My current predicament and an Apollo anecdote

I feel disabled. This is quite sad (where sad equals pathetic.) Long ago I came to peace with my addiction to the internet, but only this week did I realize my dependency spreads farther than Firefox and Google. I succeeded in breaking my phone and my digital camera in the course of one week. Because I'm a klutz. Grace is completely absent from my personality. And now I am feeling disconnected and unarmed.

First it was my phone. I drop it frequently for one reason or another. Maybe I don't realize it is on my lap when I get out of the car, so I watch it skid across the pavement like jettisoned waste before I wake up and scurry after it. Or I'm trying to carry too many things and by gravitational law, the most valuable item in my hands is the one that crashes to the ground. The repeated strain on the joint of my flip phone accumulated until one day (while I was using it) it just snapped open, giving it a gruesome-looking dislocation. The wires essential for the phones functionality maintained their connection on the left side, but the right side could come completely out of its socket and just dangle. It continued to work that way for another week or so until last week I was talking to Rob (featured!) He was saying some racially insensitive thing about how quiet the people are in his new building, when I dropped my phone again. One might think I would be more careful with a heightened sense of fragility in my hands, but no. I was trying to peel my bag off of my shoulders when I let the flopping phone slip out of my grip. It crashed to the floor, bounced once and split into two distinct sections in mid air. Those precious cables keeping it alive severed once and for all. I am now going on day 7 without a phone.

And as if that was not enough to shame me into some technological responsibility, I proceeded to cripple our digital camera beyond repair. Go me. I came up with this great idea for a post that involved me taking photos of my walk to and from work. On my way home on photo day, I looked like quite the hipster with my ear buds sprouting from my iPod in my pocket and my camera in hand, snapping pictures every couple minutes. I was too cool for my own good. After taking a photo of something across the street, I snagged my camera hand on the wire draped along my body and inadvertently flung my camera out of my loose grip and onto the sidewalk. And, because the camera was still on and the lens was exposed, it was knocked out of alignment to such a degree that it can no longer collapse back into the body of the camera. And to make matters even worse, the camera refuses to perform any of its functionality whatsoever without the lens working properly. "Lens error. restart camera," it tells me, even in play mode! So much for my clever idea to photograph my trek to the office, I can't even access the pictures I did take at this point.

And now somehow a pictureless blog post seems inadequate. It would be one thing if I had the option of going without pictures. I'd be doing it the old fashioned way merely for fun. But having no choice? Bleh! I feel so limited.

Not all hope is lost. My new LG enV is in the mail. (Did you expect me to come to terms with my material dependency? Bah!) The enV is a camera/phone combo. I'll only have one thing to destroy, this time.

In the meantime, I will share our most recent Apollo story I will title: How Our Dog Destroyed Our Couch While We Slept

A few nights ago we woke up early in the morning to the sound of Apollo licking his feet with untiring resolve. I immediately felt bad for him, assuming he was itchy. He's a neurotic dog, remember. He doesn't handle creepy-crawly discomfort well at all. I swear he will eat right through his skin at the mere suggestion of a flea bite. It is not unusual to hear the jingle jangle of his collar as he pounds away at the back of his ear all night. Nor is it out of the ordinary to hear him lick himself raw for a similar reason. (We do bathe him and treat him with frontline. Please don't call the SPCA on me now.) My assumption of itchyness the other night was not unreasonable. Eventually he either stopped licking, or I managed to tune him out long enough to fall asleep. A few hours later we got out of bed. Andy went to the kitchen ahead of me. I stopped in the living room to look at the couch, it was wet. Really wet. "What the hell happened to the couch?" I yelled out into the kitchen.

"I don't know, but come out here and look at this," Andy shouted back. Not a good sign.

I walked toward the kitchen hesitantly. Nothing was on the floor, the counters seemed clean. Phew. Then I noticed what Andy was pointing at, the pot full of oil we left on the counter. "Wasn't this full last night?" he asked. Why yes, I believe it was. We turned around together to look out into the living room. Apollo was there with that guilty expression on his face, sulking down. He rolled over for us to pet his belly, hoping his irresistible cuteness would put him in the clear.

"That's what he was doing to his feet! He wasn't scratching anything! He was slurping down the oil he slopped all over himself," Andy surmised.

Remembering the couch again, I went back into the living room to inspect it. I pulled the cushions off to find an even bigger mess deep down in the crevice, the no-mans' land of upholstered furniture. That place where remote controls, food scraps and hundreds of dollars in change goes, never to be retrieved again. That is where Apollo decided to throw up all of the peanut oil he had consumed silently in the night. Our precious dog who would not dare get up on the counter by day surfs it for goodies every night. When we forget to clean up after ourselves, he over indulges in whatever forbidden fruit he can get his paws on. When he finds himself feeling ill as a result, he goes to the most comfortable place he can find to expel from his furry little body.

So now our biggest piece of furniture still stands in our living room, smelling like we stole it from the kitchen of McDonald's.

Alas, I promise all of you non-believers, even after this story, living with a dog is completely worth it. I love our little shit kicker. (chapter Night Life, to really get the reference.)