Another terrible tragedy

Becky from Turtle Creek called me a few minutes ago and asked in a very serious tone how I was doing. Not well, I told her, which is the truth. She has that beautiful South African lilting accent that makes a mourning sadness sound uplifting. "Are you going to be alright?" She asked.

I was having trouble sleeping last night and about 3AM I went downstairs. Because I am incredibly cheap, the front room is very cold, about 47 degrees at 3AM. There were no lights on and I kept kicking shoes, with every step I would feel another shoe under my foot and kick it away. Seemed to me there were shoes everywhere. There are just three of us living in the house now, my young daughter, Professor TMI and me. All of us have only two feet, seems almost impossible that between 3 people this many shoes could be left on one single floor. It was as if someone had left shoes out as some sort of prank. It was not the shoe prank that was bothering me. What was missing was the barking dog. I noticed that as I fell to the floor when I slipped on my daughters skateboard, which I did not find particularly funny.

I did not give the missing dog much thought, I went to the kitchen and noticed what a great job the tiling crew had done on the backsplash around the wash basin. What sort of tip is proper for a tile person? Do you give money? Maybe a six pack of beer? Is that really enough? A case of beer? It is the holiday season after all, but then again, do I want to be sending an alcoholic tile worker out onto the streets with a case of beer? That does not seem responsible at all. I could just give cash, but knowing the ways of the alcoholic, he would be drunk before he left my village. Not wise. Flowers are nice, but he would think I was coming on to him, which would be awkward and unfortunate. When you think about it, in this economy and at the prices he charged, he is lucky to be working, I don't think any sort of tip is really necessary.

Where the hell was the dog? She sleeps in front of the refrigerator, just in case a gang of thugs breaks in, runs upstairs and rapes, kills and then rapes me again, they might get hungry and lord knows, they would not get a thing out of that refrigerator without going through her. I was standing in the kitchen and she was not there, which was completely unusual. I walked into the living room and she was not to be seen. I opened the sliding double doors into the dining room and there, laying in the middle of the black and white tile, which needed to be cleaned by the way, was my dog, dear sweet Beth, on her back, all four legs straight up in the air, dead of an obvious overdose, what looked to be a mix of street level anti-depressants, automobile antifreeze and Axe body spray. Why did she have to take her own life? Why?

Actually she really started to fall apart when a judge recently threw our her lawsuit against Apple Corporation. She had claimed to have invented the Ipad. What was absurd, what she even admitted was the absurd part, she had only invented something called the Mypad, which in all actuality was a pillow on a floor, that she sometime would lay majestically upon. It did not even have a patent. In talks before the case Apple had offered her 17 million dollars to drop the suit, she refused. I guess I should have seen the signs, afternoons watching Springer and Maury, candy for breakfast and even her long term relationship seemed to sour.

Oh well, I thought, I really need to get back to sleep. When I pulled the sliding doors closed she lay peacefully, alone, four legs straight up in the air, as if to say, "take me out of here, away from Apple Computer, away from the anxiety of not knowing if Trademark laws are really enforceable, away from the refrigerator that I never really planned to protect, just take me away, whats that, I seem to have an itch?"

I turned off the lights, made sure the heat was down to 47 and made my way back upstairs at 3:07AM.

"Did you ask if I am going to be alright?" I asked my strangely accented Turtle Creek living friend Becky. "Yeah, I think so."