AL PACINO, WILLY and CAROL BURNETT...OR

Just Another Day In Paradise...

It all started simple enough. I normally give Willy  (our Miniature Schnauzer) a bath before I get a bath to wash all the Willy oopy doopy crappy stuff away…he is a dog after all, a dog who does not necessarily like a bath and often leaves a ‘miniature’ disaster after it is all over.  The Hub usually gives him his bath and then I dry him and brush him and then we give him a treat.  Since the Hub is not here…none of that is going to happen and Willy is lucky he even gets a bath. Willy has been having some separation anxiety lately between the Hub being gone and him running off himself for a week. I suppose I should have some complex about all of that by now, but who has time?  Willy will not get 3 inches away from me when I am home and that is what led to the following episode in the life and times of Squirrely Girl:

I finished giving Willy his bath talking all sweet and soothing to him and promising treats when the ordeal is over. Since there was no Hub to take care of him I let him stay in the bathroom with me while I took my shower and wash my hair AND….(this is where the fun begins) try my first ‘neti pot’.

I have had a headache for about two months and no matter where I go or who I listen to they all say the same thing.  It is a sinus headache.  As a matter of fact when I die, no matter if I get killed by some meteor that was thrown from some ticked off Martian because we felt the need to go ‘check out’ their planet; no matter if I do a Thelma and Louise off some canyon; or finally get to fulfill my life bucket list dream of jumping out of an airplane and splatter my body on Hwy. 90..no matter how I die..I want this on my tombstone: “It was a sinus headache.” 

But I trust my friends and I know they only want the best for me and I know they hate it when I have a headache because I am not nice when I have a headache. They said for the sake of all that is good and right in this world, I should try a 'neti pot', they said Carol Burnett was a firm believer in the miraculous healing powers of the 'neti pot' and I love Carol Burnett and I love my friends …so I listened to them and decided I needed to suck some salt water up my nose like Al Pacino snorting up a truckload of cocaine in whatever movie that was…I can’t remember because I just sucked salt water up my nose like Al Pacino snorted cocaine in some movie and my brain is now numb or drowned or dead.  I coughed and spit and spattered and choked and cursed and coughed some more. My low down good for nothing friends said, “oh…it will just go up one side of your nose, go around and come back out the other side of your nose” WRONG..it will run down  the back of your throat and come out your eyeballs. NOTHING came out of my nose…not right then….

That was just the beginning. Poor Willy is wallowing around on the towels trying to dry his poor self off while waiting for me to get out of the shower, wishing he was on Mars while I am snorting salt water. But that can’t happen because after I half drowned myself with the ‘neti pot’ I had to wash my crazy hair. Hair that …well..there are no words to describe my hair. It is sort of like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors…it has its own personality and demands.  One of those demands is that I flip my head over in order to finally rinse out all the shampoo and conditioner, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, unless of course…you have just poured, sniffed, sucked, snorted and otherwise put salt water down and  up your nose.  If you did that particular little procedure five minutes before, what happens is everything tends to come pouring out in massive amounts of goo, snot, tears, and slime.

While I screamed in pain, Willy started barking and howling and I grabbed a towel, tripped myself trying to get out of the tub and fell right on top of him. He yelped, I yelped, he cried, I cried, he howled, I howled louder.  After regaining consciousness, I grabbed a towel to wrap up my soaking wet hair, a roll of toilet paper to blow the ‘salt water’ out of my brains and at last started to feel almost human again. Willy is huddled up in the corner looking at me like this, “Who …dear God… please....who….. tell me who…would leave me alone with you???”  Bless his little pea pickin’ heart.

~Squirrely Girl