Category — tmi thursday

Rach, if you’re out there, don’t read this one. Seriously.

With the ex moved out, Adicus and I have had to renegotiate our relationship. I agreed to fetch him more if he would quit busting the screens out of the the living room windows to get outside when I’m not home. He agrees that I’m in charge until a strange car pulls into the driveway, then all bets are off. He sleeps in the bed, not at the foot like he used to, now he stretches out like a human, his doggie head resting on the pillow beside me.

Yesterday, though, he took things a little too far.

I was lucky enough to get my monthly gift for the second time in two weeks this week. Go figure. After I came home from work, I was peeing and changing clothes….

Whenever I come home from anywhere, whenever I use the restroom in any manner except for makeup and brushing of teeth, Adicus must inspect me and/or whatever I’m in there doing. A little sniff here, a little sniff there. I guess he’s checking for cancer. Who knows. I discourage it, but I’m not too strict about it. He’s a pack animal, I’m the alpha bitch (huzzah!), and he’s just doing what dogs do. Until last night.

As I sat there, peeing, he rested his chin on my knee, as he often does, so that I will rub his muzzle and tell him how handsome and smart he is. I did just that, and as I reached for the toilet paper, in one swift motion, before I could figure it out and prevent it?

He licked my dirty pantyliner.

Yeah. I was horrified too. I mean, he’s dug them out of the trash and eaten them in the bed before. That’s how I ended up with one of those little metal trashcans with the foot pedal that lifts the lid. Somehow, though, it was much, much more disturbing to see him lick the pantyliner that I was still wearing.

Also? He licked it the way he eats his favorite treat- soft serve ice cream- tenderly, slowly. He savored the taste of my pantyliner.

I made him stop, replaced the pantyliner, and then he and I had a little talk about boundaries.  I think he understands now.

Happy TMI!

Every year in late April, Smoky Mountain National Park has its annual Wildflower Pilgrimage. Tourons (tourist + moron) pay hundreds of dollars to be led around the park by rangers and volunteers, to see all of the spring wildflowers in their glory. Which is funny to me, because if you’re hiking the right trails, you can’t miss even the rare ones.

The ex and I went out to one of the best trails in the park for spring wildflowers. We split up, and he spent the morning fishing the river, while I hiked seven miles round trip and took several hundred pictures, one of which is the thumbnail in my right hand column over there.

We met back at the truck, pulled our lunch out of the cooler, and hiked off trail to a nice spot by the river. It was fairly far from the road, back in the woods, next to a good run for him to fish after lunch, and a beautiful plunge pool.

I spread out the ground cover, and we had lunch. It was a little past noon, and the sun was high overhead. We were both tired in the best way- that tiredness that comes from catching lots of fish and finding lots of wildflowers. We were not so tired, though, as to be completely uninterested in each other.

We seemed far enough from the road, which was not busy,  and though the trees were not completely leafed out, there was some cover between the blanket and the road… and so we decided to have each other for dessert. It was necessarily short, but not so short as to prevent me from enjoying the sun and breeze on my mostly bare skin. I sat up to put my shorts back on, and that was when I realized.

Apparently, I overestimated the amount of cover we were afforded, and possibly the distance from the road. When people can see a bear from the road, all traffic stops until the bear ambles off out of sight. We locals, as well as park officials, call this a “bear jam”. Well, it would appear that the ex and I created our own little “bare jam”, because as I slipped my shorts back on, I noticed several cars stopped on the road in direct sight of our picnic blanket. It was right about that time that the “bare jam” moved along and the road was quiet again.

Funny enough, that didn’t stop me from skinny dipping in the plunge pool after the ex wandered off for more fishing. That was easier to get away with, though, because the river bank was tall, and you couldn’t see the water from the road. We should have had our little rendezvous on one of the large boulders next to the plunge pool. Live and learn, I guess.

We’re lucky that we didn’t get heckled, photographed, or ticketed. No, the only consequence was a little sheepishness, and a bruise the exact size and shape of a sweetgum ball on the small of my back.