OK, Well, Call Me

1) Maybe it's because he knows I'm going out of town, that he's unsettled by my own anxiety. Maybe he can sense that I'm conflicted about my decision to upend my life. Or maybe he just chewed the eyes off of his squeaky monkey. Either way, Pigpen spent the earliest hours of Friday redecorating the living room with autumn-hued puddles of hurl. I've been following him around, double fisting bottles of Resolve and keeping a wad of paper towels tucked in the waistband of my pajama pants, gently guiding him away from the rugs and onto the more easily disinfected sections of the floor.

I hate when he's sick because there's nothing I can do except wipe his mouth, helplessly pat his head and whisper "Shhh....don't eat it. No, don't eat that." After he spent a few puke-free hours sprawled in his favorite sunbeam, I thought we could probably both use a short walk. That would determine if he'd totally recovered and would also help air out his face, where a concentrated scent of Funk had settled around his jaws.

Because I am a Grown Up, I didn't feel the need to change out of my pajama bottoms, the ones that leave my ass tastefully decorated with a number of red and blue robots fighting each other. When you sleep alone--save for a fifty-five pound purebred and endless sleep-timer interrupted episodes of I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant--you have to showcase your nighttime fashions during the daylight hours. Also, nothing says "Hire me! I'm a professional!" like walking around the neighborhood wrapped in semi-flammable fabric.

Restrain those boners, gentlemen. These are my Robot Pants.

Anyway, we were rounding the corner onto one of the sketchier streets, where the trashcans beside the curb are always overflowing with boxed wine and broken furniture, when a man tried to get my attention. "Hey," he yelled. "Hey! Hey!" If this were a comic book, his shouts would've been illustrated in a giant red font, the black outlines and exclamation points filling the entire panel.

I stopped, yanking Pigpen away from the dead squirrel he was trying to make out with.

The man walked toward the edge of his porch, which was lovingly decorated with an upholstered sofa.

"Question for you," he said.

I waited, already worried about where this was heading.

"You ever thought about breeding?"

It was the pants. It had to be the pants. Or maybe that my unshowered hair was sculpted in the most seductive of styles. Or maybe I look like the perfect blend of Crazy and Desperate.

"Well, um, I'm not really looking for a relationship right now. I'm leaving town an--"

"Your dog," he shouted. "Have you thought about breeding your dog? He's a good lookin' Boxer."

"Oh! OH!", I yelled back, both relieved and oddly disappointed. "He's been fixed."

"Too bad," the guy said, chucking a can toward a sticky looking pile at the side of his porch. "Waste of a nice dog."

"Not really," I yelled at his back. "You should hear him sing Carmen."

We walked for another twenty minutes and when we got home, I immediately scrambled into the shower. When I stepped out, toweling off and dripping all over the rug, I noticed that Pigpen had dragged my pajama pants into the middle of the bedroom.

He looked at me, one ear cocked toward the ceiling. Then he threw up.

2) Thank you all for the comments, emails and encouragement you've sent surrounding my upcoming move to Seattle. It's going to be an adventure and I've got a lot of miles to cover, literally--with a truck full of hastily-packed boxes and unused appliances--and figuratively.

Hopefully some of my lingering questions about which neighborhood to live in will be answered in the next few days and I'll scrape up enough courage to take some unsolicited writing samples to potential employers, even though that's something I'm sure they dig almost as much as strep throat or a new Nickelback album.

Also, not to worry. I'll never swap the Red Sox for the Mariners, although I'm excited about living in an American League city. Same for the Seahawks. Unless Kurt Warner and his increasingly brittle bones end up in a fluorescent green jersey, I'll stick with my worn out Cardinals hat. I am, however, considering going to the Seahawks-Lions game on Sunday, less to watch football (The Lions? Play football? L and O and L.) and more because I'd like someone to explain why that radioactive-looking color was added to their unis this season.

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