How Do You Spell “Puppy”? c-h-a-o-s

Make that c-h-a-o-s-! The exclamation point is part of the spelling, when the term applies to puppies.

Holy mackerel! What a morning. And it’s just starting. While I wait the 20 to 40 minutes it will take to make the decrepit iMac (the only computer in the house that will speak to the printer) scan and store two clients’ checks and then upload them to the credit union, let us entertain ourselves with Charley’s antics of the day. So far.

So I get a little bit of a late start, in spite of awaking at 4:30 a.m. I’ve dawdled over the online news and my favorite time-killing games until ten after seven. Not only does Cassie need to be fed, but I like to have had my own breakfast before the young dynamo shows up around ten to eight. If Cassie and I don’t get going by seven, breakfast is going to be hurried.

She’s bolted her Queen of Sheba breakfast and I’m about to sit down to my three slabs of bacon and dry toast when I hear the blower running outdoors.

Gerardo! Have to unlock the side gate so he can get into the backyard, and also confer with him.

He wants to know when M’hijito wants him to show up at the downtown house (an assignation my son has  put off, put off, and put off some more, mostly because the yard needs little maintenance that he can’t do, plus with a six-month-old pup excavating, there’s not much point in paying a yard dude. Now, having accrued a fine mess, he wants it cleaned up before his New Year’s party). I say Pup has destroyed a bunch of planting there that needs to be removed but I don’t know what to tell him exactly, it not quite being my house, and but M’hijito will show up in half an hour and they can speak directly.

Now, as a matter of fact I know M’jihito will be flying through like a rocket, because he’s chronically late to work, and I know he’s not going to want to talk to Gerardo. But when he shows up, I make him go out and confer.

This means I have to stand in the kitchen with what remains of my miserable little breakfast congealing atop the table, coffee turning cold, and HOLD the writhing, frantic Charley, because the old bathmat I put in front of the door to the garage (through which my princely son has exited) is all wadded up so I can’t close the door, and I can’t bend down to move it or shove it with my foot without losing my grip on Charley, who is already powerful enough to draw Santa’s sled. And of course M’hijito has left the door from the garage to the backyard open, and Gerardo has left the side gate open, so under no circumstances can I let go of Charley because he will head for Yuma on a dead run.

Conference over, my son pushes the rug back into place, shuts the kitchen door, and races out the front door, even later for work than usual.

I sit down to finish my congealed bacon and now cold, limp toast.

A slurpy little noise drifts out of the kitchen. What? Charley walks out, smacking his lips. I figure the noise was him lapping something off the extremely dirty floor, which as usual I haven’t had a minute to clean in weeks.

I finish eating, look up, and notice Cassie has shat (again!) under the desk in the family room (thank God for tile floors!). So I get up to retrieve some paper towels to pick up that mess. Rummage in the under-sink cabinet; can’t find the spray bottle of Simple Green; start to cuss when I realize I am standing almost up to my ankles in a YELLOW PUDDLE!

Ah yes. That was what the trickling noise was…

Charlie has pee’d a sea of pee all over the kitchen floor. The soles of my shoes are covered with it; he has tracked it all over the kitchen, and now I’m tracking more of it all over the kitchen. And I’m out of paper towels.

Out to the garage, tracking pee behind me. Open a new package. Swab up the piss, after a fashion—it’s raining here and the air is wet (not to say damned stinky) and the stuff isn’t drying and so I have to swab and swab and swab and swab to get enough of it up to matter.

Pour a pail of hot water liberally laced with Simple Green concentrate (never did find the spray bottle, but this job is beyond spray bottle help).

Start mopping the kitchen floor.

Gerardo whacks on the Arcadia door. He’s done and wants to be paid.

Wrestle Charley into his nest. Lock him in. Cassie is hiding in the bathroom, having been terrorized by heights to which the decibel level of the cussing has risen.

Confer with Gerardo. Refrain from telling him that Mike will remove the Devil Pod Tree early next month, knowing that Gerardo will want to do it, that Gerardo will underbid Mike, and that I absolutely positively do not want Gerardo and the Slapstick Sunnyslope Seven taking down a 60-foot tree that abuts my house. He will be offended, but let’s at least wait until after Christmas to offend.

Hand Gerardo a check for twice what he charges: Christmas bonus.

Finish mopping the kitchen and family room floors.

Coffee has gone stone cold.

Free Charley. Watch little dance to spring.

Let Charley into the back yard.

It’s like letting a colt into a pasture! He takes off at a gallop, thudding across the freshly raked, very wet crushed granite, digging it up with every stride. Dump the pissy mop water, wash the mop out, hang it outside.

Pick up the four-inch-deep pile of paperwork that’s accrued on the dining-room table; carry it back to my office to add it to the six-inch-deep pile that’s been building over the past month.

Smell a smell.

One helluva smell.

Go in search of the source. Charley has deposited a gigantic bratwurst right in the middle of the throw rug by the bed.

Why do dogs and cats ALWAYS search out a soft spot to pee, shit, and barf? Have you ever noticed that? If there’s one throw rug in a houseful of hard floors, that is where the animal will go to make a gigantic, stinking mess!!!

What a stench. What a mess.

Takes two plastic grocery-store bags to clean that up. I can’t wash the rug because it’s raining and my dryer doesn’t work. Throw it on the floor in the garage.

Fortunately I can’t afford to run the heater, and so it doesn’t matter that I now have to throw open the Arcadia door in the bedroom and the front door and turn on the overhead fans in my office and the bedroom to move the gagging stink out.

Hate the scanner function on this flicking HP printer. Hate the way the ancient iMac barely works. It’s scanned one side of one check as I’ve written this. Can you imagine how long it’s taken to write this? I could’ve driven to the damn credit union by now. And I can tell you for certain that after all this, the CU’s e-deposit software is going to announce that the back side is a different size from the front side and refuse to accept the check, so I’m going to have to drive up there anyway.

Charley is in the garage going berserk. He’s barking frantically and fiercely. WTF?

Hit “scan” again. And again. Spinning mandala comes on. Traipse out to the garage. Cassie takes up the cry. Both dogs are now berserk. Open the garage security door. Charley tears out like an enraged Rottweiler. He’s looking up into the air and barking.

Two guys are on Terri’s roof. They’re trying to figure out where it’s leaking.

Lure maddened dogs back into the house. Come back to the scanner, hit “accept.” Hit “save as…”

Charley will not be dissuaded from telling the workmen what for. Ah, God, they’re barking in parts: Charley tenor, Cassie soprano. Fortissimo!

My son forgot to bring dog food today, and I’m out. So to avoid having to buy a $30 bag of dog food, which I can NOT afford (damn it, I can’t even afford to buy food for myself!), I’ll have to drive all the way down to his house and then all the way back up north and over to the west side to get to the flicking credit union. This will consume about 90 minutes of my time, maybe more depending on the traffic.

But that of course is not puppy chaos. It’s just ordinary daily chaos.