Pillow Talk, Trash Talk

I believe this blog entry will be interruption free, as the politician from South Carolina is nowhere in the vicinity.

Well, the tapeworm is no longer and Freckles is quite the perky pup. Who knew she was feeling less than 100% over the past few weeks? She's like a new dog--hopping around, smiling, generally looking younger than her years. Here she is wearing some perky potholders. (Some people ask why....I ask, why not?)

I must say that the one pill really did the trick. Nothing has shown up in her poop, quite to my relief and dismay. I mean, really--I thought there would at least be one little piece of something tape-worm-ish, but I guess it really does disintegrate and leave me wanting for something a little more gross than a pile of warm dog poop. (Not that I'm complaining.)

As for the Maytag Neptune top-loading washer, oh dear. The Oprah washer has betrayed us and the wife is on the verge of suicide/homicide (I'm not sure which). It keeps getting stuck at 11 minutes and then refuses to go forward--no spinning, no rinsing, no finishing, no nothing. If you read reviews about this machine, you will see it is not well loved. Of course, if you keep reading reviews of various sorts, you soon learn that the average life of a washing machine is something like five years.

FIVE years! Are you kidding?

We really do live in a disposable society.

Well, the wife is not a professor for nothing. Somehow, some way she figured out that if she stuffs two couch-throw pillows into the washer when it gets stuck at minute 11, it finishes the cycle. Go figure. It goes like this: Throw wash into machine. Run the cycle. Watch machine get stuck with 11 minutes to go. Open lid, throw in two couch pillows. Resume cycle. Watch the cycle complete. If the wife tries to skip the pillow part, the whole thing comes to a crashing halt and she remains stuck on 11.

If you are like me, you are wondering how the hell she came up with that very bizarre way of temporarily solving the washing machine issue. If it were me who came up with this, you might understand. But, her? Hmmm. I guess the most important part is that it works. Thankfully, the service repair man will be here tomorrow....otherwise, our pillows would be toast by the end of the month.


Enough pillow talk; it's trash talk season. I mean football pool trash talk. I love fantasy football. This year, I've somehow managed to get into three different football leagues, so I figure I'll have plenty of time for trash talking. One league is a real-draft-fantasy football league; one is a confidence pool; and, one is a semi-fantasy-no-draft football league. I have possibly the worst-ever drafted team, so I know I'll have plenty of fodder for trash talking. You can't imagine how bad my team is. I can only hope I do better in the other two pools OR that the Gods of Gridiron take pity on me and ensure that all the favorite starting quarterbacks are injured for the majority of the season. I guess it's good that I am more interested in having fun than winning because winning is not exactly on the horizon.

Ah, the weekend after a short week. How stressful this weekend will be depends on three things: (1) what the repair man says; (2) how the Packers do against the Bears; and, (3) how poorly Brett Favre does during his first real game as a Viqueen. Here's hoping the repair man says it's a $25 part, that the Packers win the game (I shudder just saying that, being from Chicago and all, but love before team) and that Brett's throwing arm literally falls off his body. THAT will be a really good weekend.

And tapeworms. No more tapeworms. That'll be the icing on our (cup)cake.