Gardening at Night

In the category of “I Keep Fucking Up My Dog: Watch and Learn!” Sunny won’t eat any food — any food at ALL — until I pretend to eat it first while looking her directly in the eye all, I’m totally eating first, bitch! I’m told this is an Alpha Thing, meaning that the underling dogs eat after the alpha does — i.e., she waits her turn until I’m finished — but still. COME ON. I have to bring the bowl to my face, do a little “NOM NOM NOM” and then she dives right in and licks the bowl clean. Sick. It’s sick. And I’ve screwed up royally, man. Or have I? I mean OBVIOUSLY I am the alpha here, as she won’t eat until I have, but … well. It’s ridiculous, is what it is, pretending to eat dog food while staring your hungry dog in the eye. And being the alpha gets me nowhere when she flips out on the shih tzu downstairs, you know? She IGNORES me then. Like I don’t COUNT. Like I’m NOT the ruler who tells her when to eat.

Every time I hear the word “alpha” by the way, my mind goes directly to the sorority song with the Greek alphabet, followed by “Gooooo Greek! GOOOO Greek! Let me hear you sing, alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta THETA IOTA KAPPA LAMBDA MU NU XI… ” Well, you get it, I hope.

If you’d like to hear the tune, please watch these lovely little young things sing it. Ahem. Yes, I did that. Probably while wearing something degrading, too, while being driven around with a blindfold and doing shots of generic peach schnapps. Lovely.

So listen, I dug my garden late today — well, half of it anyway — and in the category of “Captain Obvious” we have the stunning realization that gardening is hard. There was lots of shoveling and grunting and PLENTY of heaving as I dug up the weeds that took over the terraced space, and after all that work, I’m telling you, it’s like I expect a FULL BOUNTY of this season’s tomatoes to appear before my very eyes. I broke into a full sweat, for crying out loud, and you know that phrase, “Looks like they crawled out from under a rock”? Well! It turns out that there are some very scary things living under rocks, and that the meaning of that phrase was very likely cultivated from the super-freaky things I unearthed during this afternoon’s adventures.

I saw grubs! Worms! Ants! Creepy beetle-y things! GIANT CENTIPEDES! Horny worms! SPIDERS. AIEEEEE SPIDERS. Big hairy ones with suspicious looking sac-type things dangling from their bloated abdomens … and … and THEY CRAWLED OUT OF THE GROUND AS I DUG. Also, in the middle of all of this digging, my neighbor came home to tell me that while we don’t have black widow spiders here very often, he’s seen plenty of brown recluses. Oh, and by the way, they love stone garden walls, so hey, um, be careful, and if I get bitten, and the skin gets all black? I might want to go to a doctor. HAHAHAHAHA OKAY. WILL WATCH OUT FOR NEUROTOXIC SPIDERS, THANK YOU.

Any, um, BUG PEOPLE in my readership? Should I be afraid? What about the boxes we’re storing in the garage for our next move? WHAT THEN? (THEY LIKE CARDBOARD)

Tomorrow, I’ll hopefully finish the second half, providing it doesn’t rain. And then there will be baby lettuces and tomatoes and peppers! And radishes! And BEETS. Mmmmm … BEEEEEETS.

Also, geez, thank you for all of the bad television suggestions. I think … I think I’m going to start with Felicity. Charmed is, by the way, AWESOME AS EVER. And Shannen Doherty is a real bitch, ain’t she? I mean, her CHARACTER isn’t even likable. It’s like she is constitutionally incapable of any softness or empathy. FASCINATING.

Have a happy Thursday!

*REM

32 comments May 21st, 2008