Prolly All the Time

Me, anti-social?

So, as you may know, tonight is "National Night Out" or some such crap.  An evening where we are all encouraged to leave the comfortable confines of our air conditioned and TV-equipped homes to weather 100 degree heat and forced conversations with people who, simply by dumb luck, happen to live in our neighborhood.

I feel that it must be said that so far my experiences with my neighbors have been less than satisfactory.  Our first night on the block was Halloween 2003, which I thought would be a great opportunity to meet folks.  Hmmm, not so much. While several children came by to get candy from me (some of them, I noted came by more than once...) as I sat looking hopeful on our front porch, not a single adult introduced themselves or even waved back as I shouted greetings.  That hurt, I might still be carrying a grudge.

There are those who are quite rude, the "mommy mafia" who only started to acknowledge my existence when bean arrived, the busy bodies, and the next door neighbor who used to lock her dogs out in torrential downpours, leaving them to bay and cry right outside our bedroom window.  I love our house and I like the IDEA of our neighborhood...  So far, I just don't like the actual people all that much. There are exceptions, but I can go over to see those people anytime.  So, I am not all fired up to spend 2 hours sitting in the hot sun forcing myself to pretend that I care about speed bumps.   

N. says that we must go -- that we do not want to develop a reputation for being "anti-social", we don't want to impede our son's chances of healthy neighborhood friendships... he thinks that we might actually meet some nice people and make a few friends.  I am skeptically optimistic. 

I predict that I will be back inside my air-conditioned ivory tower just in time for House on FOX. But, just in case...  I set the TiVO.

Diaper Diving

Cole, our largest and oldest fur baby (black lab featured in the picture on the right), has made an important discovery.  The upstairs diaper pail lacks a top, which means, that at any given moment, conditions are ripe for diaper diving. 

[NOTE: This is the same dog who is known for his active role in UFHPL movement* and wearing ladies panties on his head...]

The name kind of explains it all.  My dogs are obsessed with bean's dirty diapers.  We have affectionately referred to them as our AWS or "advance warning system" due to the fact that the nastier the diaper, the more excitedly the fur babies sniff at bean's butt and follow us around the house.  Nugget, the boxer, has been known to try and snatch them out of your hand before you can hermetically seal the hazordous waste in the pail...  Collectively, they have made a number of attempts to steal this precious booty from the confines of the Diaper Dekor Plus**... to no avail.  That was until, we got tired of carrying the diapers downstairs after an upstairs changing and just said "what the fuck? let's create a hazordous waste site in our child's bedroom" started dropping them in a waste basket upstairs.  Hence, the aforementioned discovery of a unprotected source of baby waste nirvana.

Since that fateful day, Cole has been able to liberate a total of four diapers... thankfully, none of them poopy ones but gross and incredibly hard to clean up none the less.  He spends a great deal of time "sleeping" in bean's room...  biding his time for the perfect moment to snatch and run.

Now, the average person would have decided somewhere between the first and third diapers that it was time to get a diaper pail for upstairs, but not me.  No, I continue to labor under the delusion that I am the human, I set the rules and no fur baby is going to force me to change my behavior... but when you are picking up the innards of the fourth diaper out of the carpet, you are inevitably faced with the reality of your situation.  My job is to keep these animals from destroying our shit before we have a chance to sell it to some poor unsuspecting fool.  Right-O.  I am off to Target to get an upstairs Diaper Dekor Plus.

*used feminine hygeine product liberation... 

**I know that there are those of you out there with a fierce attachment to the Diaper Genie and all of its twisted glory, good for you.  We, in this house, are followers of the Diaper Dekor Plus (don't really know what is "Plus" about it, but I am slave to marketing and given the opportunity to upgrade, i find it hard to say no.). Truth be told, while I hold a degree from a prestigious university, I cannot for the life of me figure that freaking thing out.  I have been responsible, in my lifetime, for the untimely demise of four such contraptions...  Twisting is not my thing.