See this dog toy?

Gracie had one just like this. Until today. They’re usually pretty indestructible, but Gracie can destroy any toy in record time. This one lasted about two weeks.

For the last week or so she’s been working hard on this thing, untying the knot and shredding the rope. When she starts tearing things apart I usually take them away because left to her own devices, she’ll eat anything. She’s like a great white shark that way. I’m convinced that some day she’s going to crap out a license plate or a tire. When I pick up after her in the yard, I will usually find some brightly colored pooh—a toy she’s shredded, a teddy bear she’s eaten, a piece of paper. She’s a garbage gut. I’ve been sick for the last week so I haven’t been paying as close attention as I usually would. I was just so grateful that she was entertained while I was sleeping all day. But it still didn’t occur to me that she might actually eat the pieces that made up the rope.

Fast forward to this evening.

All was quiet around the Snark household. I was hanging out, watching some TV, trying to stay awake to watch the ball drop. Gracie needed to be let out into the backyard, and I didn’t see her for a while, but then I heard a yelp. I peeked out the window and saw her squatting, grunting and looking at her butt. Nothing was coming out, so she moved to a different part of the yard. She’d squat some more, grunt and look at her butt. This went on a few times until, she squatted, grunted, yelped and started spinning in circles.

That’s when I saw it. Something was hanging from her butt. She’s a long-haired dog so it’s not unusual for stuff to get caught back there once in a while, but this thing was long, and thick and swinging. At first I thought she must have eaten a ton of grass (not unusual) but when I walked outside to get a better look I realized that she had the rope toy attached to her ass, with big hunks of pooh attached.

I promptly threw up in my mouth.

The poor dog was so uncomfortable she was running in circles around the yard periodically looking at her butt and grunting. Squat, look, grunt, run. Squat, look, grunt, run.

I went inside to grab some paper towels, figuring I could grab it off her butt and she’d be fine.

I chased her around the yard until she finally gave up and came over to me. I spun her around, lifted her tail and grabbed the rope/pooh combo with the paper towels. I though the damn thing was just sort of glued to her hair. Nope. When I pulled, I pulled more out of her ass. It was like when you pull the plug out of the drain. There was like a pop, a gurgly noise, and a whoosh. Then the biggest juiciest dog fart you’ve ever heard. Another 3 inches of rope and pooh came out.

The poor dog yelped, and spun and looked at me with such embarrassment. I felt bad for her, but it clearly needed to be done.

For a split second I thought about taking her to the vet to make sure it was all out, but I realized the rope toy was all there. Whole. The rope was shredded so the whole thing looked like the fringe on the end, it was all unknotted but it was all there.

After she got over the humiliation of me pulling toys out of her ass, she followed me over to the trash cans trying to grab the pooh toy out of my hand so she could go play with it again.

Sigh. So pretty yet so dumb.

Hopefully, it’s just a craptacular ending to 2008 and not a sign of how 2009 will be.

(PS: she’s fine)

I haven’t written in week.

About a week ago I got totally sick. Like, curled up in the fetal position, coughing my lungs up, puking in the shower, phlegmy, achy, snotty, sick.

I bet you just threw up in your mouth a little bit.

I got into bed on Christmas Day and didn’t leave it until Saturday (except to go to the bathroom or take more medicine). For a couple of days there, Bill had to come in and shake me awake to try to get me to eat or to drink some OJ. That’s how out of it I was. I’m still not doing well. I went into work today, but my bosses looked at me, recoiled and suggested that perhaps I shouldn’t be there all day. Which is really saying something considering we have a lot going on. I’m pretty sure they called in a HAZMAT team to disinfect my desk as I walked out the door.

The last week has been a blur. I don’t remember much of anything. I do remember snippets of really weird Mucinex/NyQuil/Tylenol/Robitussin–induced dreams. In one, Kathy Griffin scolded me for dissing Cher, while Cher stood behind her and made faces at me. There was another dream in which my dog was yelling at me to take some damn cough medicine and stop snoring, but that may have been Bill poking me trying to get me to wake up.

The week wasn’t a total loss however. I discovered that there are some particularly great movies and channels for snoozing. On Friday I napped to “You’ve Got Mail,” “Pretty Woman,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and, of course, “Dirty Dancing.” These are movies that I’ve seen (and will still watch) 1600 times so I don’t feel compelled to drag myself out of my coma to see what’s going on. HGTV is also amazing to nap to. Food Network was a close second.  Not a lot of loud noises, soothing conversations and the commercials don’t blast in 300 decibels louder than the shows.

So I try to write about my life, but I don’t seem to have much of one right now. I nap, I cough, I sneeze, I blow my nose, I slather Vaseline on my nose to keep it from getting too irritated. Repeat in any combination.

So how was your holiday?!

Santa must hate me because I am sick as a dog. Except this dog is way cuter than I am right now.

I have a sore throat that feels like someone is scraping and stabbing it with little bitty knives. My nose is getting congested and I feel like I have a bag of cotton balls stuck in there—you know that nasty itchy, dry, full but can’t blow or sneeze feeling? That’s it. But probably by tomorrow morning it’ll turn into that gross, runny, red-faced mess. (Merry Christmas, Bill. Wanna smooch?) My muscles ache. Apparently, last night in my sleep I ran a marathon. Uphill. On my knees. Backwards. My neck muscles are so tight that my shoulders can barely hold my head upright.

I was afraid this was going to happen, so I tried to prevent it by getting enough rest and trying to lay low on the weekends—I even took some preventative NyQuil shots for a few nights—but it’s been a rough couple of weeks. After a couple of pre-dawn 15-hour days at work, I put off the bulk of my Christmas shopping until this weekend. Running around the malls stuffed with infected people? Not my idea of fun. And there was nothing merry about it.

I did manage to finish off my shopping on Saturday, but wrapping everything is going to be another story. I’m thinking about handing everything over in the bags I bought it in. Would that be rude? (Lesley, you’re lucky—I did wrap yours.)

Not sure if I’ll be dead in the next couple of days (did I ever mention I’m sort of dramatic?!) from the Black Death flu, so I will wish you all a very Merry Christmahanuakwanzaa now—just in case I don’t pop in!

Have a wonderful holiday.

xoxo

Okay, I know that title is sort of sacreligious. Even to me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Christmas season. I love the lights, the trees, the smell of baking cookies, the smell of fresh trees, pretty, wrapped packages under the tree.

But, for me, this time of the year sucks ass. It is 6:45 a.m. and I have been at work for about 45 minutes. I left here at 8:00 last night—just enough time to drive home, get ready for bed and go to sleep so I could wake up at 4:30. I drive to work when it’s dark; I drive from work when it’s dark. It has been like this since a a little before Thanksgiving and will stay this way through the end of February. The collision of our busy season and the holidays makes Mo a cranky girl. Every night this week I’ve been on the verge of tears driving home. I’m that tired.

Not me, but a fairly accurate representation

I have done as much of my Christmas shopping online as I’m able—I’ve even ordered wrapping paper online—but Saturday I’m going to have to brave the malls and do a major kamikazee shopping session. The prospect of that thrills me to no end (do you detect the dripping sarcasm?). Somewhere in all of this I have to find time to wrap gifts.

The part that’s really making me bitter is that I may have to come in for a little bit on Christmas Eve, which wouldn’t be bad if I were staying home for the holidays, but our family is scattered around Southern California, so we have to drive two hours to my parents on Christmas Eve, do our Christmas, and then turn around and drive back on Christmas day, stopping at various family members on the way home. There’s no rest for the wicked (weary?) after that. I have to come in the Friday after Christmas. Lather, rinse, repeat for New Year’s.

I know I shouldn’t bitch and moan because there are plenty of people out of a job and they’d kill to come in to work, but I’m feeling kind of burned out. I’m bummed that I can’t enjoy the holiday—which is normally my favorite time of the year. It upsets me that I’m so tired that Christmas music sounds like nails on a chalkboard. I barely see my husband, which is probably a bonus for him because I’m one miserable bitch.

This too shall pass, but I just had to rant so I can go on with my day.

Anyone else totally feeling overloaded, overwhelmed and on the verge?

I’m a huge fan of Kathy Griffin. I like her snarky, irreverent take on celebrity and all the bullshit that goes with it. About four or five months ago I heard her on Ryan Seacrest talking about her show “My Life on the D List” and about her up-coming comedy tour. She announced she’d be in L.A. this month, and I immediately called my husband and told him I wanted to go.

Now, I married at straight man, so it would be overstating it—a lot—to say that he was excited to go, but he agreed. And being the good husband that he is, he busted his butt and worked some connections and got fantastic tickets. I mean, like totally bitchin’.

The show was this Friday. We’ve had our tickets for months, but as we’re walking into the the theater and being led to our seats we’re told that the tickets we have are house seats—aka, the ones they usually reserve for celebrities. So, of course, I’m giddy because we’ve clearly got awesome seats. And we did. We had a stage-level box! We were about 5 feet from the stage! Then they told us a celeb called a couple of days ago, wanting tickets to see the show and they were going to put her in our box with us. Sure, whatever. I don’t care. And, apparently, they told this celeb that someone else was in the box and asked if she would mind sharing. She said she didn’t mind.

So we’re hanging out in the box, watching the audience file in. I got a little giddy when I saw Perez Hilton come in carrying a huge Sephora bag, because you know— two of my guilty pleasures—gossip and Sephora!

Just as the lights dimmed and the show was about to start, Cher and her friend walk in and sit in the box with us. Cher! I mean, how fucking cool is that?! She’s a legend. I’ve been sort of fan since I was a kid and watched the Sonny and Cher show. And she hangs in some major company—Tina Turner and Oprah! I tried to play it cool, like I’m totally indifferent to her sitting two feet away from us, even though I’m singing “Believe” and “If I Could Turn Back Time” in my head. I’m also running through the list of my gay boyfriends who would kill to be sitting there, and wondering if I could text them to brag without being obvious.

But I was suddenly totally self-conscious about having Cher sitting behind me.

Apparently, she was totally self-conscious about having a couple of total unknowns in her box.

Right before Kathy came onstage, theater management came up and asked if we’d mind switching seats. They had equally good seats on the other side of the theater for us if we moved.

Dude. We were fucking dissed by Cher.

I guess she wasn’t so cool with sharing the box after all. I guess the thought process was, “I’m fucking Cher and I don’t KNOW these people, so I’m going to play the ‘I’m Cher’ card.”

I kind of felt like I was back in high school—expelled from the cool table in the cafeteria for some unknown infraction.

What was sort of impressive about this was that the entire thing happened in just a couple of minutes. It was quick and stealthy. We never even saw it coming.

We didn’t have to move, and I doubt anyone would have pursued it if we had refused, but we agreed. Whatever. It was clearly an issue for her. They moved us to an empty box directly across the theater from the one we were in. They were very apologetic and bending over backwards to make sure we were okay with this.

Living in Southern California I’ve seen my share of celebrities. My biggest sighting was having dinner at a table next to Sean Connery. Bill and I have had dinner sitting just a few feet away from Warren Christopher and we’ve met A Well-Known Sex Symbol Who Is Famous For Frolicking On The Beach. It’s cool, but they’re just people, and after my initial thrill, I’m over it. But I get it—celebs get bugged a lot and have psycho fans and threatening stalkers. I’m sure they get uncomfortable with people they don’t know.

But something about this situation  bugs me, I guess. My initial reaction was, Suck It, Cher! We’ve had these seats for months. YOU move. But, of course, it doesn’t work that way. The power that celebrities have in this town is ridiculous. For a split-second I felt kind of shitty.

In the long run, it wasn’t a big deal. We moved. We still had amazing seats. I didn’t have to worry about being self-conscious. And about halfway through the show Kathy does a bit about idolizing Cher and getting the chance to spend the day with her, and they put the house lights on Cher. If we were sitting there I would have been mortified.

I like the irony of the night, though. Kathy’s schtick is all about trying to climb up the celebrity ladder and repeatedly getting kicked down a rung or five. That was us—banished to the other side of the theater.

Relegated to the “Z List” where I belong.