nagging ceases!

That’s what I did on Saturday, snagging the last grooming appointment of the day so that Teddy wouldn’t be mistaken for a sheepdog instead of a bichon.

Mark volunteered to take Teddy, and as the appointment wasn’t with our usual groomer, I told him, “Make sure you tell her to do a puppy cut on the body and a teddy bear head, not the big bichon head.”

Mark, staring down at his iPhone: “Got it.”

Me: “So, what exactly, are you going to say?”

Mark, now typing on his iPhone (and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t taking notes on what I was telling him): “Cut him really close and make sure his head is really short.”

Me:  “No, no.  You say you want a puppy cut with a teddy bear head.  That’s how it’s always done.  ‘Make sure his head is really short’ kind of sounds like you’re sending him to the block.”

Mark, hitting send and shoving his phone into his pocket: “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

Several hours later, Mark returned home with a white version of the Taco Bell chihuahua.

“What. The. Hell,” I said flatly, “did you do to my dog?”

Teddy’s tail, formerly a puffy white plume, curved over his back, almost completely shaved, save the very end.  It looked like it belonged to the Chinese crested in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Or a possum.

“I think he looks great!” Mark said.

“You cannot be serious.  He looks like a canine plebe at the Naval Academy.”

“Just give it a couple of weeks and he’ll look perfectly normal,” Mark said, his tone sage, as if he were the Dali Lama of dog grooming.

As severe as his haircut was on top, I had no idea what had been done to his tummy and nether regions until I picked him up.  Cuddling this dog is usually an experience akin to cuddling a cloud spun of angel hair.  Now it’s like petting your arm.

To the best I can figure, Mark walked into the dog salon and said, “Take it all off, and make sure you clean it up around his bikini line.  Wait, scratch that, just give him a full Hollywood wax since we’re coming up on swimsuit season.  And he doesn’t need all that hair on his tail.  Or his ears.  Ok?  Great.”

Take note, ladies.  This is what happens when you send a man to do a woman’s job.  Your dog gets scalped and given a Brazilian.

Düsseldorf

It was a rainy night in Düsseldorf.  My ladies wanted to leave this Rhineland for the dry heat of home, but while they bundled up against the evening chill, the air and rain off the river left me refreshed, like a brittle plant finally watered and coming into bloom.

Düsseldorf tasted like fresh bread and freedom, all the more so because my time there was limited.  My Düsseldorf was a vivid dreamland: Frank Gehry designed buildings in the skyline, the all-consuming mania of fashion week, the luxury of shopping on the Konigsallee with my face unveiled.

My father had been clear on the rules of my exile to Germany.  I was not, under any circumstances, to return to any of our residences without his permission.  Not until I’d learned German and satisfied my tutor’s standards for what constituted a thorough understanding of the people and the culture.  Ironically, this included a thorough understanding of Western dress and customs, though once I was called back home I would be forbidden these things once more.

My arguments that it would help my education if I were allowed to go to school or out to bars or restaurants with these Germans were rebuked so fiercely that I dared not broach the topic again.

To provoke my father was madness.

And who was I, a mere woman, to question a sultan?  I supposed I should be grateful for this respite from the desert, this chance for freedom, even if it was fleeting.  My brothers were granted this privilege, but not my older sisters.  They were all married with several children by the time they were my age.

Still, I was due to return to the desert, to veils and hot air and submission, in a little less than a month.  I had a passport and the not inconsiderable sum my father had set aside in a local bank for my comforts.

Obviously, I would have to leave Düsseldorf.  Where could I go?  Would they find me?

I could also find someone here and marry.  Either of my tutors would a decent candidate.  He could never come home with me, and if I were to return without my father’s permission as a married woman … well, I might as well be dead.  But if I were to stay here with a husband, this life, this simple happiness found by the river, in the old and new of the city together, in tripping on cobblestones, in sipping Altbier (whatever that may taste like), might be mine.

Sleep eluded me and I sat up most of the night in the window seat, the glass cracked to let in the breeze.  When I finally dozed off I was awakened by the drunken singing of a rugby squad leaving the bar across the street.  A quick peek out the window showed them using something akin to a scrum to hold each other up as they sang bawdy verses insulting the masculinity of the entire city of Cologne.

I laughed.

And in that moment, I knew what my decision would be.

*** This is a fiction post for the online writer’s group Write on Edge.  The prompt: “I challenge you with this opening line.  ‘It was a rainy night in Düsseldorf.’  You have 500 words.”

Pantsless

This morning I came downstairs to discover Grant fully dressed, but Anne cavorting about in her pajamas.
“What’s up with the PJs?” I asked Mark.  “She’s not sick, is she?”
“No, but all her pants are in the dryer and they’re just not dry yet.”
Ok.
A look at the clock showed we still had an hour before we had to be out the door.  Plenty of time for a load of laundry to dry.  Right as I finished my breakfast, the dryer stopped.  I opened the door to find … a load of sopping wet clothes.
Right.
I started the dryer again, setting the timer for 60 minutes, and said a silent prayer that things would dry and Anne would not be sent to school pantsless.
Because that would be bad.  Bad in a setting-her-up-for-therapy-for-life kind of way.
Mark came back downstairs to leave for work, and naturally, asked why Anne still wasn’t dressed.
“The clothes still aren’t dry.  Also, they smell kind of funny.  Go take a whiff.”
He opened the dryer door.  “These aren’t even remotely close to dry!  They’d been in there for 55 minutes already!”
“What?  I figured you’d just started them.” 
“No.”  He fiddled with the buttons and turned the heat up to high.  “We need to get somebody out here to service this thing.”
“Agreed.  In the meantime….” I gestured at Anne.
He shrugged.  “Maybe she can wear tights?  I don’t know, I’ve got to get to work.”
Tights?  As pants?  Perhaps he meant leggings?
So Mark, fully pantsed, disappeared, leaving me to deal with this potentially life-altering ordeal.
“Come on, Anne, let’s go find you something to wear,” I called, and went upstairs to rummage through her dresser.
She was hot on my heels, and the minute I opened the drawer I knew we were in trouble.
She went right for it.  THE outfit.  The one we try to let her wear only around the house.  It’s not that it’s not cute.  It’s different.  It’s very Lily Pulitzer (only much brighter).  And, unfortunately, with a giant multi-colored unicorn gracing the top.
The leggings are hot pink with chartreuse polka dots.  The top is chartreuse with short puffed sleeves, then long hot pink sleeves coming down from there to give it a layered look.  And, let us not forget, the pièce de résistance, the unicorn.  Anne loves it, because it’s soft and furry.  In fact, while wearing this outfit, she’s prone to invite people to pet her chest.
Again, not good.
I tried to talk her out of it.  I had a perfectly cute pink sweater and a bevy of leggings to match, but she was having none of it.  She wanted her unicorn, dammit.  This is the point where I began to really regret giving up coffee for the first time, because it would have been the easiest thing in the world to just tip the mug right onto the outfit…or perhaps not, because before I knew what was happening, she had her PJs off and the unicorn on.
Did I mention this outfit is bright?  Brighter than your average Lily Pulitzer?  Not good for those of us with migraines.
I was shielding my eyes when Anne put her hands on her hips and said, in her best I-am-going-to-be-hell-as-a-teenager voice, “Mommy, when I first wore this outfit Daddy said something really mean.”
“Oh, really?  What did he say?  Do you want to put a nice sweater over that?”
“I don’t want a sweater.  He said something that really hurt my feelings.”
“What was that?”
“He said, he said … that it looked like the Easter Bunny pooped on me.”
I tried to laugh silently, y’all, I really did, but I was shaking and crying.  Fortunately, Anne was so introspective I don’t think she noticed.
“Honey, you just have to learn you can’t always listen to everything Daddy says.”
She sighed.  “I know.  He’s such a boy.”
After I dropped the kids off at school, I immediately called Mark.
“I took Anne upstairs with me to pick out her outfit, and she was right there when I opened the drawer,” I said.  “Two guesses what she’s wearing.”
“Oh, NO!!!”
“Yep.  She saw it, and there was no stopping it.”
“I bet her teachers have headaches.”
“Well, the strange part is what she said when she put it on.  She said the first time she wore it you told her …” I started laughing… “that it looked like the Easter Bunny pooped on her!”
Mark howled.  “No, no, no!” he said, when he could finally breathe.  “I am quite confident that what I said was that it looked like the Easter Bunny threw up on her.”
“Oh, that’s much better!”
We both laughed until I was almost in tears again.  Then I had a thought.
“Maybe someone will make fun of it and she won’t wear it anymore,” I said.
“We can hope.  Obviously it doesn’t work if we do it.”
We’ll be awaiting our Parents of the Year Awards in the mail, people.

There goes the neighborhood…

This week, after hitting up the drugstore for a super-antibiotic plus steroids, the kids and I were cruising through the parking lot of the grocery store/drugstore complex on the way out, when we saw it. 


I am not making this up. It is not Photoshopped. And yes, I did turn around and go back to take a picture.


Photo conditions were not optimal: hanging out a car window laughing my ass off, iPhone shaking as a result, kids yelling from the backseat, “Mommy, what’s so funny? What’s so funny? What? What?”, cars behind me honking at the idiot holding up traffic taking a picture of a random bumper.

Anyway, if you can’t read the stickers from the photo, the one on the left says:
“Two’s company … three’s a fantasy.”

The one on the right says:
“Support porn. It’s cheaper than dating.”

The best part? There was convertible carseat strapped into the backseat.

My reaction?


Also real, and seen in that same parking lot earlier in the day. 

This post is part of #iPPP (iPhone Photo Phun), where we link up photos taken from our smart phones. Any smart phone.

iPhone Photo Phun