If I Believed In Karma, I Might Think I Was Karma's B****

So after the fantastic "meeting" with my neighbor, I came home and was in the house about 3.3 seconds when Tilly took an explosive and lavish poo on the family room carpet. And I'm sorry if you are reading this over your breakfast bagel, but it wasn't just poo. It was diarrhea. On my carpet.

I hustled her outside where she proceeded to finish her business. Then I came back inside, opened windows to the frosty evening air to get the stink out, and then cleaned up the mess. And by cleaned up, I mean gagged my way through a roll of paper towels and carpet cleaner while still not making a dent in the resultant stain.

And remember how I said I was going to fold laundry and have a glass of wine after the whole neighbor debacle? Never happened. Instead, I spent the next 4 hours before bedtime trying to bathe children and shuttle the dog outside so that she could answer the increasingly urgent call of her bowels.

All was well until 3:21 a.m. when I heard an unpleasant, um, gurgling noise. I shot straight up in bed, while simultaneously yelling "Tilly, NO!" and trying to shove my feet into my slippers. I fumbled through shutting off the security alarm, hustled the dog downstairs and got her leashed as quickly as possible. Then I took her outside where she proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes trying to evacuate what smelled like a very putrefied skunk from her bowels. You're welcome. Aren't you glad this isn't Smell-o-vision? And did I mention that it was freezing out? And that I didn't have a jacket on, but was wearing my pajamas--the ones with a short sleeve shirt? Yeah. So that was awful.

Then it got worse, because I had to go clean up the mess. It was, well, completely and utterly awful in its absolute awfulness.

Tilly belly crawled into our room, wagging her tail and looking at me with doleful eyes. I patted the floor next to me and she crawled over and laid her head in my lap, submissively wagging her tail and showing her belly. I told her it was okay. "I know your belly hurts," I cooed. "It'll be okay. But if you do this again, I'm totally divorcing you, dogbreath."

She laid companionably next to me as I breathed through my mouth and gagged and scrubbed. I bagged up the horrors, told Tilly that I'd be right back and went downstairs to put the bag in the garage. When I came back up, she had pooed yet again. In several spots. With great abandon.

"I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you," I hissed. I'm not sure what culture this is from, but I'm totally claiming it as my own. It's very liberating even though it may not be valid.

This time, there was no companion beside me as I cleaned up the crime scene. She knew better. She slinked over to her bed and started to snore. Occasionally she would open one eye and look at me in a baleful manner, as if to say, "Haven't you got that cleaned up yet? All of this racket is keeping me awake! Rude!"

I'm not sure how many times I divorced her while I was cleaning up that particular mess, but I said it many times with fervor.

In the midst of all of this cleaning and running the dog in and out, well, you know what happened, right? I got a migraine. Of course I did, because: Brouhaha with neighbor+doggy diarrhea+interrupted sleep=Monster Migraine from Hell.

I took my medicine and tried to sleep while not actually sleeping so that I could listen for any more disturbances from the dog. The last time I looked at the clock, it read 5:27. My alarm went off at 6 a.m.

I spent my morning taking the dog out. And discovering and cleaning up a mess that I had missed in the predawn hours. Then I volunteered in Sean's classroom, all the while praying that it wouldn't look like a ritual sacrifice occurred in my home in my brief absence. Then I shuttled children some places. And finally around dinner time, I took the Tilly to the vet, who prescribed Pepto Bismol for the dumb dog. Yes, the pink stuff. Apparently you can give it to your dog. Who knew? Obviously not me or I'd have done it much quicker and without paying $45 dollars for the information.

She seems better now, which is good. I might even reconsider my divorce from her after seeing how the carpet turns out when the professionals have had a go at it. But you know what I didn't get done? The laundry.

Oh well. Clothes are overrated.