oceandoggy.com

Another Monday morning again and like everyone else I had to go to work. I work all by myself in the unoccupied beach front homes of absentee homeowners. I’ll go weeks without talking to anyone but after centuries and decades of managing employees, if I never have to deal with one again I’ll be a happy guy. But that’s a whole nother story.

I was tired ’cause once again I spent all weekend working. When Miss Carol and me don’t have house guests (which is rare since we live at the beach and Miss Carol is one of 12 and we have a million bejillion nephews and nieces and they all want to come to the beach but that’s a whole nother story) we work on the house and try to keep stuff from rusting, which is one of the things they don’t tell you about when you move to the beach. Everything rusts. Plastic rusts. If you lay awake at night and listen carefully you can hear your house rusting. It’s a constant battle. But, again, that’s a whole nother story.

I spent Saturday working on painting Casa Oceandoggy once again, two gallons at a time because that’s all my sanity will allow. But that’s a whole nother story.

I’m also getting the bay boat ready for another season and the catamaran re-rigged for easier sailing. But that’s a whole nother story.

My brother and his little cupcake are coming down next weekend so we can tear out the fence around Casa Oceandoggy so that I can build a new one. Fence I mean. But that’s a whole nother story.

But then tonight, at the end of a long day which was at the end of a long weekend I was walking the dogs, feeling a little beat down when a friend of mine, barreling home in the golf cart that he uses to clean pools on the island swerved, stopped, and offered me a cold beer so that he wouldn’t have to drink alone.

And ya know what? I just wanted to french kiss the world. It was quite possibly the best beer ever. 

There are times that I love being me.

So anyway.

When Miss Carol and I would go to work we would put Cutter and Tug in the small half bath off of our living room. They would sleep on their blankies (Miss Carol’s word- not mine) on the floor of the shower. They had all of their toys, food, water, newspaper, and each other. You would tend to think they’d of been happy.

Wrongo!

Once the doggy gate was in place they would commence to barking and whining something pitiable. I don’t know if they carried on the whole time we were gone each day but they were certainly still doing it when I’d get home for lunch and again when we got home at the end of the day. Cutter would be furiously trying to clamber over the gate and Tug would be sitting in the corner looking mournful and guilty.

Picking them up, both would nuzzle and nip at our faces as if we had been gone for years and years and they were worried they would never have seen us again. 

Beware giving your heart to a dog to tear.

It was movie night at Casa del Oceandoggy last night and we watched the eagerly anticipated Marley and Me. I have been waiting for this movie to become available on NetFlix ever since I read the book. I have often felt that Marley and Me is our generation’s Old Yeller and I was really hoping the movie would be great.

Even after it was announced that Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson would play the lead roles and even after seeing all the release posters showing Jennifer with Marley on her shoulders, I remained hopeful that Hollywood and Jennifer wouldn’t eff up another great story. 

My hopes were dashed last night.

Somehow, some kinda way, Hollywood managed to take a moving story about a dog’s life and death and turn it into a cutesy lovefest celebrating two blandly mediocre actors. And, oh yeah, did I mention there was a dog?

Except for the end, Marley was totally moved to the periphery. In scene after scene we watched as Jennifer was cutely perfect and Owen was cutely imperfect and Marley bounded around in the background chewing on things. Um, did I mention there was a dog?

Not only did Marley lose his story, he lost his identity. In the final twenty minutes or so every scene has a different Marley. They were changing dogs like a stripper changing costumes. Heeelllllooooooo, did I mention there was supposed to be a dog?

Finally, at the end of a movie largely devoted to Jennifer and Owen someone remembered that the dog has to die and it’s done in a grandiose style befitting a NASA space launch. Believe me, I’ve been there and done that and it ain’t nothin’ like that. Owen looks cutely imperfectly sad and Jennifer looks cutely perfectly sad, but life has to go on and hooboy, did I mention there’s a dog? 

I only hope that Jennifer and Owen made enough money on this film they can retire and not infect us any longer with their cutesy pithiness.

Oceandoggy’s take? Lift your leg and pee on this one. 

Good boy.

On the weekends we like to walk the beach and let the boys run. Yesterday evening when we went up they were tuggin’ in the wrong direction like boats in a storm and sure enough, when I released them they bolted. Gone down the beach until the onliest thing we could see was matching yellow Lab tails twitching on the horizon.

Which just makes me crazy. 

Cutter and Tug don’t have to do anything but laze around on the furniture and scarf up treats. I walk them twice a a day, every day, for a mile. On the weekends they get the run of the beach. They don’t have to clean up after themselves. They don’t have to help with chores. They don’t have to mow the lawn or do  long division.

All they have to do is come when then they’re ‘effin CALLED. That’s it. That’s all. Just stop what they’re doin’ and race in our direction when we call them. I don’t think it’s too much to ask and it makes me a crazy turd when they run like that. 

Which led to Miss Carol being a turd, which led to all of us being turds.

Turds by the sea.

I keep saying I’m going to write more, post more, do more. But somehow I don’t. 

It’s mostly maybe laziness, but not always. Like tonight, we had to take Cutter to the vet because when we got home his eye was squeezed shut, which meant taking Tug to the vet, which meant the entire clusterfuck of wildly excited full-on male Labs tussling with barely adequate veterinary assistants trying to corral them.

It made me giggle and the boys acquitted themselves well, giving almost no ground. But it was exhausting. Dog wrestling just flat wears you out.

I’m looking forward to the sunny sun-swept days of summer. Except for the Touron part.

Earlier this week, bored beyond tears, I happened upon a Travel Channel special called When Beaches Attack. 

And boy howdy am I glad I did. I had no idea that going to the beach ranks right up there with riding shotgun on a Humvee in a firefight in Iraq.

Who knew?

Come to find out, we’ve got stingrays and sharks and killer waves and jellyfish and hurricanes and tsunamis. And let’s don’t forget sunburn. Apparently, the beach is no place for the faint hearted and danger lurks everywhere on the periphery of  our sun drenched paradise, baring it’s teeth and biding it’s time.

Horrors heaped on horrors.

At first I laughed. Then I smirked. But when I realized the Travel Channel was serious I sprang to action, knowing I had to do my part to make people aware and help save lives. Call me Mommy Oceandoggy.

DON’T come to the beach this summer. Just stay away. It’s really not worth it. Consider your life and that of your loved ones- would you rather spend your vacation in a hot tub sipping cocktails watching a mountain sunset or in the death throes of a shark attack? Dinner in cozy, quaint, country restaurant or writhing in agony from a Man-O-War sting? Swimming lazily in the pool or being sucked out to sea in a rip?

Think hard and spend your vacation dollars wisely and please, stay far, far, away.

Don’t thank me, I’m just glad I could help.

I’d like to say that our dogs love us so much they can’t stand to be away from us.

I wish I could say that our dogs are so well trained that a simple, curt hand signal keeps them trotting at our side.

I want to say these things but I’d be lying.

The terrible truth is that hidden deep in the multiple layers that swaddle her and keep her warm, lost in the many hoodies that comprise her winter bikini are the onliest things that keep Cutter and Tug with us when we walk the beach.

And it ain’t Miss Carol.

Miss Carol and me celebrated our 23rd anniversary of wedded bliss this weekend by deciding to completely re-decorate our living room. Actually, originally, we were just going to buy some new furniture but then things spiraled out of control.

Our living room and kitchen and dining room are basically all one big room. It’s where we spend almost all of our waking hours and has remained largely unchanged for the better part of two decades. It’s as comfortable as your favorite pair of flip flops. We’ll call it Surf Shack Chic for lack of a better term to describe the evolution of our fairly inept thematic decorating. 

It had been time for new couches for a while now, so we decided that this was the weekend to go shopping- where going shopping means going buying because neither one of us has very much patience for just shopping. Hence the Surf Shack Chic.

We were going to go and buy leather furniture similar to the leather furniture we have always had in our living room. But then a funny thing happened. We found ourselves looking at sectionals. Contemporary sectionals. And not just any contemporary sectionals, but contemporary sectionals in strange, foreign colors like grey and white and cream and coffee and taupe.

And then another funny thing happened. We found ourselves purchasing a contemporary white leather sectional that is going to force us to completely re-do our living room because otherwise we are going to end up with a living room that looks like Snow White meets a drunken sailor and has illegitimate children and decides she likes being a little slutty. 

Not wanting to descend into that particular dysfunctionality we wasted no time and started with the brick fireplace.

Before.

And, later that same day.

That’s Tug, helping to soak up some of the fresh paint with his back. Thanks Tug.

I’m calling the new theme Annoyingly Beachy for lack of a better term to describe the matrimonial menopause we appear to be going through. The next step is delivery of the contemporary white leather sectional on Thursday. Hopefully we won’t hate it by Friday.