My Beagle is One Large Irony

While my husband and I both love our beagle, when someone asks us if they should get one we both immediately respond with a resounding NO!  He's loud, hyperactive, sheds like a grizzly bear in the springtime, and has resolved to destroy everything in his path.  For every 3 minutes we spend loving him, there's about 30 minutes we spend chasing him around with a broom or forcefully extracting him from under the bed.
There are many ironies that come with owning a beagle.  Let me give you a few examples.
1. If we're on a run or walk, he ABSOLUTELY MUST stop and pee on every single mailbox, trashcan, political sign, stick, groove in the sidewalk, and trunk.  It doesn't matter if there's no more pee coming out.  He'll still stand there with his leg pointed towards the sun for a few seconds.   It makes exercising somewhat...difficult.  But when I take him out at 5:30 in the morning because he's been whining since 5 and it's 45 degrees outside and raining, he must exhaustively smell out each bush and tree until he finds the perfect one.  How dare I expect him to urinate on the first greenish object we come across??
2. Nick and I spend money on extremely solid and bright rubber toys.  (Anything less than an inch thick won't make it through the next hour, which also rules out all cloth toys.  Not only do they not last more than 20 minutes, but the pieces end up all over the carpet.)  Toys that bounce, toys that squeek, toys with special handles for tug-of-war, toys that are supposed to make his breath smell better.  There's a pile in our living room right now.  But no matter how bouncy or squeaky the toy is, he would much rather play with a wine bottle cork, my film containers, or the pen left under the couch.  There are two things in particular that we cannot leave on the floor, because he will destroy them.  The first is my underwear.  Not anyone else's underwear, not my sister's or old roommate's or Nick's, only mine.  And the only part he tears out is the crotch.  (I was going to make some dirty joke relating him and Nick here, but I though my poor mother would have a heart attack.)  The second item is water bottles.  His fascination with water bottles in unexplainable.  If he hears one of us drinking from a bottle he will race over and sit underneath you with a light in his eye and his tail wagging so fast you think he's going to start to fly.
3. Like any other beagle or hound, his nose is the most important thing to him.  When he is in your car he expects you to have the windows down so he can stuff as much as his body out of it.  If you leave the window up, he cries and howls.  When you put the window down, he cries and howls because of all the things I'm not letting him smell.  We terribly scared a nice old couple walking their nice old dog at the beach one day.  Let's just say Rudy really wanted to play.
4. He will only poop if you take him on a walk.  If you're just walking outside our apartment building, he will pee, but never ever poop.  If you don't take him on a walk he poops right next to our bookcase.  When we do take him out on 'adventure' he'll poop three to four times, because he's just been holding it in for the last few days.  We always prepare appropriately and bring many many bags.
5. On the thought of walks, when you're outside with him he's trying to be the full length of the leash away from you.  I walked half a mile once with him only on his back feet because I was trying to get him to walk next to me.  But when Nick and I go to bed at night and we leave him in the hallway, he'll whine and bark and scratch at the door until we let him in.  He would rather be in his cage in our room that free in the rest of the apartment.

And I could go on much longer!  He's a puppy that doesn't make any sense, which may be one of the reasons he'll always have a special place in my heart.

Five Ways Movies and Television Lied to My Husband

1. I'm not sure was Victoria told you her secret was, but I promise that lacy thongs and brassieres are not comfortable. We will never wear them just for kicks. If I had it my way, I would never wear them period.

2. I understand that in a lot of movies, when Hot Guy A picks up Smokin Chick X at a bar, they go back to his place she is always wearing sexy black lingerie under her dress. I'm not sure if this means she went to the bar expecting to get picked up or not, but don't expect that to happen. I'm probably wearing granny panties and a sports bra under my clothes.

3. Your secretary will never be that hot. And I'll never hire a nanny with blonde hair, shorts that show off her tight buns, and a cleavage problem.

4. If you use (insert name brand) shampoo, girls will like you more. Actually, if we edit this one a little, it's not a lie. If you use shampoo, girls will like you more because you won't smell like the rotting food on your nightstand. So I take this one back.

4b. I will never wake up with my hair all curled and pretty and my make-up nice and fresh. When I get out of bed I look like a Steven Tyler raccoon mix. And my breath stinks like I've been eating trash all night.

5. If the world ever ends in a zombie apocalypse (and my husband is pretty determined that it will), you will not suddenly become a Bruce Lee master of zombie killing. You will get us eaten by taking a wrong turn out of the city, trapping us in some desolate barn in the middle of nowhere where the farmer, the farmer's wife, and their thirteen children have all got the hunger for fresh meat.

I Am A Killer Whale

There are quite a few things I like about our apartment.  Since it's new, we are the first people to live in our unit.  There are (fake) wood floors throughout most of the space, which are easy to keep clean and almost look expensive.  It came with all the appliances, including the washer and dryer.  Lord knows I don't have time to lug all of Nick's dirty underwear to my mother's.
Those are the nice things you notice when you get the tour.
But then you move in and begin to spot the smaller stuff.  Like the fact that the floors are crooked.  Our fridge actually leans away from wall.  Or the completely irrational arrangement of cabinets.  Bathroom counter space is so non-existent we had to buy an over-the-toilet organizer.  It was the best part of my week.
The latest annoyance is our continual and completely random lack of hot water.  It just happens every so often.  Of course, we only know it's not working when fifteen minutes into a shower it still feels like you're swimming in the arctic.  I become delirious,  screaming, "I'll never let go, Jack! I'll never let go!"  Wait, that's just Rudy crawling under the shower curtain to eat my loofa.   Nick finally figured out that the breaker was switching itself off.  In the 2 1/2 months that we have lived here, he has had to switch it back eleven times.
I seem to have an all-over bad experience with showers.  (Maybe that's my inner-psych reason for only taking one 3 times a week.  Sorry...TMI.)  I lived in one of the oldest dorms at Ball State, which meant sharing a shower with your entire floor. I never did specific research on the topic, but I'm convinced  people must have averaged about 5'2" at the time they built the dorm, because if I wanted to wash more the just my kneecaps I had to bend in strange ways, limited by the small space there was.  Imagine trying to shave your armpits.
Then I spent a few summers working at a summer camp, where you had to walk to the showers (sometimes quite a distance).  These were the kind with the button, so if you were stuck in the second shower on the right side you had to press it every three seconds in order to receive a steady stream of water.  The temperature of the showers were controlled behind the building, meaning you just had to take what you could get, blisters or frostbite. 
The rest of the time I lived at home, where my younger sister (we'll keep her anonymous and name her Schmemily) is determined to use approximately as much water as God did right after Noah built the ark.  I could be in bed, happily snoring, but if I hear Schmemily heading towards the bathroom I would do whatever it took to get there first.
Even when our hot water at the apartment isn't turned off, the shower never reaches hot, or even lukewarm.  It's just not cold enough to keep the goose bumps off of you.  It's like being in high school gym class again.  Including the part where you're being stared at by the strangely hairy senior girl.  Except it's my husband.
It takes me about 2 minutes to shampoo, condition, and wash my body when it's cold water.  I've become quite the earth-friendly gal.  When I finally do shiver my way out into the bedroom, I mutter something around the likes of, "I'm freezing my buns off in here!"  My husband, suddenly alert from killing zombies with a chainsaw (his new videogame addiction), screams back, "I'll come warm them up for you!"
At least there's one thing that always stays turned on around here.