Leezer

Leezer:  You see, sometimes when a man’s … um, how should I say, one-eyed trouser snake won’t . . . er. . . salute, then there’s a pill for that. .

DAG: what is this ’snake’ of which you speak, and how does such a fiend, ‘salute’?

Leezer:   Well - if you must - I’m referring to the ‘penis’ in its aroused-state, not literally a ‘snake.’.

DAG:  Ahhhh . . . the ‘pintel.’ thy know’st it, aye.

Leezer:  As I was saying, when the ‘pintel’ stays but a wee wet noodle, you take this little blue pill and it will swell up like a bratwurst.

DAG:  Doth thoust apothecary render said potion with mortar and pestle?

Leezer:  I suppose you could crunch it up and put it in your beer, but it’d be easier to just swallow it whole.

DAG:  So this ‘pill,’ is a suitable proxy for the Royal Fluffer?

Leezer:  Yes!  In fact, some mightn’t respond to royal fluffing, and need something a little stronger.  I hear it works well, except there are possible side effects.

DAG:  Pray, continue!

Leezer:  Well, there are cases where the um, swollen bratwurst stays rather swollen for half a day. .

DAG:   [Scratches lice-infested beard thoughtfully] That is ná gód.  But thy codpiece will surely hold a liege of bratwurst!   Bring me the pill!   

Georgia:  Lizzie is sad.  Her fish jumped out of its bowl and it died.

Me:  Oh, that’s too bad.

[Two hours later]

Georgia:   Good news!  Lizzie’s goldfish didn’t die! It’s just blind.

________________

Georgia:  Mom, I finished the list of chores I need to do for my allowance.   Want to hear what’s on my list?

Me:  Yes.

Georgia:  Clean room.  Set table for dinner.  Clean bathroom.  Watch for rats. . 

Me:  What do you mean, ‘watch for rats?’  We don’t have rats.

Georgia:  Sure we do.  They’re in the bushes in the back yard.

Me:  Oh.  Well what are you going to do if you see one?

Georgia:  Make a note of it.

________________________________

Me:  Georgia!  Quit bugging your sister!  Just leave her alone!

Georgia:  [heaving a big sigh]  Mom!  It’s just that . . . it’s just that . . . [puts hands on hips, shifts weight to one foot]  I’ve had such a hard day and I’m SO exhausted.  AND I can’t go shopping for a whole day!

 

without the hollywood squares

john might not be such

a megawat star

if you’ve a problem

civil war reenactment

can cure any ill

Well that was quite something. 

I finished moving yesterday.  When I say “move,” I mean literally that I can no longer move because I’m so exhausted.  Oh, and we changed residences by picking up all our belongings and placing them onto a moving truck so that they could be deposited about twenty-five miles away.   Because my husband’s thrift surpasses all human decency, he refused to retain a bona fide moving company and instead rented a truck and hired two day-laborers from the Millionaire’s Club[1] in downtown Seattle.  Our Millionaires: Virgil and Percy. 

While the well-reasoned among us deign to discuss race in polite society, I am neither well-reasoned nor polite.  Young black men working out of the Millionaire’s Club in Seattle don’t have names like Virgil and Percy.  They have names like DeShaun and Marquis.  “Virgil” and “Percy” are 1920’s ragtime musicians in the deep South. In any event, after Virgil and Percy spent twelve solid hours man-handling my boxes of underwear and toiletries, we were like a family.  Sadly for me, their period of employment was merely one day.

On the second day my husband dragged me back to the old house to finish emptying out the basement.  He said there were only a “few” things to collect, which I reckoned to be a broom and perhaps a laundry basket or two.  Not so.  After two hours of hurling stuff onto the sidewalk, I left. 

For what must have been ten weeks before the move, I began asking[2] my husband to perform an inventory of the memorabilia and sporting equipment filling our basement so that when the important day arrived, the poor bastards moving us wouldn’t be folding my husbands “party shirts” from 1980.   It was wasted breath[3].  Imagine Steve Martin in The Jerk carrying a lamp, a chair, and a shoe one-by-one out the door.  That is how we moved without Virgil and Percy’s help. Tube socks and cheese graters were strewn on the sidewalk in front of our house.  The buyer of our house had to step over our piles of hockey sticks and high school band instruments while his chain-smoking girlfriend went on and on about the new titanium nails she brought along for hanging pictures.  I don’t know what is so great about titanium but that’s beside the point.   “I told you so” seemed such an understatement of my fury.  Ironically, my sudden departure from the gulag, while intended to ease my pain, most likely eased his.

Moving is always hard on our relationship.  Not only due to the physical and logistical demands, but due to a few idiosyncrasies that surface whenever we move.  First, after we’re settled in our new home, my husband will not rest (read: go potty) until he has replaced each toilet seat in the house.  He cannot sit on a toilet seat unless he personally unwraps said seat from its Lowe’s packaging.

Second, my husband experiences bouts of manic creativity upon entering a new home.  Interior decorating - usually my domain - suddenly interests him.   And this interest would be somewhat manageable for me if it manifested itself in broad generalities, such as “I like leather furniture”; or “I like the color red for a dining room or bathroom.”  Instead, his suggestions tend to the extraordinarily peculiar and the highly specific.  For example, once I brought home an oriental rug.  It was the typical red, black and multi-colored variety.  I asked my husband if he liked it.  He bent down, bees-knees from the tuft, and studied it:

See that small border of pink about a millimeter wide surrounding the black fleur de lis pattern?  He asked.

Me:  Yeah?

Elliott:  Well, I’d like the rug better if that border was peach instead of pink.[4]

Me: [Expletive deleted].

Despite these moments, we are quite happy with our decision to move.  We now live in a neighborhood with CC and R’s (Conditions, Covenants, and Restrictions).  Moving a planter from one side of the door to the other requires a super-majority vote of approval by the Board.   Yet, I wonder if it will let me paint my house like this:

---

[1] Don’t be fooled by the name.  Cruelly enough, the Millionaire’s Club is a shelter of sorts for men who are “in between” in some sense of the word - in between jobs, in between homes, in between meals, in between sexually-transmitted diseases.[2]bitching.[3] Id.

[4] This exchange actually happened, but between my mother-in-law and father-in-law.  I cite it here because my husband is slowly turning into his father so I’m easily confused.   When my father-in-law retired he became too interested in decorating for my mother-in-law’s comfort.  At that time, they lived in a beautiful high-rise condominium in Glendale.  To my mother-in-law’s horror, she arrived home one day just in time to prevent my father-in-law from painting the beautiful mirrored floor-to-ceiling pillars a matte black.  You see my point.

i just can’t help it

brit’s meltdown can’t be ignored

 my last one, promise

 

poor little sad girl

you are but a rich hobo

love money can’t buy

 

oh worthless penny

you are obsolete to me

i throw you away

oh holy turtle

stigmata on your belly

go get Larry King!