The Strange Saga of the Menstruation Gate

Prologue:
I'm still watching Nate's 'mentally different' dog (see preceding post). That I'm fine with. What I'm not so fine with is that Cheyenne is quickly approaching her special lady-time*, and I have nightmarish visions of my apartment turning into this:
Further complicating the situation is my belief, as a Dogon bushman, that menstruating females are unclean and must be confined to a menstrual hut for the duration of their shedding of the uterine lining. Unfortunately, I couldn't track down a menstrual hut seller on Amazon that was willing to provide free shipping to Chicago, so I opted for a metal baby gate instead, thus transforming my kitchen into a de-facto menstrual hut. I'm praying like fuck that the sky god Amma is okay with that. So, I order the menstruation gate from Amazon and it is scheduled to be delivered on the first of the month. You know what else was scheduled to be delivered on the first of the month? 20+ inches of motherfucking snow, that's what. The parcel was delayed a couple of days, which is completely understandable, even though our street was clear throughout. As of Thursday evening, the UPS tracking info indicates that the package is scheduled to be delivered sometime on Friday. Cool.

Day I (Friday):
Was up and going at 8AM just in case I got a go-getter delivery driver. There were a load of errands to run, but I decided to hang-tough (like a New Kid) and make sure that I didn't miss the UPS guy. I sporadically checked the UPS Track and Confirm status just to make sure that everything was on schedule. When I refreshed the tracking info at 1:30 I got "1:27 P.M. - The customer was not available on the 1st attempt. A 2nd attempt will be made." Dicks! Either they were outright lying, or the sign I had taped to the front door was overly vague:

My feeling on the matter is that if you are unable to decipher that sign, you probably shouldn't be driving.
Screw those guys. I decided that since I wasn't going to get the package, that I should focus on trying to get my Jeep out of the garage in case I had to go and pick it up. It took 30 seconds to get the Jeep out of the garage and an hour getting it dug out and the 10 feet back in**. I was stuck. Now I had to make sure that the menstruation gate was delivered to my door.
I called up the UPS 1-800 number to make sure that the parcel would be redelivered. I got through their automated telephone hell; "If you want to know where your motherfucking parcel is say 'motherfucking parcel'.. I'm sorry I did not get that", only to be transferred to a busy signal THREE FUCKING TIMES.
Okay, this is war.
I prayed to Amma to hold off the bloodworks through the weekend and begun waiting for Monday.

Day II (Monday):
Evidently there had been a 'Super Bowl' of some sort over the weekend, but I hadn't really notice as I had become menstruation gate obsessed. With the weekend gone, I was ready for those fuckers. By 8AM, I had a pot of coffee in me and all of my 'necessities' out of the way. At any time of the day I made sure that I wasn't any further than 50 feet from the doorbell. I spent lengths of time with my forehead pressed up against the window. Waiting... like a crouched panther.. strapped with a thermonuclear bomb. Hell, at one time in the day a doorbell rang in some fucking 1-800-Flowers commercial and I ran downstairs just to be sure. I was running to the window every time I heard a diesel engine passing. Listening. Watching. WAITING. Around 4:30 I caught the UPS truck driving by, and sure enough when I checked the Track and Confirm status it came up as: "4:41 P.M. - The customer was not available on the 1st attempt. A 2nd attempt will be made."
Again? So the were admitting that this was the first attempt and that they were just fucking with me on Friday? And now a 'delivery attempt' involves driving by at 30 MPH? Oh, fuck you guys! It's not like you have to deliver the fucking menstruation gate to some remote fucking fly-speck village in the Mopti region of Niger. I live on a main thoroughfare in one of the largest cities in the United States. C'mon, this shouldn't be too fucking hard, people! Yeesh.
Here's a suggestion; focus less on cheap buzzwords such as "logistics" and work on delivering some motherfucking packages, you brown-short wearing cunts. As for logistics, you suck at it.

Day III (Tuesday):
At this point it's me against the clowns in brown. I'm jacked up on a mix Red Bull and pure hatred which makes me slightly more high-strung than a methed-out chipmunk. I'm waiting... No, I AM waiting personified. To compound matters, they start doing construction on the empty storefront below us, so with every new noise the (not yet menstruating) dog freaks out and I run to the window.
Around noon the doorbell rings. I'm downstairs in 10 seconds flat, swing open the door with an "A-HA!" and scare the hell out of the mailman. I ask him if he's seen any UPS scum in the vicinity. He mutters "Uh-uh", shoves Jenny's catalog order at me, and runs off. I begin to suspect that he's in on the conspiracy, possibly an undercover UPS agent sent to check my alertness.
Around 2PM I catch sight of a box truck in the unloading zone down the street. I run out and stare hatefully at the Snap-On Tools truck that was brazen enough to deceive me. At 3PM I chase a FedEx truck down the street just for the hell of it. Around 4:30 I notice my landlord outside and decide to take a break from pressing my forehead against the window whilst swearing and go down and say "hi". I'm in front of the apartment talking to Jimmy for about 20 minutes... Well, talking for 5 - bitching about those UPS fuckers for 15. I head back up to recheck the order status and get: "4:31 P.M. - The customer was not available on the 2nd attempt. A 3rd attempt will be made."
Okay, let me get this straight: You tried to deliver the parcel to the apartment while I was standing in front of said apartment? Trust me, I would have noticed. Hell, I probably would have run-up and tackled the guy once he stepped on the block. I would have chased a truck down the street swearing, had one driven past while I was out there. You fuckers aren't even trying now. I go upstairs, make another phone call to the UPS not-line, get disconnected again, throw a tantrum, decide to send UPS an e-mail, compose e-mail, get stopped half-way through due to the '500 character' limit, remove all obscenities, finish writing e-mail, notice that I still have several characters left. At this point I AM a burning hatred of UPS.
Around 5:30PM a UPS truck stops across the street and delivers a package. Before he can drive off, I scream "Gimme my menstruation gate, you brown bastards" out the window. The driver looks around, quickly jumps into the truck, and speeds off, I notice (thankfully) that the driver is a white dude.
Around 11PM Dena calls up and asks me if I want to meet up with the Valtrex Squad for some drinks. Fuck it, I need to get the hell out of this place. Jenny agrees and shoos me out the door. I head down to Quencher's - Drink. Then head across the street to The Mutiny - Drink more. By 2AM I'm substantially less crazed and very drunk.

Day IV (Wednesday):
Roll off the couch at 11AM. Mutter something about "UPS cunts" and grab some aspirin for the fucking headache. I make some lunch, and around 1:30PM the doorbell rings. It's my motherfucking menstruation gate; Praise be to Amma! I was so damned surprised that UPS actually bothered to deliver the parcel that I was downright giddy when I saw that brown bastard (yet another white guy). I didn't even care that the package looked like it had been re-routed through Vanuatu - I had that fucker! Later that evening Jenny and I started to put it together. Some pieces were scratched and slightly bent from the shipping, but nothing too serious. Definitely nothing worth sending it back and going through that ordeal again. I actually had it, and then I knew a happiness that can only be known between a man and a menstruation gate.
Here it is in all of its majesty:

Epilogue:
The dog hates it. Actually, it's more of a 'terrified of' than a 'hate', then again, she's terrified of helium-filled balloons so a new gate is bound to be horrifying. I don't care. We're ready for Cheyenne's special lady-time and I don't have to worry about the three week run of her menstrual-show. I'm fine with that.
To top it all off, UPS called in response to my e-mail and woke me up at 9AM this morning. I know it was exactly 9AM because the phone was ringing at the same time the alarm was going off. I was half asleep, so I started to say that I got the parcel and was going to let that be the end of it before the UPS rep foolishly mentioned that UPS had tried to deliver the package several times before I was available and that I was lucky that they allowed an extra delivery for me. I woke up damned quick and gave her the WHOLE bloody story. She seemed disturbed. Very disturbed. I was thoroughly amused by her horror. I win.
---

*Fun Fact: Dogs menstruate twice a year for 3 whole bloody weeks at a fucking time!

**4-wheel drive doesn't work if 3 tires are off the ground and the remaining tire is on a sheet of ice. In fact, 4x4 stands for 4" deeper and 4' further.

Nate's Weird Little Dog -or- How I Missed the DeKalb Townie Christmas Party

It started off as a simple plan:  Head out to the hinterland, get the dog acclimated to new surroundings, run some errands, head out to D-Town, drink festively, return the next morning, head back to Chicago, the end.  Sounds nice, huh? Well this is what really happened:

We've been watching my good friend Nate's dog (pictured above) since September while he and his kids are in the process of moving.  It's a good deal.  Nate doesn't have to worry about the dog and Jenny gets to mollycoddle something other than the X-Box 360.  The dog is super-sweet, but how to put this mildly... um, er... nuttier than a sack of squirrel turds.
So, now Jenny is in Williamsburg, VA for the holidays and I'm home alone with the dog.  The parents were up in Wisconsin, so I figured that I could just take the dog out to their place and use that as my base of operations for some festive wassailing.  I headed out of the city around noon.  Well, noon-twenty. I should have known to end the adventure when it took 20 minutes getting the dog into the back of the Jeep.

I solved that challenge with an elegant flying tackle into shot-put technique after ten straight minutes of creative swearing failed to do the trick.
We got on the road and despite my repeated suggestions the dog insisted on standing for the duration of the trip.  This wouldn't have been a big deal if the traffic hadn't been stop-and-go for the first half of the journey and the dog didn't have the sense of balance of a turnip.  So what happened was: Accelerate - Dog slams into back window, Decelerate - Dog slams into safety gate, Turn - Dog slams into side window/spare tire.  Motorists were actually pointing and laughing, and I began to feel and equal mix of anger and humiliation often reserved exclusively for 14 year-old girls with their families at the beach.  I tried reasoning with the dog and even went so far to try and explain Newton's three laws of motion to her but it was no use.  We finally made it there just as I suspect she was just starting to grasp the concept of linear momentum.
I suspect she grasped the basics of linear momentum, because once I opened up rear door of the Jeep she shot off like a furry missile. FUCK. So I'm running through 2 feet of snow (in Converse) trying just to keep her in my line of sight. After much pleading, cajoling, and a bit of creative swearing I finally got her into the first fence on the far side of the house that wraps around the pool. Her first order of business was to run out to the dead center of the frozen pool and defaecate. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!

Flash forward 10 minutes - I'm exhausted from chasing the dog in a circle around the pool, swearing, and waving a frosty pool skimmer trying to get her to go into the fucking yard. I give up, prop the gate open with a shovel, and head into the garage for a beer.  She finally wanders into the yard, I leap out of the garage, slip on the ice, spill my beer, lunge toward the gate, and slam it shut with an "A-HA, GOTCHA!".
I took her into the yard, set out some water for her (which horrified her beyond description for some reason), and attempted to show her how the doggie door into the (heated) garage worked. I sat there for another 10 minutes sticking my arm through the dog-flap and gently trying to nudge her through it.  It didn't work at all.  Fuck it.

With that ordeal in the rear-view, I unpacked some stuff and focused on some holiday-themed projects such as fishing frozen dog turds off of the pool with aforementioned skimmer, emptying several mouse traps, and affixing my new MP4 Smith & Wesson Q3 tactical flashlight onto my Rock River Arms LAR-15 rifle.  After I finished up my festive tasks, I left the dog out in the yard while I ran into town to pick up another one of my bad-ass machines that was out for repair:

I returned not even 45 minutes later and it looked like the dog had spent the entire time alone trying to jump over/dig under the 5 foot fence.  When I found her she was standing in a hole with her front legs poking through the chain-link fence looking like she was awaiting the sweet embrace of death.  We went inside and I filled up one bowl with food and another with water which she stared at with a look of unbridled horror and ran into the other room wherein she saw a vacuum cleaner which she stared at with a look of unbridled horror and ran into the other room wherein she saw a chair which she stared at with a look of unbridled horror and ran into the other room, etc. (repeat for one hour).
I was starting to suspect that my DeKalb drinking adventure was probably in jeopardy at this point, so I decided that I just make a run to WalMart and call it a night.  What to do with the dog?  I looked around and realized that I could put her in the entry way with her food, water, and a doggie bed.  It was about 8 foot square, so she would have plenty of room, and the doors shut on both ends, so she wouldn't wreak havoc in my absence.  Hell, this was nice enough that I could leave her there later and run to DeKalb, make a showing, have a couple of beers, and come back in time to let her out and go to bed.  I'm a fucking genius.  I left for the store incredibly pleased with myself and picked up some festive items from WalMart such as 4 bags of water-softener salt, Windex, paper towels, sugar-free Red Bull, a carton of Winstons, and a couple boxes of mint tea.
I came home to URINE... and lots of it.  I have no idea how one animal can piss so much.  It was rolling out from under the closed door.  I guess the trick is to miss anything absorbent, as the dog-bed remained unscathed.  I cleaned up that mess, did a few odd-jobs, made myself a sandwich, switched on the Steelers game, and settled down - my hopes of making it out to the party utterly crushed.  I got into the second quarter of the game before I figured out that the dog had planned to spend the entire night wandering around in circles, crying, and being horrified by every item in sight.
Fuck it, I'm going home.
I made good time heading back, the dog doing the hairy pinball act the entire way home.  I let the dog out of the back and she was ECSTATIC!  She was running around, hopping about, and looking at me like: "OMG! That was the funnest trip EVER!"  Fuck you, dog.
I went down to Fireside, grabbed a beer, hung out with Jimmy, watched the end of the game, and tried to put the whole fucking ordeal behind me.
And that's why I didn't make it out to the DeKalb Townie Christmas Party.

The End