Every. Single. Night.
I’m laying on the couch finalizing home inspection reports when I feel a disturbance in the force just to my right. I don’t even have to look to know what causes such trepidation to trouble my soul:
It’s Charlie.
When she decides it’s time for a licking session, there is no stopping her, but she’s way too canny to make her move all at once; she does every thing in threes.
I have no one to blame but myself, as I have said for years that everything happens in threes, and I guess she’s been listening; you can travel the world with three pairs of underwear and three pairs of socks. If we ever had a mishap at work, an accident or what have you, we could not rest easy until two more incidents happened to complete the cycle.
So how does Charlie enact her Tongue lashing Trifecta? Act 1 starts by her easing up onto my right side and lathering my face with canine sputum. And not just my face; ears, fivehead(like a forehead, only larger), nostrils, eyes, the whole ball of wax, so to speak. This goes on until she senses that I am about to asphyxiate and demand to be set free. It is at this critical moment that she heaves her massive bulk directly onto my chest with her elbows on my shoulders; in her special universe, this serves to flip the hourglass and announce the commencement of Act 2.
And the whole licking thing is reenacted with even more vigor, regardless of the fact that she is rewatering real estate that was drenched just moments ago.
I have no idea what internal stopwatch that she hears ticking, but she somehow knows the exact instant when I’m about to howl “NO MAS!” This is when she advances to Act 3, and rolls to my left without missing a lick.
This is not good. Now she is wedged between myself and the back of the couch, and nothing less than an Act of doG and a stick of dynamite will dislodge her. My only recourse is to roll to my right onto the floor; this pleases Mom to no end, as she has been after me to take out the trash or some other menial chore that I like to believe will vanish if I ignore it long enough. I put the “pro” in “procastination”; I am so good at it I should seek sponsorship.
So it’s off to the kitchen I stumble, the inmates clicking along behind me like the Israelites following Moses across the wasteland. But instead of waiting for me to part the Red Sea, they have agreed to compromise and allow me the lesser miracle, the Opening of the Fridge. Then, after substituting the miracle of loaves and fishes with that of cheese and leftovers for the multitude of inmates whose loyalty I must repurchase nightly, I see that the Miracle of the Trash Can has not been realized; I must move quickly, before Mom casts me into outer darkness with weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
(Sigh). They know not a prophet in his own country.
