Note: The events described in this post actually went down last week, but I didn’t get a chance to publish it before our family camping trip, so here it is now.

Okay. This post is a total vent. So feel free to bail right now if you don’t wanna hear me bellyache. Oh. And if you have a weak stomach, you’re seriously in the wrong place. Leave. Immediately. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So I get home from work a couple of days ago, and I smell something that’s all too familiar in my household.

“Honey,” I said to Caroline, “does Luke need a diaper?”

“Nope. I just changed him.”

Good enough for me. On to the next thing which was taking taking Briggs out for a walk, a chore, it seemed, that was well timed in that I could hear him barking from his crate clear across the house.

“I’m gonna deal with my hound,” I said to Caroline. “Sounds like he might need to go out.”

“I think he’s just barking because he heard you come in,” Caroline said. “I just took him out an hour or two ago.”

“So he’s good?”

“He’s good.”

Good enough for me. On to the next thing which was driving Alli to swim practice. Upon my return, I entered the same door to the same smell and repeated the same question I’d posed earlier to the same woman who gave me the same answer.

Luke did not need a diaper.

Good enough for me. On to the next thing which was figuring out what time the Celtics game started because after getting through the witching hour, I’d planned on doing something I rarely get to do: sit on my ass and watch sports uninterrupted for an hour or two.

I know. Decadent.

As I poked around the Internet to see what time the game tipped, Caroline went back to our room, returning shortly thereafter, her face colorless and void of any expression, her eyes glossed over and looking right through me.

“What’s up?”

“You need to go in there,” she said, pointing toward the bedroom.

Two thoughts:

Wonder what it is? and How bad could it be?

Two answers:

You don’t wanna know and Way worse than I thought.

So, again, weak stomach folks, get off here. It’s your very last warning. Because I’m about to tell you how Briggs, confined to a crate on account of his torn ACL, a crate which resides in our bedroom, had taken the second or third biggest shit of all times, which, incidentally, explained the diaper smell I’d detected clear across the entire house. Only there at ground zero, our room did not smell like a dirty diaper as the intensity had picked up several-hundred fold. No, our room smelled as if it had been magically transported to the inside of our dog’s ass.

Upon further examination, Briggs had trampled in said shit with all four feet. He’d also somehow gotten it all over his e-collar, too, which suddenly gave an entirely new and more profound meaning to the term “cone of shame,” as while there’s very little dignity in wearing an inverted dunce cap around your neck, there’s simply no dignity whatsoever in wearing one that’s been smeared in shit.

Particularly if it’s your own.

Don’t worry. Caroline and I are still married. I didn’t leave her for her colossal FAIL in allowing this situation to occur. You know, given that she’d taken him out an hour or two prior. And she didn’t leave me on account of my “dumbass dog” creating such a, um, stink.

To help you fully appreciate the situation, I thought it’d be handy to provide the following list of the logistics from that point, as well as some thoughts that occurred to me as I negotiated those logistics.

1) Unless I wanted paw-shaped shit stamps all over our carpet, Briggs had to be carried outside.

2) Briggs’ body was caked in shit.

3) If you do the math real quick, you’ll understand why I took off my shirt to carry him.

4) And why I dry heaved twice along the way.

5) Briggs’ crate was peppered with his robust effort.

6) Never underestimate the usefulness of Clorox Wipes.

7) Or a hose.

8. ) Even so, Operation Crate Clean Up required complete disassembly of said crate for those stubborn, hard-to-reach corners.

9) Once the crate was clean, there was still the matter of my dog.

10) Did I mention that Briggs isn’t allowed to get the staples in his leg wet?

11) It’s hard to sponge bath a gimpy dog whose strapped to your bumper and hopped up on pain meds.

12) Harder, still, to look cool while doing it.

13) Yet not as hard as unstrapping the cone of shame without touching any part of the murky saliva/shit combo that rolls about within.

14) Once all that was done, there was still the matter of the carpet in our room — specifically that area which served as the perimeter of the crate.

15) Though we did all we could that night, we relied upon carpet-cleaning professionals to officially remedy the situation.

16) The entire episode took nearly four hours to resolve (not counting the professional carpet cleaning part which went down this past weekend while we were away on a family camping trip).

17) Which means I saw ZERO of the Celtics-Sixers game.

18) We (obviously) threw away any rag that had anything to do with the matter.

19) Our rag collection has been reduced by two-thirds of the pre-shit-debacle number.

20) Remember this tale (no pun intended) the next time you think you’re having a shitty day (pun intended and it was a really, really bad one).

21) I’m so sorry for this post.

22) Poor Briggs. We can’t wait for him to get back to his good old self.

Photo Credit

The following post is sponsored by Philips Norelco, which provided me with two products for review and also compensated me for my time. The following post is also proof that it’s always best to have an extra layer of protection if you’re prone to, oh, I dunno, having like 15 kids. All opinions expressed are 100% mine.

I know. You think that Philips Norelco is a highly esteemed manufacturer of men’s grooming products. A lot of people do. But I’m pretty sure they’re dabbling in the birth control industry.

And I’m no stranger to birth control, you know, what with my recent vasectomy and all. Not the most pleasant thing in the world. I mean, there’s the procedure itself, which is pretty intense. Then there’s the whole sitting-on-a-bag-of-frozen-peas deal as you watch a marathon of horrendous movies while hopped up on enough opiates to somehow make you cry at the end of Home Alone. (What? It’s a tender reunion between an abandoned, vulnerable little boy and the mother who never meant to leave him.)

And don’t even get me started on the sample-check deal. You know about that, right? When you have to bring back a plastic container filled with a sample of your, you know, to make sure that the procedure worked? Talk about an esteem crusher. Seriously, how’s that supposed to go down?

I mean, if you simply carry the “sample” in your hands, you feel like some kind of freak. Brown-bagging it seems a bit prohibition-y for my taste. And if you transport it in a small cooler, you run the risk of coming off like a cryogenics enthusiast.

And it’s not like you can just drop it off without saying a word before heading directly to your therapist’s office. NO. That’d be way too prudent rude, which means, like it or not, you’re in for an impossibly awkward conversation.

Seriously, what are you supposed to say? Hi there. I’ve ejaculated into this small plastic container per your request. So whaddya say, Puddin’? Is this cowboy shooting blanks, or no? I usually handle awkward moments with humor, but try as I did, I just couldn’t bring myself to point to the plastic container and ask Has one of your clients ever filled this damn thing up?

Yeah, talk about a maze of therapy-inducing scenarios. Even so, yours truly negotiated said maze and came out on the other side (relatively) unscathed. And now Philips Norelco is rendering that hard work absolutely useless, at least for the next little while, as they’ve asked me to grow a beard in honor of the Stanley Cup playoffs. And I look like an idiot with a beard. It’s just not me. Kinda like if Caillou ever tried to go all Billy Badass or something.

Caroline hates it. And who can blame her. I mean, ladies, how would you like it if your man grew a beard that looked like a random assortment of bristly-ass and splotchy possum hairs on his face? Did I mention that virtually every bit of it is gray? So not only do I look like a dork, but a much older dork at that.

If you do the math real quick, you know what you get? ZERO. Which is the exact chance I stand of getting lucky with my wife while rocking this possum-on-chemo look. Which, in turn, is why I contend that Philips Norelco is doubling as a birth-control manufacturer.

But they also make men’s grooming products. And I know this for a fact because they’ve sent me their Vacuum Stubble and Beard Trimmer Pro designed specifically for possums folks like me who can’t go all Grizzly Adams out of nowhere.

You know who can go all Grizzly Adams out of nowhere? NHL players. And many of them are doing just that right now during the post season. The NHL hockey playoff beard is an extremely cool tradition. I love how so many fans follow suit by saying no to the blade and growing a beard of their own which they’ll sport until their team finally loses. My team, the Predators, are already out (nice run, though – GO PREDS!) but I’ll be growing my beard, anyway, thanks to this campaign, and I won’t shave it off until Lord Stanley’s Cup is finally claimed.

So if you or a friend / boyfriend / husband is in the same playoff-beard boat, I’ve got a tip for you. (NO! I won’t tell you how I handled the drop-off conversation. I’m pretty sure I blocked it out, anyway…) Say no to the blade and go out and get a Philips Norelco Vacuum Stubble and Beard Trimmer so you can shape your beard up in style while you watch your team skate to a championship.

Quick footnote – Caroline, out of nowhere, is following the Stanley Cup playoffs. Turns out she’s hoping every series is a sweep so my beard gets shaved sooner rather than later.

Well, honey, I hate to burst your bubble, but the Finals don’t even start until May 30, and there’s not been a Finals sweep since 98. So you might be stuck with this thing for a while.

Good thing I’ve got that beard trimmer, because all in all? I’m actually looking pretty tight, y’all. (For a sick possum.) It’s easy to use, and has several different settings which make it easy to dial back the length to a point where I can force it to grow more evenly. I’ll be sure to provide photographic evidence of my beard as the playoffs draw to a close. I need a bit more time for this thing to come in before I’m ready to go public!

Special thanks to Philips Norelco for this fun opportunity!

So, Briggs had his surgery and he’s totally good. With the exception that he’s confined to a crate for eight weeks and will need quite a bit of care during that time. He’s also wearing the cone of shame. And he’s not allowed off of his leash even when he’s using the bathroom. And he’s on a bunch of medicine. While it’s gone as well as it could to this point, and while I’m thankful that I’ve gotten this chance to be able to love on him so much, one thing’s for sure:

Boy are we ever the wrong family to have a dog in such a constant state of need.

Our mornings have gone from chaotic-but-manageable to sitcom-funny in the blink of an eye. Still, nothing we won’t gladly endure for our faithful hound. I posted something on Babble a few days ago that recounts a few of my favorite Briggs stories and concludes with some pictures of him through the years. Take a peek by clicking HERE.

Also — you know what question I get a lot? What do you use to make your home movies? It all begins and ends with the camera I use — the Sony HD HandyCam. I was recently asked to take part in a series of sponsored posts over at Babble about the HandyCam. One cool thing is that you’ll be eligible to win one (I think they’re like $650 or something)  by commenting on any of the Sony posts on Babble (including mine) and answering the following question: What’s your favorite family memory?

So if you’d like to check that out and maybe even give yourself a chance to win by leaving a comment then click HERE.

Per NPR’s rules, each story had to begin with the exact same sentence (right down to the unnecessary comma). I think the sentence totally sucks, but, again, I had to begin my story with it, so when you read it, just know that it wasn’t mine.

Anyway, my story’s only 597 words, so it won’t take you very long to read. In fact, it should only take you (get this) 3 minutes. I had been calling it Each Other, but a close friend came up with another title I kinda like: The Hand You Were Dealt. So I don’t know what I’m calling it. If you think of something that you feel is better than either one of those, I’m all “ears,” so just leave a comment.

Here it is.

* * *

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. But not before glancing back to make sure she’d marked her place. The black thread peeking through the gold confirmed she had. Luke’s story of forgiveness would wait for her return.

“You’re late,” the manager said from his seat beside the curtain.

“Sandra ran over. I could tell from the music.”

“You were reading again, weren’t you?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Just kind of a weird place to do it.”

“Not to me.”

Onstage, she hoisted herself as high as she could go, then leaned all the way back, her legs in a figure four, the chill of stainless steel at odds with the dark mustiness. She surveyed the upside-down audience to find it wasn’t very crowded, especially for a Saturday. Mostly regulars, including the man in the fedora.

He’d been coming for weeks, paying the other dancers no attention. He seemed to have eyes for her alone, though he never stared too long before casting them downward and hiding behind the brim of his hat. She was certain he’d eventually approach, but she was wrong. All he ever did was watch from afar, that night from a table near a group of rowdy college kids.

During her last number, two of the frat boys came to the stage, youthful faces she first saw through her legs, while flat on her back, when thigh-high leather fell to either side like old-fashioned windshield wipers. Their greedy eyes scanned every part of her body as if taking inventory. And thus, a marketplace emerged.

Soon they’d decide how much she was worth.

She used to be ashamed of that moment, until her skin grew thick with the knowledge that survival knows no shame. Sorrow, yes. Regret, too. But shame? Never. Besides, this place had always been her destiny. Every last road from her miserable childhood led here.

The market yielded four dollars, singles she stuck in the garter above her boot while the man regarded her from beneath his hat. He took it off and placed it over his heart, then smiled as he put it back on.

“That your girlfriend, mister?” one of the frat boys asked. The man didn’t answer.

“Because she’s a whore,” he said to the amusement of his friends.

The man stood and without hesitation or ceremony slammed his fist on their table, the impact toppling their drinks and silencing their laughter. He pointed at the boy with the smart mouth with the only finger that graced his left hand.

“Who made you judge?”

Before last call, she sat down beside the man in the fedora and thanked him for defending her honor, joking that there wasn’t very much to defend.

“That’s not true.”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

“Yes it does,” he said. “And so do you.”

They sat for a moment.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Nothing. I was born like this.”

She nodded, then took a long drag off her cigarette. “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”

It was him she thought of in her dressing room when she opened the book to the black thread and read the rice-paper pages that were soon pocked with tears.

Hours later, a congregation sat before a pastor who stood with uncommon grace. “Why do we lead with judgment instead of compassion?” he said. “It reminds me of a passage from the book of Luke.”

He opened his Bible and began reading at chapter 7, verse 36, tracing the words with the only finger that graced his left hand.

* * *

So there you go. Hope you liked it. There were 6,000+ entries this time, and my story, unfortunately, wasn’t one of the 20 or so they featured. But I’ve got a built in excuse — NPR had to be mindful of their sponsors, and they decided that a story of this sort might not go over well with them what with the word “whore” and the concept of preachers going to strip clubs and all. Plus, they knew there was no “win” here. They’d get attacked from all sides. Some would consider the author a misogynist, while others would believe he was a heathen hell bent to take down the church. Neither, of course, is true. I’m just stuck in the middle with you.

So, yeah. That’s why it didn’t make the cut.

That, OR it just wasn’t good enough! Here’s a link to the winner, and from there you can check out some of the other stories that NPR highlighted. I thought the winning story was compelling, but it wasn’t my favorite of the finalists. I particularly liked Heavy and Exit was great, too.

Did you enter? Because if so, I’d love to read yours. Hit me up with a link.

Photo Credit

The whole deal has really thrown me for a loop. It’s pointless to try and explain why — in fact, I’m not 100% certain I understand, myself. Or, actually, maybe I do understand, and I’m just ashamed.

A friend emailed and asked: What happens when your dog tears his ACL?

What happens, I answered, is you’ll shell out three bingos and your dog’ll go under the knife.

OH. And your four-year-old boys’ll wanna go to the vet with you, only the trip’ll turn into a dark one when they see Daddy’s eyes gloss over with an emotion they can’t quite place when he hears the news he’d predicted. And they’ll do their best not to cry, but they’ll get a bit misty.

And you will, too, because when you get down on the cold, tile floor to hug your dog one last time before he’s taken back to be prepped for surgery, he’ll lick your face like he’s not done since he was a puppy, as if to say Despite the fact that a wife and five kids have pushed me from the fore of your consciousness, you’ve never once, not even for an instant, been pushed from the fore of mine, which’ll make you flash back to the time when you decided to become a newcomer to the hometown you thought you’d left for good, a super-fucking broken newcomer in the complicated aftermath of the death of your dad, compounded still by having intentionally blown up a lucrative white-collar career because of a nebulous and difficult-to-articulate set of ideals, armed only with a pile of cash you’d worked hard to attain and some pipe dream about becoming a writer, whatever the hell that meant, and how, during that time, a little brown puppy with a fuzzy crinkle on the bridge of his chocolate-colored nose somehow made everything okay, which’ll make you wonder how in the world it is that you could have ever taken a creature capable of such healing, capable of such steadfast and unconditional love for granted while random images pop into your mind, like the way he rode shotgun and poked his head out the sunroof and looked at the dam as you drove through the gap, or how he curled right beside you as you lay in your tent beneath the canopy of stars that shone dimly through your rainfly, basking you in a soft light that lulled you to sleep on one of the countless nights that littered the era in which camping with your dog wasn’t something that required permission.

You’ll come home from the episode downtrodden and tired, and you’ll wonder if you’re visibly upset as your four-year-old daughter runs outside to meet you before you’ve even gotten to the five large flagstones which bridge your driveway to the side door, and you’ll stand on the first of those stones and feel the warmth emanating from the sun-drenched rock, and the sensation’ll comfort you until you notice the tears streaming down your little girl’s face which’ll prompt you to open the arms she instinctively seeks, and you’ll listen helplessly once she’s jumped safely into them as she tells you in her sob-stuttered voice that all she wants is for Briggsie to come home, this, from the girl who seemingly thinks his name is Move Briggs as often as she’s bellyached about his well-intended shadowing, which’ll prompt you to ask her if she knows what taking something for granted means, and she’ll say no, and you’ll think, Well, hell, how could she if I don’t even know what it means, though you won’t say that as instead you’ll explain that it’s what you’ve all been doing to Briggs, at which point your two other triplets and your ten-year-old daughter will sit down with you and the little girl in the keeping room, where Briggs would normally have been, and you’ll all discuss this business of taking things for granted and how your faithful brown hound deserves so much better and you’ll all vow to never do that to him again, and your baby’ll be there, too, agreeing with this group decision, or so you’ll gather by the squeak he makes with his plastic giraffe, the very noise that makes Briggs point his gray-whiskered chin straight to the heavens as he forces a comical howl out of the tiny O his pursed lips have unknowingly made, which is exactly when it dawns on you how interconnected it all is, making you wonder if you would have ever found your family, if the triplets and Luke would even be alive without the silent canine council of yesteryear which you seemingly discounted if not discarded entirely once all was well.

Briggs’ll be fine, but he’ll need to take it easy for a while. We can’t wait for him to come home, though. Because the next eight weeks? They’re gonna be all about him for once.

Just like old times, no?

No problem, right? I mean, “that guy” has been there before, so just dust off a bit of charm and see what happens, right?

Wrong. Because Caroline was a single mom.

[Read More at BabbleVoice by clicking HERE]

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. Especially you, Caroline. We love you SO much.

It’s funny — the triplets hardly even seemed to notice Briggs. But Luke? He’s all about my faithful hound. I suspect that’s because we’re always so full-steam-ahead dealing with our domestic chaos that Luke is often left to his own devices. And that’s a boat Briggs has found himself in a time or two, as well. All of this to say that I think that Briggs and Luke are developing a bond, and it’s been awfully fun to watch.

So, yeah, I guess that kinda how I stumbled upon this topic, which, you should know, is heavy on Luke pictures. Click HERE to read over at BabbleVoices.

I put something up on Babble today that kinda tickled me, primarily because it’s one of those JCO / Caroline banter deals that’s akin to watching a really good tennis rally. Check it out if you have time, but before / as you do, ponder the following riddle:

If Caroline really wants my help, then why does she put so many qualifications on it?

Click HERE to read the post on BabbleVoices.

Over the course of the past five or six years, a friend and I have been slowly but surely knocking out sections of the Appalachian Trail. Our goal is to complete the entire 2,181 miles. Last week, we finally completed the “southern leg” of the Appalachian Trail which means we’ve hiked (not in order) every step of the way from Springer Mountain to Damascus, VA–some 460 miles. If we average 100 miles per year (which we have been the past four or five trips), then we’ll finish the trail when we’re close to 60 years old–a patient man’s goal, for certain.

Within the next week, I may post a  more-detailed account of our latest trip, a three-day, rain-soaked journey which began at Unicoi Gap and ended 52 miles south at Springer Mountain. Until then, however, I thought I’d post a three-minute video of our trek for anyone interested. A constant cloud-like mist accompanied us almost the entire way, so we were short on breathtaking views. Even so, this may have been my favorite trip yet, as my friend and I were more efficient than ever, relying on our experience, perseverance and gear to make quick work of our aggressive goal (finished a half day early!) all while staying (relatively) dry, the latter, quite an accomplishment, indeed, given what the other hikers looked like! Here’s the video: