You're going along and going along, and everything seems tolerable. And then, blam, dog poop. You step in it. It happened to me on Thursday morning. Somewhere between my back door and my car, a landmine lurked, but I couldn't see it in the pre-dawn darkness. It wasn't until my heater kicked in while I was on the way to work that I smelled it. Then I knew I had stepped in it.
Luckily it's only a fifteen minute drive to work. When I parked my car, it was almost daylight. I opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. A gloppy mess of poop covered the entire front of my left shoe, and not surprisingly, it was all over my clutch pedal. Agh. (I have an expression of eeewww on my face as I type this.)I tried to wipe the mess off my shoe in the wet ivy that edged the parking lot, with mixed results. Better than nothing. I got out my spray bottle of white vinegar and sprayed my shoe and then my clutch pedal, trying to catch the stinky drips with paper towels. Once inside the building, I made a beeline for the restroom, where I washed my shoe under tepid water, trying not to breathe through my nose.
All morning I walked around school thinking, I'm tracking little invisible pellets of dog poop all over the carpet. When I found myself crossing my leg, I quickly put it down, for fear someone would see the muck in the tread of my shoe. I imagined the smell of dog poop wafting behind me like Pigpen's dust cloud. As I drove home for my mid-day nap, I breathed through my nose all the way, hyper-aware of my shoe on the filthy clutch pedal, permanently grinding the poop into the grooves.
When I got home I looked for the evidence of my mishap. It had rained hard and snowed, and I found nothing definitive, no skid mark, no telltale smashed pile. The path was clear, and believe me, I scrutinized it carefully. Nothing on the path itself, but the churned up grassy area right in front of my driver's door looked suspiciously mushy. The poop could have washed away into the dirt and grass, what was left of it, anyway: I inadvertently took most of it with me to work. Or I suppose someone could have cleaned it up.
Did the poop belong to my neighbor's dog? At the time, I wasn't positive. But now, today in the cold light of day, I found more poop in the same place. Little dinky poop, lots of it, almost like she encouraged her wretched little mutt to poop right there, right in front of my car door, right where I would be most likely to step in it. Could this be payback for the times I scooped the poop on the path and left it on her back steps? Could she be retaliating because late one night last week I pounded the floor with a hammer in a frustrated frenzy, hoping to get her to turn her music down? Does this mean... war? At the Love Shack?
Time for action. I spent some time composing a polite note. I posted it in the basement laundry room. I described my poopy experience and asked for help to find a solution. I didn't get mad. I didn't blame anyone. I tried to be both diplomatic and humorous. I'm not sure if I succeeded, though. You know how when you are really, really ticked, but you are trying to pretend like you aren't, and everything comes out sideways? This could be one of those times. Still, I intend to give my landsharks a copy of the letter. Might as well put it all on red.
I'm over it now. What can you do? The world is full of invisible poop. I mean, think about it. There's no way to know how much poop you stepped in during your day today. It could be everywhere: on your shoes, on the bottom of the wheely backpack you dragged along a sidewalk, on library books, on the vinyl seat at Denny's, on doorknobs, faucets, and coffee cup handles. Everywhere. Why bother to care? As you already know, we are screwed. See previous post about volcanoes, and then google Krakatoa.
On the bright side, my cat has been thoroughly entertained by all the new smells in my apartment.
