Icy Exhale

My mother has a little white dog named Emmie.  Excuse me, Emmie Lou except of course when she is in a particularly ”precious” phase of her day, then she is Emmie Lou La Belle.  I am not kidding.  Here’s a picture of her right here.

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I have a monster Pit Bull.  No, that’s a lie.  I have a great big baby head who thinks she’s as small and cute as Emmie Lou La Belle.  I am not even kidding.  Her name is Daisy.  She thinks she lets me sleep on her bed.  She is also kind enough to let Merryweather sleep on her bed, as you can see here.

These two, Emmie Lou and Daisy, are terrible together.  No, they are TER-ble.  You know the difference.  They run around the yard a lot when they go out to tinkle.  Everyone knows sixty-five pound Pit Bulls take dainty little tinkles; Daisy is no exception.

Today, I let the little baby heads outside.  I am wearing a robe and a shower cap.  The shower cap is one of those flimsy plastic ones that can be used to protect perfectly coiffed hair from shower sprinkle or to cover a mass of hair color while it processes.  It’s dual purpose.  Today, it’s about to protect my hair, less than perfectly coiffed, from shower sprinkle.

The baby heads, known as Daisy and Emmie Lou, begin running around the backyard.  No, they more run back and forth like they’re actually going to accomplish something with all that running and barking.  It’s terribly cute.  Well, it would be cute but for all that barking.  Emmie Lou follows Daisy in one direction, Daisy trails behind in the opposite direction.  So there they are, running back and forth when Emmie Lou blips out of existence.

She is just gone.

Daisy keeps running.  “Sorry for ya, Emmie Lou La Belle!”  Says Daisy as she takes a shot across the monkey grass solo.

I notice the conspicuous absence of energy.  I tentatively call, “Emmie?”  Then, more forcefully, “EMMIE!!!”

Like I said, she blipped out of existence.

Then a man with the most charming southern accent hollers, “Yourn leetle dawg thar is over har in tha screet.”

You have got to be kidding me.

I don’t have on underwear, much less pants.

I run into the house while the sixty-five pounder tap dances around my feet.  She knows this is terrible fun that Emmie Lou has wrought.  How exciting!  A journey over the fence!

I’m trembling as I slide into the first pieces of clothes I find, which consists of a pair of dirty jeans, a flimsy shirt that is inside out and a pair of party sandals I must have left in the hallway for just such an occasion.  While I toss all this on and frantically discard my robe, I imagine little Emmie Lou La Belle, terrible as she is, getting smashed by a car going one hundred and ninety miles an hour, as they are prone to do on our neighborhood back streets.

Then I imagine having to call my mom.  Or worse, tell her when she gets home.  My poor little momma’s face wrinkling and crinkling like a wet paper bag.  Tears and snot on her pretty pink peasant skirt, which she forcefully beats into her knees with fists clenched in anguish.  Oh, the horror!

I run into the backyard and with no traction I proceed to hoist myself up one side of the fence.  Once half-way over, I see a gold mini-van careening in our direction.  I look to the left, where Emmie’s tail is making little circles to the clouds as she runs after that pleasant redneck man who just kept on walking his mangy mut without a second’s thought that it might help me if he handed that twelve pound Emmie back OVER THE FENCE!

From the zenith of my perch, I wave this gold mini-van down.  My arms flail and my face is contorted into this abstract look of horror.

The mini-van stops.  The lady with her hot pink yoga mat riding shot-gun waits patiently as I drop down onto the street side of the fence and summon Emmie.

Emmie sees me and proceeds to shrink nine sizes and saunter over to me.  It looks to all spectators that the reason this little dog escaped in the first place is to leave behind all the beatings I issue, personally, upon waking because she is there.  That’s right, folks, Emmie Lou La Belle acts like I beat her and that’s why she ran away.

Nevermind the little monster, I mean baby head, is spoiled as rotten as I was at that age.  No, she’s putting on quite a show.

I pick her up.  I am clenching my teeth and fighting the urge to beat the snot out of her.  It’s like that time I ran out in front of a semi-truck in the Gayfer’s parking lot and my mother threw her purse down in the road and beat my ass right there leaving both me and the truck driver stunned.

The gold mini-van rolls on with a smile and a wave.  The friendly neighborhood redneck has also rolled on.  I am left in the road on the wrong side of my fence.  I am not wearing a bra and I do not have a leash.  I don’t have house keys, for that matter, so walking the ten or so minutes around two subdivisions to get to my front door wouldn’t serve much purpose.

On the other side of the fence, Daisy is incensed.

Emmie is having a wonderful time.  Everyone on our street thinks I beat puppies for a living given how she acted when I retrieved her.  I double-check to make sure I took off the shower cap.  You don’t want to know the answer.

I do the only thing I can do; I shove Emmie Lou La Belle right back through the hole from which she escaped.  Does she want to go, or behave in any sort of way that might make this easy on me?  Nay nay, my friend.  She acts like I’m trying to push her back into the womb of hell.  I know that’s how she got out and that’s how she’s getting back in, though, because I’m going to have to climb this damn fence, again, in party sandals with no traction.

I do not know how this happens, but once on the home side of the fence without a sprained ankle, I stop up the hole to prevent any future escapes.

Everyone is fine, especially Daisy who likes a little excitement every now and then.  The only thing that would have made this any better would be for it to have happened on her birthday.

Now, you may all be wondering what this has to do with yoga, writing or any of the other topics about which I usually write.

Dear Reader, not a damn thing.  This was just too good not to share.  Happy comic relief Friday.