The correct phrase to describe what happens when you pick up a full 5 pound container of puppy food by the lid, then discover that the lid was not as secure as you thought, all in front of said puppy and her three older, bigger siblings is ‘hand grenade in a hen house’.

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Life’s kinda funny. You’re keeping the house clean, sometimes neat, and you feel pretty good about that.

And then you dust your blinds and ceiling fans.

Great googley moogley, do I need to up my game.

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Things I did to prepare the house for a party to celebrate The Young Prince getting his Eagle Scout –

1. Declutter and pressure wash the back deck. This includes all furniture, grills, and pets.
2. Clear off and pressure wash the driveway and parking area. Yes, I know you already did this once this year, but it just didn’t sparkle in the false fall sunlight, according to my beloved.
3. Dust, oil, and polish all pieces of wooden furniture, including blinds and ceiling fans. Vacuum all upholstered furniture.
4. Disassemble, transport, reassemble, and place a new chair and table set Irish Woman bought on Facebook. This will provide additional seating in the basement, as well as a place for the Young Prince to play poker with his friends.
   • Clean gun I wore while on this trip, which the nice 20-something year old woman who sold the table to us noticed as I bent down for the umpteenth time to pick up pieces of the table.
5. Steam clean the carpets in the basement, study, living room, and hallway, because puppy.
   • After everything dries, vacuum up the puppy’s worth of extraneous fur that the steam cleaner kicked up from deep in the carpet’s nether regions.
6. Deep clean the kitchen, both bathrooms, living room, and laundry room. Make mental note to have a discussion with the Young Prince about housecleaning in the next few days.

This morning, not only am I out of spoons, but two large men in wingtips from the Medellin Spoon Cartel are standing on my front porch demanding the interest payment on the negative spoon balance I’m going to be running for the next couple of days.

Irish Woman and The Young Prince did most of the decorating, seetup, and food prep, so it wasn’t a solo adventure.

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Speaking of energy levels, if I could somehow harness the spike in psychological energy my darling wife has after having a bunch of folks over to the house, we could stop spending money on fusion power plant research. She is so bubbly that I’d like to bottle her and market the bottles to gas stations as both a fuel additive and an energy drink.

Meanwhile, my social battery is flatlined, smoking, and the chief engineer is calling up to the bridge asking permission to eject it into space before it goes critical. It is only because I had the foresight to set up the coffee machine last night and only had to hit the ‘ON’ button (albeit after several attempts to find it through one bloodshot eye) to get the sweet elixir of life flowing, that I have the wherewithal to do more than stare blankly into the flames.

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The other night, I took Irish Woman to a Brazilian steak house for dinner. It’s one of those establishments where nice men carry around large knives and swords laden with meat and carve you off a hunk whenever you want some more. The experience basically comes down to “you don’t eat a lot of anything, but you eat a little bit of everything” before you roll your overstuffed carcass out to the parking lot to drive home.

They even had a salad bar so that we could convince ourselves that we were having a nice, healthy, balanced meal. This delusion was good to have while I cut into my fourth helping of grilled critter later that evening.

It occurs to me that there should be a country cooking variation of this restaurant. You could have herds of little old southern women wandering around a dining area with pots of gumbo, baskets of biscuits, butter tubs full of country green beans, that sort of thing. The midwestern women could dish out small helpings of green bean casserole, tater-tot casserole, and lefse. The Texas women could walk around with brisket, smoked sausage, and warm homemade tortillas. The California women, well, we wouldn’t let them in the door. California ‘food’ just wouldn’t fit the aesthetic, and nobody wants to be harassed for their food choices while they signal for their seventh helping of something.

Only flaw would be the overhead for defibrillators that would have to be replaced due to overuse on a monthly basis.

Question for the readers:

At what point does ‘ideation’ become ‘premeditation’?

I’m asking for a friend.

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To the dude at Circle K this morning –

If you come into a convenience store at 8:35 AM on a Wednesday when the lottery prize is over $1 billion and buy several dozen lottery tickets and scratchers, you forfeit any rights you had to get pissy with the clerk. If you want to do numerical combinations that require an abacus and hardware from Cray to figure out, bring some patience with you. The folks who just want to pay for their gas and snacks will thank you.

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When having the first fire in the firepit of the year, now that the summer burn ban has lapsed, it is nice to imbibe a little. A beer or two, followed up with a few fingers of good bourbon, are fine.

However, if the beers are hitting you just a little hard, and you tell your wife to ‘leave the bottle’ when she brings out the bourbon and a glass, a little self-control will save you from much suffering.

If said self-control does not materialize, the clue that you’ve overserved yourself is when you figure out that moonlight looks really cool when filtered through a glass of bourbon. Recreating this phenomenon four or five more times over the course of several hours only enhances the hangover the next day. And the day after that.

There’s just something satisfying about using a propane torch to burn weeds growing up through the cracks and seams in the concrete.

I may have to explain my methods to the neighbors, though.

To them, I was a 50-something year old schlub wandering around his driveway with a propane tank and a wand with a bell-shaped end on it, muttering to himself.

To me, I was going from bunker to bunker in Normandy, giving the Huns exactly five seconds to throw their hands up and surrender before I burned them out.

I may or may not have stated, at medium volume, on several occasions – “Any plant that runs is a weed. Any plant that doesn’t run is a well disciplined weed.”

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Note to self – read the label of the dog shampoo before using it.

Ancillary note – when the ‘shampoo’ doesn’t foam up while bathing the shaggy, 85 pound Labrador, don’t just add more ‘shampoo’ in a vain attempt to get the dog clean

Tertiary note – if, after all that work, the dog looks like the bass singer in ShaNaNa, it’s time to just rinse him as well as you can and go to the store for more real shampoo. You’ve used half a bottle of conditioner, so hes just going to be extra shiny and slick for a while

Poor Moonshine is going to look like the Maybelline model’s little sister who got into her big sister’s hair goop for a few days.

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The other day, I advised my wife to acquiesce her decolatage.

She was not impressed. This may be my last transmission.

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The other morning, I drove into downtown Louisville for a doctor appointment. It was like Day 2 of the zombie apocalypse down there, but without the John Williams soundtrack playing in the background.

It was 6:30 am and still dark out. Random folks who were definitely not using 10% of available CPU were shambling around in no particular direction. There were more than a few whose cheese was definitely on a sideways trajectory from their cracker.

Two junkies were having a dance off on the corner right after I got off the highway. Everybody was kung-fu fighting, and it looked quite exciting.

How did I know they were junkies, you ask? Well, they were screaming at each other about a stolen needle loud enough that I could hear it over my podcast.

Two blocks down, some poor soul was doing the one leg still, one leg doing the jig/watusi, while he waved around his blankie at traffic. I actually felt bad for this guy. He obviously needed somebody to come get him before he got hit in traffic.

I really hope that the multiple people I saw laying down under blankets on the sidewalks were asleep. Thank goodness the weather has been rather mild, because being that deeply unconscious when exposed to the elements, hot or cold, is not good for you.

Somebody either put out some stuff thats too pure, or it’s adulterated with something really nasty.

It’s wasn’t as bad as Oakland in ‘89, but it’s not far off. No comment as to why I know how bad Oakland was at the height of the crack epidemic.

I finished my business, programmed the mobile magic elf box to direct me to my fast food breakfast of choice (a habit I picked up as a child. I was good at the doctor, so I deserved a treat), and got the heck out of Louisville.

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Maggie, the little black pup that isn’t so little anymore, is settling in quite nicely. She is now taller, but not quite as long, as Sophie the Faux Dachshund, and is quickly closing in on Ellie, the American DerpHound.

Both of her sisters seem to have accepted her, and play “I chase you, now you chase me” in the yard, the living room, and the basement. They especially like playing in the basement, as it’s one big room with stairs forming an island in the center. It makes the best canine track in the county.

Moonshine, the hound emeritus, has not accepted the puppy as much. Maggie has learned to just leave him be, stay the heck away from his food, and to not chase her sisters over the top of him while he’s trying to nap.

Maggie enjoys going for rides in the car, mostly because there may be french fries on the agenda. She has a perfect record of looking dangerously cute and starving every time we go through any drive-up window.

I swear, every woman we meet, and a few of the men, gets all squeaky and baby-talky when they see her. She is always gentle and loving when given a treat, making sure to give kisses on command to anyone with a biscuit or pup cup. When I give her a treat, I risk having my fingers degloved, but when the teenager working at the Circle K does it, she gets her hand kissed.