The Move

During the three years I've lived at my place, I’ve had a few roommates to alleviate the blow that is a monthly lease payment of fifteen hundred dollars.

If you’re new around here and don’t know much about me, I have three children whom I love more than stripper shoes and vodka.

When Sofia moved out about a year ago, I opted out of yet another roommate in favor of some sanity. The main cause for said decision was my dogs' inability to learn that my bedroom was indeed not a barf or poop zone.

With the roommate gone and house to myself, I decided to give the kids their own room, also known as one large toilet. A week after Sofia packed her things, I attempted “the big move."

Before this story unravels, it’s important to note a few things...

• Because Sofia was moving in with her boyfriend, she had no place to leave her furniture, so I agreed to let her store it at my place.
• Sofia’s “furniture” consisted of a small night stand (which she took) and a twin bed on wheels that could be rolled around easily to any place in the room.
• At the time of “the big move,” there was a husky named Jenka here which I’d rescued from a park where a stranger kissed me and told me I was a good person. You can read about that here.

That night, as I geared for my new venture into sleeping alone, I carried my dogs into their new little “house” and went back to my room for a blissful night of uninterrupted slumber. Of course I knew they were going to put up a fight, but I had obviously underestimated their ability to control me with cuteness.

It was half past eleven, and although my earplugs were in place and my eyes grew heavy with fatigue, their crying and barking was piercing my weak soul.

The clock ticked internally for hours and the more they whined, the stronger my resolve to go to sleep. By two in the morning nothing had changed and I was so exhausted I’d reached zombie mode and that resolve I was so determined to keep had dilapidated into puffs of smoke. I begrudgingly got up and went to their new room, carrying a pillow and some covers.

Soon as I walked in, I laid in Sofia's old bed and commanded my dogs to Go to sleep, God damn it! My dogs celebrated their victory by climbing on the bed with me and making themselves right at home. Because I was squezed in a twin-sized bed with three dogs, you can surely deduce it wasn’t the most comfortable of situations. As Bruno and the gang began snoring soundly all around me, I fumed at my horrible mothering skills and lay in the dark listening to some cats fighting off in the distance.

I looked at my clock for the last time at some point after five. Three hours later, I woke up and realized I was exactly half an hour late to work and in the middle of the empty room. Apparently my dogs had moved so much in their sleep they’d pushed the bed completely out of place.

You know those moments where new mothers find themselves on the verge of tears because the children won't stop crying and everything is a hot mess? That was me, a nervous breakdown of epic proportions taking place and ending all in a matter of sixty seconds.

And then -just like a mother would- I got over myself and went into damage control mode.

I pushed the bed back against the wall in one quick motion and put fresh water in my dog’s bowl. I then ran out of there, changed, brushed my teeth, combed my hair while I used the bathroom, and put on two mismatched earrings unbeknownst to me.

I proceeded to grab a bag of milk and gourmet coffee I'd bought for the office and was almost out the door when I realized Jenka had taken a colossal dump in the middle of the kitchen. As much as I wanted to hurry and get to work by nine, I wasn't about to let that marinate on my kitchen floor for nine hours. Quickly, I grabbed a napkin and picked it up, threw it in a plastic bag, tied a knot, and off I went. On my way out I threw the plastic bag with its poopy contents over the balcony and into the garbage as I hurried on to work.

As I’m driving twenty miles over the speed limit, I thank the heavens for blessing me with no traffic on my way up north. It seemed that I wouldn’t be so late after all and I was slowly beginning to breathe easy when something struck me.

Good God it smelled like a rat had been degutted and thrown inside my car while I slept.

I've never really understood why they always have garbage places so close to major highways. But this smell, I couldn't quite pinpoint why it was so different. Jarring to the senses, in fact. What the heck was that?

Turns out that in my rush to flee my place, I'd thrown away the wrong plastic bag. And although a bag sat innocently next to me on the driver’s seat at the time, it didn’t contain milk and mocha flavored coffee.

I still had about thirty minutes of commute time left and there was no way I’d be able to handle the smell of Jenka's monster poop for that long, so against my strict no- polluting beliefs, I grabbed the bag and tossed it out the window.

I don't know, but something tells me the planet will forgive me.