Drive-By Licking

I'm coming out of the shower one evening when the phone rings.

It's MV. "What'cha doooooin'?" she sings.

I smile, knowing already from her tone that she has something amusing to tell me. "Nothing, just climbing out of the shower. Finally getting around to chopping down the forest... you know how it goes..."

"Ah yes, the forest..." she says, trailing off before taking a long slurp of something. Turns out Daddy Ventura is away on business, giving her an excuse to dig into the gin and apple juice again. "So speaking of forests," she says after some idle chit-chat, a light slur becoming apparent now, "I have something to tell you."

I sit down on the bed, bracing myself and wondering what the story is this time. A freaky porn video? An embarrassing noise in the bedroom? I can't even guess, but with MV, it's always something good.

She launches into her tale, beginning with the fact that DV and her were getting frisky on the living room sofa one night. "His pants were off," she breaks into a giggle, before collecting herself. "He was in this, you know, spread-eagle position... anyway, I won't go into too much detail."

I laugh, wondering how much more detail she could possibly get into.

"And then, for some reason I leaned out of the way," she continues, before bursting into a belly laugh.

"Oh my God! Did Mini V walk in or something?" I am horrified.

"No!" she shouts. "It's worse than that!"

This throws me for a loop. What could possibly be worse than that? And then she says it: Their massive horse of the dog came galloping into the room and...

"He jumped up and LICKED HIS BALLS!" she manages to sputter before another convulsing outburst.

I recoil and then burst out laughing too, unable to stop for a solid five minutes.

"The dog licked DV's balls?" I ask finally, feeling a strange mix of horror and amusement at the awful mental picture. "Oh my God, your poor husband! What did he do??"

"I don't know," MV squeaks. "I was too busy laughing! It was the best thing ever, you have no idea!"


"God, he must have felt so..." I search for the right word, but there really is nothing.

"Violated? Raped by the dog?"

I shudder. I suppose that's one way of putting it.

"And like, I've been thinking," MV says, dropping into a whisper, "what if, you know, he kinda secretly liked it?"

I gasp.

"I mean, he couldn't help it if he did, right?" she continues. "And if so, wouldn't it make him feel like the dirty rapist, even if it wasn't his fault?"

"Okay, I'm hanging up now."

"Too much?"

"Definitely."

She takes another slurp of vodka. "Alrightly then, good chattin' with ya!" she chimes, before hanging up the phone.

...there's no good way of ending this post.

Namaste?
MM

Filthy Cheater

I've never been the jealous type.

Ha! Okay that's a lie. (Do you like to say that out loud too?) I'm one hundred per cent jealous. To the point where I've quizzed PJ on his past girlfriends hundreds if not thousands of times. Also, I may or may not have Googled them. And I may or may not have done so repeatedly, hoping for fresh information to sink my fangs into each time.

I even managed to find myself an angle when I posted that ad on Craig's List. (Refer to Husband For Sale if you don't remember...) I was convinced my joke would bring forth nothing but weirdos – lonely single mothers who looked like truck drivers and burly men with strange fetishes for hairless cats, etc. But when I ended up with a string of emails from hot, busty women, I became, you guessed it, jealous. It wasn't the fact that he was getting these responses that bothered me (I was the one who posted the ad after all, and so that would be... crazy! *queue cackle*), it was the fact that when I showed PJ the emails, his eyes lingered on the women's photos for just a split-second too long.

I know, I have issues.

But the other night, we had ourselves a chart topper.

***

I wake up in a cold sweat, my "Love Me Tender," Elvis nightshirt glued to my back. "WHO IS OLGHA?!"

PJ continues to snore. I nudge him in the ribs and he rolls over. "Hmm?"

"You heard me. Who is Olgha?" I say, thinking back to the bimbo in my dream who'd taken a shining to my husband. A shining that was more than reciprocated.

"Olga? What are you talking about?" he mumbles, before turning over again.

"You know who I'm talking about, you filthy cheater! Her name is Olgha with an 'H-A' like she's got a smoker's cough embedded in her name. And, if you must play dumb here, her last name is Numberz."

"Olg-ha Numbers?"

I sigh, feeling myself grow genuinely impatient with him. "Numberz... with a Z!" 

"Okay, you're seriously crazy."

I should say, before you go agreeing with him, that I truly do get the occasional intuitive dream. I've even managed to predict a few key life events for some of my close family members. So, say what you want, but in my 2:00 a.m haze, I am convinced Olgha "Smokers Cough" Numberz is a real person and my husband has been cheating with her, to the point where the next evening when he comes home from work, I'm not even a bit sheepish when I ask him, again, about her.

He pours himself a glass of wine and falls limp onto the sofa. "No, M, there is no Olg-ha Numberzzz." He says it so it sounds ultra doofussy.

My eyes narrow at him. "Is there anyone else? I could be off about the name. Perhaps it's some sort of code."

He laughs. "For what? A Stripper?!"

"Perhaps a stripper who doubles as an accountant, yes. But that's not the point. You're dodging the question."

He raises an eyebrow at me as though he feels deeply sorry for me. "There's no one else, M. Just you. You're my Olg-HA." He makes the hacking noise.

I smile and then the two of us have a good laugh at how ridiculous this is. I mean, seriously: Olgha Numberz? This really is crazy – even for me.

He leans back in his seat, clearly relieved. "So what do you want to do tonight?"

"Oh, I don't know – I thought we could watch this." My smile widens and I hold up a copy of Fatal Attraction.

His shoulders sink back down again, and he mutters something like "here we go..."

I pop it in the DVD player. "Let this be your reminder."

Namaste,
MM

Mom vs. Mom

As most BFFs do, MV and I have had this unspoken competition with each other ever since we became parents. It's not a competition over who's a better mom or who has the shiniest new mini-van, but rather who has their shit together... the least.

She calls me up one day, her voice weak and exhausted. "So, I've given mini-V and I a haircut."

"That's very resourceful," I tell her, uttering something about haircuts being a waste of time and money, and then sitting back and waiting for her punchline.

"Well, not really..." she says. "I couldn't find the dog scissors."

I laugh. There it is. The punchline. Dog scissors! Oh MV, how I heart you.

She waits for my laughter to taper off. "No, the dog scissors are what I normally use. They're good! I couldn't find them so I had to improvise."

"Oh," I say, wondering what could be worse than a flea and possibly poop infected tool. "So what did you do?"

"Well, I dug out mini-V's crayola scissors, figuring they'd work just as well. Then I started cutting and I couldn't stop! We both look terrible!"

"I'm sure you don't," I say and can almost hear her roll her eyes. Quickly, I think of something. "All I've eaten today are like eight Slim Jims."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, isn't that disgusting? I'm like a teenage boy."

She sighs.

Again, I think fast. "I'm still in my pajamas?"

She ignores me. "And... look at my kitchen."

My phone bleeps and I open the text:

"Okay, you win."

I'll even the score tomorrow when I feed the kids jerky for lunch.

Namaste,
MM

There's Poop in Your Future

It's just after lunch and my mom pops over, immediately scooping up Baby Zen and noticing a strange brown streak in his hair.

"What's that?" she asks, recoiling.

I wave her off. "Oh that's nothing. It's just peanut butter, from breakfast."

It's a habit of my mother's – waltzing in the door, and right away zeroing in on the streak of Cheez Whiz or snot on my kids' faces. The sad thing is, most of the time, I've already made a mental note of the muck, dismissing it for more important things like making sure Buddha doesn't tackle Baby Zen to the ground like a linebacker. But in her mind, it's a serious sign of neglect.

Her nose scrunches up. "Are you sure it's not... you know..."

"Poop?" I ask.

She nods.

"Yes I'm sure," I say blandly, and then explain the rest of it – that I've developed a sort of sixth-sense for detecting that sort of thing.

Pooptuition: the uncanny ability to know when your child has filled his/her diaper. This "knowing" is most often accompanied by a sudden potent smell, even though your child is across the room or even somewhere else in the house. I realized I'd developed it after smelling a sudden waft while Baby Zen was trying to fall asleep in his crib. Sure enough, upon going in to investigate, I discovered I was right, and for the next week, continued to experience this strange ability every time one of the kids did a number two.

"That's crazy," my mother says, once I've filled her in.

"I know!" I say, waving a hand in the air. "It's ridiculous! Why can't I have something useful, like predicting natural disasters or knowing the lotto numbers?" I've always wanted to be psychic. I've even read books on it, hoping to develop an intuition that would guide me away from life's problems. Instead, I've developed one that leads me directly to one of the grossest things there is. Fantastic.

"You must be imagining things," she tells me, before shuffling off to the playroom with Baby Zen, holding him close, as if to shield him from me, his apparent nutcase for a mother.

Realizing that she's probably right, I head for the kitchen, deciding to use the bonus time to do some dinner prep. 

But only minutes later, when I'm peeling potatoes, I catch a sudden waft.

"Mom!" I holler down the stairs, "did he poop?"

There is a short beat of silence before she gasps.

I smile. "Told ya!"

Namaste,

MM