Typical Tuesday night

I went home to a house full of ladies last night. 10? 8? Something like that. Counting is hard.

They were all in the war room, discussing. Getting excited about... things. Planning and learning to use chop sticks. I dropped a couple bottles of wine on the table and tried (and failed) not to distract anyone from their meeting.

Later, most everyone had gone to wherever ladies go when they leave our home. There were four of us left. Drinking, smoking too many cigarettes, laughing, sharing stories. We were on the back porch and someone in the apartment complex next door shooshed us.

It was kind of a loud shoosh. Then, the neighbor from just upstairs came near his window and I asked if we were being too noisy - he said we weren't. Cool, so we kept chatting, giggling.

And then. Regis (my pup) went apeshit and ran toward the front door. Which means that either someone was knocking or he thought someone was within a block of our home. My roommate went to see who was there while the rest of us remained on the porch.

She was gone for a few minutes and honestly, I forgot about the possible late night visitor. Until I walked into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of my roommate holding Regis and talking to a gorgeous man at the door. A police kind of man.

Someone called the cops on us for being too noisy. Likely the shoosher.

I sat my glass of wine down and went to investigate at the door. My roommate was just asking Officer Hotness what time it was (noise curfew?). He answered 11:30pm. Pretty serious. Of course, they had already confirmed that there were only 4 people present and that he couldn't hear a thing when he walked up. But he's bound by duty to investigate a call.

I am bound by nature to ask him if he has a girlfriend. And then (un)kindly mention that I don't want to talk to him anymore when he says he does. We - all four of us girls and O.H. chatted about our project and planning, he told us about his sister, and he pet Regis.

So thank you, crankypants shoosher. Made my night much more rad.

The Velvet Bow

I used to work for a completely insane, drugged up, brilliantly talented dog groomer named Dave.

My friend Billy worked for him first. Then, Billy went to jail for drugs and Dave was without an assistant. Billy knew I had just gotten canned from my job (I was late every day for a year and a half. Oops.) and told Dave that he should ask me if I wanted to replace him.

So there I am, sitting in my living room, smoking the reefer and wondering how I'm going to afford next month's rent when Dave walks in. Just waltzed right into my house and introduced himself.

I knew who he was through Billy, but we had never met.

It was kind of funny to me that he didn't knock or think to at least stop in the doorway for a quick "yoohoo" before strolling in, but it wasn't uncommon. My home was a welcoming place at the time. The door was never locked and I often found friends hanging out at my place when I returned from wherever I was. It's not like I had anything to steal when I was that young, in my first apartment.

Back to Dave- he told me that he needed me to come work for him. He'd train me and I could schedule grooming appointments around MY schedule- he was flexible. Wow, what a great deal! No job search. No filling out applications. No driving to work even- he was a few blocks away.

I ended up working for Dave at the Velvet bow for about 9 months. Over that time, he got more and more strange, but he still paid me and I learned a lot about dogs and grooming, so I didn't mind much. The benefits were great too- he'd leave a pipe full of reefer in the bathroom for me, with instructions to turn the fan on in there to smoke so customers wouldn't smell it. AND he'd always leave a 6-pack of beer in the fridge and encourage me to have some throughout the day.

Things started to fall apart between Dave and his very straight & narrow wife and he started to have trouble with the law- something about the sherrifs getting pissed at Dave for shooting his rifle on his acreage late at night. He liked to do target practice in the dark.

He stopped showing up to work when I had appointments booked for him and I certainly wasn't about to try the super fancy cuts that he did on the dogs I booked for him, so we lost a lot of customers and I wasn't making as much money, and I left. On good terms though, no hard feelings.

I guess he and his wife broke up and he continued to get weirder- he showed up at the bar where my sister worked about a year after I left. He was wearing a bathrobe and was rolling on the floor. They asked him to leave and he did, but not before inquiring about how I was doing. That was an awkward call from my sister for sure.

I drove by the Velvet Bow shop last time I was in town and saw that it's now a massage studio. I was kind of sad to see the old place go.