The Talented Mr. Cooper

Typing with paws is a bitch so I'm going to let my mom put some blog entries in here from time to time. The entry below is one of hers....but it's about me, so that's okay. She was having a bad day, but---sigh---I sure had a great time.


Mom Wrote:

The toilet is plugged up. I hate toilets---more specifically I hate new toilets. I never had to deal with plugged up toilets before Don had his stroke and we moved, first into an apartment, then into a brand new home. The apartment wasn’t too bad, they had maintenance and we called them a couple of times a week. I’m maintenance now and we’re on a monthly schedule for fixing plugged up toilets. Had I thought about the fact that we’d have the modern, water saving toilets in our future, I would have taken my old one with me when I sold my house. But I didn’t, so after breakfast I went back to slay the dragon in the bathroom.

Things are going better than I expect them to and I’m thinking I must be honing my plumbing skills and I’m a happy camper…until I go to the bedroom to make the beds. Oh yuck! There on the carpet, in the walk-in closet, is evidence that the dog took a turn at trying to unplug the toilet. “Calegon where are you? I need someone to take me away!” This is one of those ‘damn stroke’ moments that not even a raspberry truffle can fix.

I look around for the guilty party, the one who drags everything illegal into his walk-in cave. I find my sweet little gray poodle sitting on the bed giving me a big brown smile, looking like he just came home from a great adventure. “Pearl diving in a cesspool! Come right on up, all you doggies, lay down your quarters! Canine Adventure Park has a brand new feature! Plenty of pearls left before we flush.”

Canine Adventure Park is getting bigger. They now have: The Car Wash, The Canine Poo Poo Beauty Parlor, The Boys’ Tree Farms, The Outdoor Deck-Jail, and now the fabulous Pearl Diving Tank! Maybe I’ll suggest they need to add Bungee Cord Jogging behind a moving car. Oh, I almost forgot the theme park’s most popular attraction: The Laundry Basket. There used to be a time in my life when finding a pair of purple panties on the living room floor had an entirely different meaning than it does now. Now, it just means that our dear darling dog wants us to see his souvenir from his latest theme park adventure.

Okay, enough gripping about the dear darling dog. I strip the bed of the sheets that were just put on clean yesterday and shove them in the washer. Now, the dog needs a bath, the day before he’s scheduled to see the groomer. I think about canceling that $40 expedition as punishment for Cooper’s trying to change the color of the carpeting in the closet. It’s a good thing I keep a case of Resolve Carpet Cleaning around for times like this. Now, if I could just find a product to wipe the smile off his doggie face; he’s having entirely too much fun today and I’m not in the mood to smile back. I think about going after a roll of tuck tape in the garage and that makes me grin, but there’s probably a law against duck tape on a dog. So, I buck it up and scrub his little face extra hard.

He’s still in the shower when a thought depresses me: I didn’t really fix the toilet all by myself. I was taking partial credit for Mr. Cooper’s talented work.

Jean Riva ©