While the two of you are resting your laurels on the sandy beaches of Jamaica, sending me unsolicited feet-in-the-foreground pics of the blue-green ocean and perfectly white fluffy clouds suspended in an azure sky, I am freezing my ass off in 15-degree Maryland with two dogs who are testing my ability to [National] Love-Your-Pet-Day. MY sky is more opaque than blue and the bright sun illuminating the latte-brown grass below will fail to bring us above 27 degrees.

I just now pulled the curtains aside to gaze out the window so that I could describe my view and… I think it’s snowing! False alarm – it is only the dust I’ve shaken from an untouched sheer curtain behind my computer screen. No – I’m not a bad housekeeper. I’m a woman in my 50s who just doesn’t GAF about keeping a pristine house anymore. Especially with two pigpens who bring all the dirt from the yard and a wonderful husband with a woodshop and a garage.

Convenient segue…

February 20 is National Love Your Pet Day and as of this writing, at 7:16 a.m., my pets are treading on the thinnest ice available on this 15-degree morning.

It’s my day off, yet Shuggie fails to understand that that means mom should be allowed to sleep a little later than 5:54 a.m. So, the daintiest whimper drifts from the foot of my bed. The challenge here is to not immediately jump out of bed and reward this behavior while also combatting the rising anxiety she causes that I fear will culminate in a high-pitched bark of the spoiled child.

It’s after 8 a.m. now because I was interrupted – can you believe?! – to deliver kibble to empty bowls (how dare I leave them empty!) and let them outside for the third time. I figured I’d drop a load of laundry into the washer while this circus commenced so I can at least be productive somewhere. Shuggie is now finally lying in yet another expensive dogbed that, despite her best efforts, she hasn’t succeeded in destroying in the two weeks since we bought it. She is watching me.

I know she wants to go out again, but for the moment has given up – a sweet respite from the neediness she has when one of us is home all day. Why am I not letting her out again? Because this last time they went out, Bee returned but Shuggie did not. This has come to mean, in recent days, that she is feasting on the land mines Bee has left behind. THIS DOG. She likes to eat shit. After so many years of living with dogs, I have come to accept that they either will roll in it (Bert, the Cocker Spaniel of my youth) or eat it (Sabra, cat shit, and Shuggie – any shit).

How do I know she has taken up this revolting habit again? Because Sunday evening she came back inside and promptly belched the world’s nastiest belch in the history of dog belches. So anyway, I went out onto the deck this morning to look for her and, sure enough, she was standing before a steaming pile of Shuggie delicacy, looking up at me like “what?”

One of the best things about living where I do is our huge fenced-in yard. I don’t have to walk my dogs or clean up shit if I don’t want to. Conversely, the worst thing about this free-range backyard is the rainy season when muddy paws become the bane of my existence. And now, apparently, a shit-eating dog. (Yes I have addressed this with the vet. Yes, we have tried supplements. Yes, it worked. No, neither dog is taking them anymore.*)

So, while the two of you sit on a nearly-empty 85-degree beach  (yes, I saw the pictures, including the one Aunt Dianna sent me that was empty but for a red-sleeved elbow and a couple strolling at the water’s edge. Also no shade for being too stoned to crop the elbow out) – I will be picking up backyard shit in boots and the heaviest coat I own and baking dog biscuits, because it’s National Love Your Pet Day and Sunday is International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day and I love my pets and their favorite biscuits are out of stock everywhere.

I hope you are enjoying the distance from your work lives while the rest of us (barring your retired friends of course – two of whom I heard were in Key West and you know who you are and WHERE ARE THE PICTURES) toil in the shitshow that has become technology glitches and AI to “join the future of [insert whatever-the-fuck].” I’m sorry, do I sound crabby? Because I AM and I’m going to tell you why.

Every day that I go to work, I get to experience some issue with the basic technology I use to actually do my work. So Monday, Aunt Dianna, when you sent me the pic of the upside down pipe in a bowl at 11:00 a.m. next to a box of matches (please, please do not forget to bring me that matchbox!*), I was three hours into a day without access to a shared folder I need to do my job and a phone system that wouldn’t allow me to assign myself to a specific line I also needed to access. Four separate phone calls with the Help Desk before lunch that yielded nothing helpful, and one desperate call to Todd just to vent before I burst into tears. It was, dare I even use the word, a shitshow.

I have a love-hate relationship with technology, as you already know. I love what it can do. I hate when it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to and I am helpless to fix it. Case in point, a meeting with my counselor that couldn’t be conducted over skype (an app like that) a couple of months ago dissolved me into tears because I was sure it was our problem, not the app’s problem (it was the app’s problem). He offered to speak on the phone, which was probably a good thing overall because then he couldn’t see my red, swollen eyes. He spoke to me in the soft, comforting voice of an ATF officer hoping to diffuse a bomb. (Spoiler: it worked.)

Ultimately, some days the signature pad doesn’t work after lunch. Some days the credit card machine declines every. single.card. Some days I can’t assign myself to the Express Care line. Some days I can only access the O drive in Windows, but not in Epic. Some days the drive disappears altogether.

It is hereby notable that my two crabby days in a row at work were NOT from human interactions, but from TECHNOLOGY fails. And did you know how hard it is to remotely fix a problem with an IT person? I picture these people sitting in a little dark room surrounded by screens and buttons and wires and they pick up the phone and they’re all, what is your IP address? And suddenly I can’t remember where to find it. And I feel like a complete and useless asshole who doesn’t deserve to use a keyboard.

The dude on Monday, though, said, I’m going to send you a Teams message, let me know when you get it. Tick tock, tick tock…. I didn’t get it. Okay, I’ll send it again. Still didn’t get it. Okay, open up your Teams app. The longest thirty seconds passes while I poke around my computer trying to find it. I finally give up and admit I’m a total idiot and where do I find it?

Well, how do you open up Teams? I don’t. I don’t use it. (BECAUSE I FUCKING DON’T NEED TO, TO DO MY JOB.) So he sends me an email so I can open up teams and guess what?? THERE IS NO TEAMS APP on my computer. And, instead of believing me – which I can understand given the above – he asks me if I did it right. He finally remotes in to my computer (via the elusive IP address) which he should have done from the start, and that’s when he finds out I’m telling the truth.

So a little click here and a little click there, and now I have Teams, which I was NOT calling for in the first place. He finds the drive I need and says, there it is. And he’s not wrong. But after we hang up and I actually start doing my job again, I get a “You do not have permission to access” message and I all but screamed.

Are you ladies still following me, or are you lost, rollin down the street smokin indo? I know you’re laughing your asses off at me while simultaneously agreeing with each other about how funny Tara is and “how much we love her.” And I love you both for loving me. I miss you. But I’m not finished with my story.

So I get home Monday night and I’m all, I need a drink. I don’t like to drink on work nights because, well, “old and don’t recover well.” Todd is already home and he’s all, what are we having. I whip out the vodkas. Yes, Vodka is plural in our house because we have different preferences. What wasn’t plural on Monday night was the cranberry juice. And my Stoli bottle had less than an ounce left in it which is a crime I should’ve been punished for.

He offered to go out and get more cran. I took two large gulps of his drink, which I’d already made, and said – if you drive, I’ll go in. Done. It’s amazing how wonderful a short trip through the grocery store is on a light buzz. I know ya’ll would argue a stoned trip is equally pleasant, but I’ll have to take your word for it because as you told everyone who would listen when I was 19 years old, mom, “Tara doesn’t like altered states.”

Got home and trying to decide what to make for dinner when Bee horked up whatever she’d eaten that day all over the living room carpet. And then Todd dropped his drink on the floor next to the side table and it exploded on the floor into glass shards, ice cubes, and red sticky liquid.

I’d like to think I have a strong constitution. I mean, for life in general. I can take a lot. But when I hit a wall, I hit it hard. Since I’d already hit that wall before lunchtime, by the time Bee puked I was more like Miss Hannigan drunkenly singing about “Little Girls.”

Anyhoo, it is now Thursday and there are so many ideas for wasting the day away and I don’t even have to be high like yous. I decided to reschedule my annual GYN appointment because I just wasn’t in the mood for personally invasive activities. Less invasive is gathering tax documents for the accountant who will hopefully file our taxes before the IRS gets shut down, but we won’t talk about he who musk be eliminated while you’re on vacation. (Pun intended.)

Since I will have to endure another Friday night without seeing you, let me catch you up on a few things. I have another trigger finger, this time on the left hand, that I need to attend to. I had a way better day at work yesterday – my tech issues were resolved (until they’re not again, because let’s face it, there’s no optimism here) but someone else had issues and I was appropriately compassionate – until I developed a wicked headache about a half hour before I went home. Felt like I was getting sick last night, but today I feel like it was a fluke.

I restarted my yoga and I’m down one pound and I will celebrate that even if no one else will. I’ve amped up my vegetarian choices in a last ditch effort to lower my cholesterol before my next blood draw in just over a month but we all know that’s a smokeless pipe dream for me. I want to quit drinking anything at all but then, Monday. Let’s be realistic, just not excessive. I used to repeat the mantra many years ago, everything in moderation, though I cannot remember what era I started that or with whom. I do remember when I stopped, with a mountain of drama and unending uncertainty. It was 2020.

Anyway, I’m muttering on and on and I’m fairly certain you’ve dozed off in your chaise lounge under the palm fronds by now, hopefully not with a burning spliff dangling from your fingers. Remember if you’re arrested for starting a wildfire, I won’t be able to bail you out.

There is so much more I’ll remember halfway through the day like, omg I forgot to write that!… but for now I’ll end on a joyous note. I’m happy you both are enjoying a well-earned rest. I am happy. God is delivering for me and I am at peace and so very happy. I can’t wait to see you again.