...And Then Everything Went Horribly, Horribly Wrong

So I haven't blogged since Wednesday b/c in the move on Thursday, I dropped my monitor. Oh yes. My beautiful 17-inch flat-screen month-old monitor. And now it just says "no signal" and times out. And I have so much to share! I'm once again at my parents' house, blogging on my dad's rickety old PC. I will have to remedy this situation stat.

In other news, I found my Special Purpose. (And I mean this in a Steve Martin in "The Jerk" way, after he boinks the biker chick and calls home to announce that he found his special purpose, and not in the "Special Porpoise" way that K found when searching for a gift that her boyfriend could buy her. She turned up a gold ankle bracelet ... with a dolphin charm. Oof.)

Anyhoo, My Special Purpose is to be a Lap. I adopted a pug on Friday and his main reason for living, apparently, is to lie in my lap and nod off. Now, this is sublime and adorable, but I am so ADD at home that I tend to get up a lot and putter around... it's not the best situation for a dog who A) needs lap and B) if he can't get lap, needs to be hovering around my ankles as he tries to predict where I'll go next. It has only been a couple of days and he seems pretty mellow otherwise. Today I left him at home alone and won't check back on him until after work. Poor little guy!

We were trying to think of a name for him since his given name is "Little Bit." That sounds to me like an AKC name...or a name for a horse...or your favorite S&M gadget. My mom suggested "Tino" - as in Rudolph Valentino, the world's greatest lover. The Puppy suggested "Pugly" - he could have done so much better. I keep calling him "Monkey," and he seems to respond to it. But on Sunday the Puppy and I (and the yet-to-be-named-lap-bogarting pug) watched "The Hebrew Hammer" on the comedy channel. I was starting to feel a name, a real old-man Yiddish accent thing was a-brewin as I looked down (into my lap) at said pug and noticed an eye booger. I wiped it off with a Kleenex and the Puppy said, "That's so perfect - you have to treat that dog like an Alzheimer's patient." And that's when it hit me: "Morty."

Now I'm thinking not so much ... but at the moment, Morty was genius.

And it's just fabbo to be in the house again! It feels like My Space, and there are no emotional traces of the EH. It's almost surreal how natural and happy it is to be back. Not a note of ennui... it's all purely good feelings. Nice, that.

And I hope y'all had a lovely Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/Festivus. I spent mine with my parents... and the Puppy! Yep, he met Ma & Pa. My mother was completely charmed. "He's adorable," she growled in her (as I hear it) Harvey Fierstein voice. My father was more reticent. He capitulated this: "He seems like a good guy," and then snuck in the zinger: "He's not exactly introverted."

Later that night the Puppy brought his cousin over and we hit a dank dive bar. Yes, on Christmas. It was spectacular. The bar slowly filled with two kinds of people: the ones who need a little booze after spending too much QT with their relatives, and the ones who want to drink until they black out, just for the holidays. We had a blast. I shot pool and played darts - things I haven't done in years. And though my billiards game is rusty I did win one of the three dart games. I need to bone up on the Bar Arts. Or maybe not.

And - this part is shameful - I watched "Drive Me Crazy" (Sabrina the Teenage Witch and dreamy Adrian Grenier) last night...and got all sappy and sad when AG kissed those teenaged girls. I watched his lips and felt myself get all jumbly inside b/c there is no romance in my life. I need Man Lips - STAT! And though I love my time with the Pup, I know that as long as we hang out as much as we do (Daily) I'm not going to be able to do anything about it.

Sadly, I would totally make out with the Puppy if he was willing, but despite our initial infatuation with one another there is nothing even mildly romantic between us now. And let's face it - I like a guy with a childlike/playful streak, but I also need him to keep a clean house. I am too old and too tired to let somebody's dirty dishes get my goat. Messiness kills the romance, fo shiz. No girl wants to experience a night of warm monkey love and then wake up to a pile of laundry and dirty dishes on the dresser. (And if she does, she belongs on Springer, and god help her.)

And guys - seriously - if there's one easy, painless thing you can do to keep your women happy, it's doing the dishes. No stacking them on coffee tables, no soaking them overnight, no leaving them in the sink when the dishwasher is just inches away. Please. To create lasting harmony in your home, simply clean up after yourself when you have finished eating. Dirty dishes on their own are benign, but unbeknownst to you, dirty dishes can often communicate this message: "I don't care." And that message - given the right situation - might lead your woman down an emotional path that I guarantee you don't want her to take.

You'll thank me for this later. Trust me.

ps: Do I seem crabby lately? More ornery than usual? I haven't had nookie since October. I think it's beginning to affect my attitude. Shaka.