07/19/2023
Given I’m working with dogs, playing with dogs, riding with dogs, sleeping with dogs, .... and ‘PICKING UP’ after dogs; I am an obsessive Hand Washer. I scrub my hands at the kitchen sink with a nail brush multiple times a day like I’m prepping to do surgery.
But, I don’t often check the rest of myself out in a mirror. I may give myself a couple quick glances in passing, but I really only give myself a once over a few times a day before leaving the house. Just enough time to make sure there is no spinach in my teeth, no bats in the cave, and my eyebrows and/or breasts are not askew or untucked.
So, imagine my dismay when just before heading out for the evening to return my Dog Pack to their respective Owners, I stop by the bathroom, wash my hands, and look up to see a line of smeared Dog P**p above my upper lip. A P**p Moustache.
Yes. That’s riiiiiiight.
I had somehow managed to give myself a Dirty Sanchez.
And not only had I probably had s**t under my nose for the better part of the day, I had talked to one of my neighbors when I’d picked up my mail, and, AND, when I’d answered my front door to give hell to the door to door AT&T sales dude for blatantly ignoring the ‘No Soliciting’ sign.
I was devastated. This was what my world had come to? Really?
Tears spilled down my face. It was just all too much …. Too much Dog. Too much P**p.
I spent the hours immediately following my horrific discovery, driving all 8 Pooches home to their respective Owners. And upon my own return home, another two hours looking up an appropriate Crisis Center Hotline, researching some kind of Radiation Therapy for my face, and contemplating drowning myself in a Fishbowl of Bourbon.
I was in a fog, lost in my own mind, floundering in the debris of a thousand shattered dreams. Trying to make peace with the unthinkable.
And then, just when I’d reached the moment of acceptance, I remembered that earlier in the day, while picking up a dog at a Client’s house, I’d spotted a plateful of Shortbread Cookies and snagged one. When I had taken the first bite, the cookie had begun to crumble because it had been sitting out for a while. I had quickly caught the pieces in my hand, raised my palm up to my lips, cupped it over my mouth and tossed in the remains of the melting CHOCOLATE DIPPED!! Shortbread Cookie.