sub~Urban Blog

A conversation in which I remember that I've already been through this

So the Bride was lying on the bed compiling the various parts to the latest addition to the family while paging through a catalog on her laptop.

"I’m working on the registry and I want you to take a look.” She handed me a list. One thing that’s pretty convenient about the Bride is her tendency to do research. When, a couple of years ago, the (Pre) Bride and I went to Paris in sin, she spent several weeks beforehand meticulously going over various travel guides and forms of French birth control. It proved to be unbelievably useful, as apparently even something as simple as getting a seat in restaurant or horking on the Metro requires mastering a new social protocol.

I glanced at the screen. “Uh, huh, that looks nice.” It’s kind of pointless for me to say anything because, quite frankly, I am not in control here. Also because when we were in the hardware store last week, I picked up a chainsaw and said “Can we buy this for the Baby’s first chainsaw?”

“No, really look at it. I need your input.” I looked at her face, which was about to break out in pout. Pouting and gestating are best done separately. “I can’t decide which car seat to get—the XJ-49 or the Tot-a-round.”

“Which one fits on my bike rack?”

“Stop it. Just look it over, please.”

I scrolled down and immediately realized that the Bride’s research clearly was focused on how much folic acid to take to make the baby psychic rather than such mundane issues such as baby paraphernalia. “You’ve reserved 24 burp cloths?”

“Yeah, they come in fourpacks. Do we really need them?” 

“Well, yeah. To catch the Baby’s burp. But we'll never have one when we need it."

“They burp? Why’s that a problem?”

“Because they don’t know how to burp and so when they do stuff comes out.” I kept scrolling down. “Hey, you have us down for only four fitted crib sheets.”

“Well, they come in two packs. They’re quite expensive. Isn’t that enough?”

“No way. That’s barely a night’s supply. We’ll need about 30. And why do you have us down for 36 receiving blankets?”

“They come in twelvepacks. I only got three. What is a receiving blanket for, anyway?”

“They’re to give to people before you give them the Baby. I know you might want to give the Baby away sometime, but it’s a bit more complicated than just doling out a receiving blanket first. People often know what they are and avoid you. But 36? Damn, that’s a regular baby swap-o-rama.”

“But why doesn’t the baby get the blanket?”

“Well, you see, it’s like this: You know why babies wear diapers—but they also produce lots of disgusting things out of other orifices.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s going to be a time between 3 weeks and 3 years in which the Baby will have a runny nose. Not jut a little drip, but actual rivers of snot flowing from those little nostrils. It’ll be a tsunami of snot. Heck, once my cousin’s baby was so bad, it had snot coming out of its ears. Then there’s the aforementioned burp and diaper failure, plus a lot of gratuitous drool.”

“Gratuitous drool?”

“Yeah. The damn things drool more then dogs.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“Yes, my dear, I’m afraid so. It’s a simple matter of fact that babies leak.”

Death Warrant for a Tree

So when we moved into the house there was this tree in the backyard. It was a huge tree, a beautiful example of an Elm. It’s massive trunk took up a large portion of my backyard, reducing the need for mowing and providing shade for both my and my Gospel Sucking neighbors.

As trees are wont to do, it dropped it’s share of leaves, seeds, twigs, branches and squirrels. Because it was so huge, it dropped all of this crap all over both yards. I occasionally raked the leaves and allowed the dogs to chew on the squirrel carcasses, but otherwise generally didn’t pay too much attention. Until one day when I noticed that there seemed to be a pattern of sticks upon my lawn.

Okay, not like some kind of crop circle or anything. It was more like the fact that the Elm was dropping sticks in a particular way: There seemed to be more sticks right next to the fence--a lot more. Of course, on the other side of the fence was the Gospel Suckers’ picture perfect lawn. I then realized that when sticks were falling on their lawn, they were chucking them over the fence. Hopefully, they at least hit a dog.

Now, this wouldn’t be without precedent. When we moved in there were two landscape waste bags that I assumed had been left by the previous occupants. The gospel Suckers quickly introduced themselves, and explained that the bags were grass clippings from when they mowed my lawn before I moved in the house. Two full landscape bags was a lot of grass clippings, so I looked deeper in the bag, and found that it was filled mostly with brush from their meticulously maintained shrubbery along with a bunch of pulled weeds and three beer cans.

So I leaned over the fence to talk to her while she was busy hunting down Satan’s flowers, otherwise known as dandelions.

“Hi Annie.”

“Well, Hi Chris.” She immediately came over. She knows I’m a heathen and though I think she is as personally repulsed by me as I am by her, she pretends.

“Nice day for gardening.” I decided to start light.

“Yes, it is. Just wanted to get out here before the weekend. Jenna and her husband are coming over.” She was wearing white canvas gloves with little harps on them. "Are you starting a garden over there?"

"Yeah. I've churned up a patch over there, and now I'm going allow for some contemporary native flora to randomly appear."

"What kind of flowers are you planting?"

"Contemporary native flora. You know stuff like violets."

"Oh, I'm sure that'll be real pretty. But gardens are a lot of work."

"Oh, it's okay. It's self maintaining." I decided to test the waters. “That tree seems to be dropping a lot of sticks.”

“Yes, I’m always picking up after it.” Her gaze wafted over the mounds of sticks and dog fecal matter that dotted my lawn. "It sheds a lot."

“It's kind of funny how they all seem to fall along the fence.” Her eyes followed my gaze. The sticks were quite frequent along the fence, and thinned out considerably before reaching the trunk.

“You don’t think I’ve been throwing them over the fence do you?” Well, actually, yeah I did. But I was a little too polite to call her a liar to her face. After all, I had never seen her throw any sticks across the fence. And it was quite possible that one of the hoard of homeschooled grandkids she calls Prayer Warriors has been doing it. But I never see any landscape waste bags in front of their pristine house.

“Well, no. But it is kind of odd how they’re all along the fence.” I wondered how she was going to get out of this one.

“Hey, I haven’t seen your cat lately.” Ooh, a change of subject, and a sore one to boot. Our yard seems to be a breeding ground for snakes; the Gospel Sucking wife hates them. It was a perfect situation. Unfortunately, when the cat showed up, it liked eating snakes, which was somewhat annoying but quite amusing to watch after giving him catnip. My only consolation was the fact that she was also violently allergic to cats.

The following year the Municipality’s Department of Forestry was created specifically to condemn the tree because of disease. Fortunately, they didn’t care about sod, and so when they cut the mighty elm down, the hydraulic truck ripped up the Gospel Suckers' yard pretty bad. But it was only small consolation for signing a death warrant for a tree.

Tastes Like Chicken

So the BFD bit some kid yesterday. I suppose it’s kind of tragic, and I should be concerned that the BFD is some kind of carnivorous monster that chews up little children like the walking rawhide they are, but no, I'm not. It simply reminded me that I was overdue for bringing the hairy beast in for his rabies shot.

It happened at the block party. Since it was sponsored by the Gospel Suckers, I wasn't really interested in attending. I had recycled all of the flyers about it without reading them, so I was surprised when I came home in the afternoon and found that the street was blocked off. This was pretty annoying, and it took several minutes of honking and engine revving before I made it to the driveway. I'm sure the fact that my car needs bodywork helped.

I then prepared to ignore the event with a purpose. After all, this was a good time as any to clean out the garage. So I went out back and waded into the mess where our cars were supposed to be. Of course, the garage was filled with antique melon ballers and other kinds of crap that tends to be collected by sub-urban families that we had planned to sell during our garage sale. Of course, once we emptied the garage, we’d fill it up with stuff bought at someone else's garage sale. But only if I thought I could eBay it.

So I grabbed a beer and started sorting out the fiction paperbacks that the Bride bought when she thought she wanted to be a librarian when I heard someone say "Excuse me."

I looked up. There was a slightly older gentleman standing in my driveway. He was wearing some kind of pastel colored polo shirt and khaki shorts, along with some sandals that looked vaguely Roman.

"Yes?" I said, as uninterested as possible. In my mind--already feeding on the frenzy of thought that comes from wading in a garage full of useless crap purchased from other messy people--this guy couldn't compete. Probably wanted to buy a bike or something.

"Your dog bit my son."

"He did? When? Just now? I thought he was inside." Well, it turned out that he wasn't inside. I had left the front door open with the screen door to take advantage of the breeze. when I left them, the BFD and the Fluffbucket had been patiently admiring the legions of walking rawhide chews cavorting in the street.

"I guess the door opened, and he got out. I think …" I'm not sure what else he said because I noticed that he was holding a red plastic cup in his hand. " …and bit him just below the armpit."

"Is that beer in your cup? Do they have beer over there?"

"No, it's lemonade. No one seems to be drinking. It looks like your dog didn't break any skin, so I …"

“Would like me to pour some of my beer into there? It would make it a shandy, and they would never know.” 

“No, that’s alright. I like it the way it is. When your dog got out, he charged my son and bit him just below the armpit.” I noticed that his shorts had pleats.

“Hmm. Don’t know how he could have gotten out.” I picked up a Piers Anthony book. “Do you like science fiction? I know this is third in a series of five, but it’s okay, you can still read it anyway.”

"No, that’s okay, I don't like to read. I was wondering if your dog had his shots?”

“Yes, of course he does,” I lied. "We just took to the groomer last week to get his belly shaved for his tattoo." I discarded the Anthony and picked up a book by Franz Kafka. “Maybe you’d like Kafka? I never really got into 'The Metamorphosis' because of the complex issues between Gregor Samsa and his mother. I liked ‘The Trial’ because K’s issues all arise from his behavior after his accusation.”

The man looked over at the hairy beast we call the BFD. "He doesn't look like he's been shaved. What kind of a tattoo did he get?"

"A cockroach. And his hair grows back fast. So there's no beer over there? Not even a wine cooler? That's warped. Sure you don't want a beer?"

"No, I need to get back. Anyway, I just wanted to make you aware that your dog bit my son. I don’t know why he did, but he did."

He wasn't really indignant or angry or anything, but I had to say it anyway. "He must have tasted like chicken."