Hark, Hark, the Dog Do Bark...at 3 a.m.

Urgle. No, I realize that 'urgle' is not a word, but it is just about the only sound I am capable of making at this time.

I went to bed last night at around midnight. We've got a million things going on, and my full attention is demanded. I had my twice-monthly Knights of Columbus meeting, where I found out that everyone else is having the same problems recruiting volunteers to shake the can and give out Tootsie Rolls in front of stores as I have been having. Seems this is just a bad year for volunteerism or something.

Worse, we found out that Food Lion grocery stores have suddenly discovered that they have a problem with letting the Knights stand in front of their stores. They've allowed it for a gazillion years, but now for some reason, no dice. We have to submit a written request six months in advance, and even if permission is given, it will only be for one single Saturday, not Wednesday through Sunday of one week per year. So that kind of sucks. We shop for groceries at Food Lion. I guess maybe now we don't. There's always Piggly-Wiggly.

So anyway, I get home and I'm tired and I have to do a bunch of stuff on the computer - and I'm having hard drive problems all of a sudden on one of my old drives. And I have vacation coming up - we're supposed to take a trip to Gettysburg, PA in two weeks. So I'm trying to get ready for that as well.

And my photo club wanted me to email them some photos from Monday's meeting, since we have a member who got called up by the military and is now in Germany and wanted to see our smiling faces, so I had that to do.

And I have a friend who lives in Croatia who wants to trade me a huge WWII-era camera lens from a bomber airplane for a Soviet-made rangefinder camera from Kiev, and I have to complete that deal.

And a good friend whom I used to work with asked me to dig into my records from 2002 and find a contact name of a company that I did some work for back then, which I am trying to find in my fractured hard drive.

And finally, Mrs. Wiggy found out yesterday that she needs surgery on her knee - what she thought was maybe just some arthritis turned out to be a torn meniscus. She is intending to tough it out for our vacation, but then she will need to take three days off while she recuperates from the arthroscopic surgery.

And my mother-in-law and brother-in-law are arriving for a visit on Saturday. Of course, I won't be able to pick them up at the airport, I'll be giving out Tootsie Rolls instead of my brother Knights who are all mysteriously 'out of town' this week.

Can you say 'stressed out'? The Wigster's wig is stretched a bit taut, my droogies. Snap, snap, snap. That's my brain cells demanding beer.

So getting back to last night...

As I said, I got to bed a bit late. Say around 12:30 or so.

At 3 in the blessed a.m., Milo (the 11-month old boy puppy) began to bark. Mrs. Wiggy (bless her) got up to see what was the matter. Milo chose to become taciturn and did not reveal the source of his amusement, distress, or whatever it was that drove him to choose to attempt the Milo mind-meld method of communication by bark in the middle of the night. Mrs. Wiggy calmed the lad and came back to bed.

At 3:30, (or, as we used to say in the military, "oh-dark-thirty"), he started up again. I got up and stumbled downstairs. Folks, I keep loaded guns in the house. If I were as unstable as I sometimes think I am, the lesson would have ended badly at this point. Apparently, I am more sane than I often think I am.

Milo greeted me with great enthusiasm, as did his sister Molly. They were both trying to explode out of their crates, so I let them out, and was promptly tackled and covered in doggy slobber and great excited kisses. Well, it's good that they love us, anyway. If you ever feel unloved, get a dog. That's what they do - love people. And eat your linoleum floor, but that's a small expensive price to pay, right? Right? Ah well.

Then Milo ran for the back door and began jumping on it. I got the message, he needed to go outside. Ah.

Typically, we let Milo and Molly out in the evening around 9 or 9:30 for the last time, to do their bidness and get their remaining energy burned off. Then we put them in their dens and they are good until about 5:30 in the morning, when they wake us up by whining. Well, I guessed that Milo had chosen not to do what nature intended and was now doing the pee-pee dance inside his den. OK, fair enough. I turned off the alarm system and let him out.

He did indeed run out into the backyard and do, um, what I implied he needed to do. Then he ran back up to me and wanted to be let in. Elapsed time - 30 seconds. Sigh. All this sturm und drang for 30 seconds.

I let him in and put him back in his den. I reset the alarm and prepared to go back upstairs.

Bark. Bark, bark, bark. BARK!

Now what? My bleary noggin was throbbin'. This dog was going to be the death of me.

I trudged over to his den and tried to discern, by doggie ESP, what on earth his major malfunction might happen to be. Milo looked searchingly into my eyes and barked again. So much for meaningful dialog.

Sigh. OK, open the dog den, turn off the alarm, open the back door. Milo raced out at warp speed.

At this point, I don't want to be too graphic. He, um, assumed a hunkering position, ok? You know what I mean. Great. Here I am, oh-dark-thirty, in my bathrobe, sitting on the back steps, watching a dog squeeze one out in the back yard.

My life is grand. A cheerful, happy thing, that's my life. Like a sunny field full of wildflowers and a babbling brook running through it, and oh look, over there is a tiny delicate fawn, nibbling at the ivy. And then GWAR comes thundering in with monster trucks and nitro-burning funnycars and flame throwers and they roast Bambi and eat her and it makes them sick and they yack all over my blissed-out field of smoldering stinkweeds, while I sit on my back porch, stunned and amazed.

I'm thinking to myself - there are people sleeping right now. Blissful, happy, deep, dark, sleep. But such is not for me. As RiffRaff from Rocky Horror would put it, "The darkness must go, down the river of night's dreaming." Others dream in Morpheus' tender embrace right now; whereas, I, I sit on cold concrete steps and watch a dog poop. What's wrong with my life?

[RANT]
I mean, where did I go wrong? Was there a line like when you sign up for your classes in college, you stand in line for hours and get told that Algebra 101 is full, so you sign up for Geometry even though you don't have the prerequisites, but that's full too so you end up with four lunches, Comparative Russian Lit, and Bonehead English for Illiterates, and it's not like your English instructor doesn't speak English himself, but his last name has four M's, two Z's and a silent freaking Q in it, for God's sake, and he tells you he likes to eat 'sneakers' and it takes you ten minutes to figure out he means he likes 'Snickers' candy bars. Did I miss the line for the nice normal life and sign up for the circus by mistake? Were the normal lives all taken, and all that was left was a slightly dented life where I narrowly escape having a net dropped on me for several decades, get fat, lose my hair, and then watch a dog poop at 3:30 in the morning? Is that it?
[/RANT]

Oh, but we're not finished with this saga. Not by a long shot. I mean, it would not be my Wiggy life if things were this simple.

Seems that Milo was unable to perform as nature intended in the hunkering down and shivering one out department. He looked downright apologetic. Turned around and sniffed the spot which he had selected to receive his federal budget statement. I nearly laughed. Sorry dog, you're not going to find anything there, I'm ashamed to say that I was watching, so I'd know.

He then took a few steps towards me and hunkered down again, with a very concerned look on his doggy face. Now I was starting to get worried too. I've heard of dogs having twisted intestines and so on, this could be a Bad Thing requiring huge vet bills to repair and so on. So now, I'm rooting for the dog like some people cheer on their favorite NASCAR driver around these parts. "Come on Milo, you can do it!" Dear Lord, I shudder even now to think of that moment.

I mean, winos who wake up in a cardboard box under a bridge next to the river, covered in their own filth, can honestly say, "Well, at least I never cheered on a dog trying to take a poo in the middle of the freaking night." How bad is that? Winos and drug addicts would listen to my story, shake their lice-covered heads, and say "I dunno, you're a freak, man." That's bad.

Tom Waits wouldn't write a song about this story - he'd say it was too depressing, ya know? Tom Waits, people. Tom Waits. Whimper.

But my cheering on the dog didn't help. He was having no luck in that department. I'm thinking maybe there is some doggy equivalent of Ex-Lax that we could give him - God help us if it begins to work while we're both at work ourselves. That there would be a fine welcome home, eh? Twenty-foot long trail of tears, steaming unhappy chocolate festooning the half-eaten linoleum floors of the kitchen and smeared up the walls like something from "The Shining." Let's not go there.

Milo then did something I have never seen a dog do. He leaned against the wall of our garage, hunkered down while leaning over to one side, and stared at me from across the yard as he strained mightily. And he was rewarded this time - not with the expected, but rather with a long, loud, twenty-second fart.

I know dogs fart, ok? When they were both tiny puppies and we'd give them peanut-butter chewies, they'd clear the danged room. But we didn't hear them do it. I've never heard a dog fart before. And especially not like this. I'm a big huge manly man, and that was a toot to be proud of, I'm telling ya. Like a trumpet, it was.

Milo had the strangest expression on his face while this was happening. He was looking right at me, and I swear, his face wore an expression of both amazement and concern - like he was wondering if he was going to take off like a rocket and fly around the back yard or something. Frankly, I am guessing I would not have been shocked if he had lifted off briefly. Ah, Houston, we have a problem.

Immediately after the ... event, Milo came trotting over to me like nothing happened. He was obviously relieved and relaxed, and he wanted to be let in now. I stood up, let him in, reset the alarm again, and put him back in his den.

Since I was somewhat concerned that we weren't done with the evening's festivities, I decided to just sit down on the couch and await further developments. There were none, and I fell asleep there in a sitting position, which is where Mrs. Wiggy found me this morning when she came downstairs to make the coffee.

I am now at work. I have coffee, and I think I may be able to get through the day somehow. Directly after work, I have to go over to the Lowe's to put on my funny apron and shake my change can until 9 p.m. - I'm going to be a tired puppy myself later on. Not sure where 'dinner' plays into this, but I'll have to figure out something.

I told a few co-workers this story. They're used to my wiggedy bizarre life, and they just laugh and shake their heads. One of them asked me, "Is this the kind of life you were thinking of when you decided to quit your job, move to the country, buy a house, and get a couple of dogs?"

And I have to say, on reflection, that no, this is not what I had in mind. I never saw Sheriff Andy Taylor sitting on his back steps at oh-dark-thirty, waiting on Opie to finish farting so he could fall asleep on the couch and wait for Aunt Bee to make him coffee. I must have missed that episode of "Mayberry, RFD."

Remain Calm,

Wiggy