The Occasionally Worthwhile Ramblings of a Sometimes Outraged Mind

Maybe you remember meeting this young lady when I put this picture up some months ago:

This is The Dude’s girlfriend, who has put up with all of us and stuck around long enough now sufficiently endeared herself to me to have earned a blog nickname; she is hereafter to be known as Angel Bites. (For the uninitiated, this is not any sort of editorializing on my part — it’s much more to do with her piercings, and my current lack of imagination in the direction of better. Because she’s from Vermont, I tried to work out something involving a Ben & Jerry’s flavor, but decided that neither “Phish Food” nor “Chunky Monkey” would go over well, and gave up from there.)

We had a nice time together this afternoon, she and I, that Angel Bites gracefully endured entertained long enough that I was able to achieve two things:

1) Get her to believe that I am almost funny enough to listen to for 20 or 30 minutes, and

2) Use those 20-30 minutes to let the water heater recharge enough to let her take a shower.

As to why 2) was necessary, allow me to backtrack enough to explain a bit of background: Lester and The Grrl shed hair from their heads like house-bound collies let out on a hot summer day. Combine that with a water supply that is harder than a quadratic equation and the fact that we really should scrub the shower more often than once every time Saturn orbits the sun, and then I suddenly find myself confronted with the fact that Angel Bites actually wants to use our shower, something she has avoided not done on any of her previous visits.

Remember in “Independence Day”, when Will Smith and and Jeff Goldblum are in the mothership and the aliens are overriding their command to keep the window covers up? “Oh, shit! Um, hide!”

Dang it, my son’s girlfriend wanting to take a shower shouldn’t have to involve a miniature haz-mat operation! So of course, I had to stall her long enough to get in there ahead of her and play Scrub Boy in an attempt to make it more like a shower and less like a petri dish. Have you ever found yourself using the outer edge of your hand to literally squeegee up into a ball the stray female hair in a shower? In short order, I had accumulated enough to furnish a small canine “Locks of Love” recipient. It is said that the trait of women’s hair (generally) always growing back is one of human survival, and that rings true to me. However, based on my experience with all of the shedding that makes it necessary, it is a wonder that male plumbers ever marry.

Once done with that it was a matter of, oh man, is there now enough hot water for her? So I convinced this dear God is the girl mute? No! At least it doesn’t seem so any more! Yay! young lady to hang with me long enough to let the water heater replenish some, and as we got to talking (yes, I shut up long enough to let it be both of us talking) three things occurred to me:

A) She’s sweeter than a homemade apple pie, and

B) If we don’t get her Vermont-native palette tuned to the rowdy southwestern and Mexican food we make a lot here, she’s in danger of withering and dying while staying with us, and

C) If I had let her get into our shower as it looked before, refer to the result of B), plus Lester would, upon finding out I had, make noises equivalent to birthing a porcupine. Breech presentation.

In the end, I’m pretty sure my miniature haz-mat operation succeeded; at least, I never heard any screams. But succeeding at getting to know Angel Bites at least somewhat better was a bigger success, for me at least. Her mileage may vary but, again, I never heard any screams.