Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why It Often Sucks in the City, or Who Are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me? (28 page)

I get up and kiss the dog, whose head is resting gently on my pillow. As soon as I vacate my spot, the other climbs onto the bed. Both are exhausted from their two-week-long freak-out and aren’t yet ready to get up. They have no idea they’re about to go on their last walk before discovering the joy of their new yard.

Fletch is still asleep, too, so I head down the stairs for opening duty. We brought the cats to the new place yesterday and they’re thrilled at all the big patches of sunlight that flood the new house. This place has a northern exposure, and in the two years we’ve been here the cats haven’t been able to bask in a single sunbeam, which always made me feel guilty.

I open the curtains and our living room brightens with the indirect light. Naturally, Winky is there standing on the broken remains of my birdhouse. Somehow he managed to catapult himself up the brick wall and chew through its ropes. He’s out there feasting on his spoils and I just know he’s smirking at me. I have had it with this evil creature and throw open the door, swinging the first thing I can get my hands on—a tube of wrapping paper embossed with the phrase “Peace on Earth” and a bunch of penguins holding hands.
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Swearing, spitting, and swinging, I chase him to the edge of the complex while shouting, “Die, motherfucker, die!” and he dashes up a telephone pole. (You know what? Animal rights don’t apply to those who break my birdhouses.
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)

Victorious, I strut back into the house with my paper battle-ax, but not before waving at one of the fat girls who glowers at me while getting into her car. Frown all you want, missy. For I? Am Audi 5000.

I flip on
Fox News
and walk over to my Cuisinart Automatic Grind & Brew. I pour in filtered water and carefully measure the smoky, nutty beans into the little basket. Never have I earned a cup of coffee more in my life. It’s a tad cool today and my extremities are chilly from having been outside chasing squirrels through fresh dew. I long for the feeling of cold fingers wrapped around a warm ceramic mug. I flip the switch, expecting to hear the blades spring to life, but instead I hear a loud pop, followed quickly by the hum of all my household electronics dying in unison.

Wait, what?

No.

Noooo!

Not again! I swear we’re not deadbeats anymore! I’m (almost) sure we paid our electric bill! I frantically search through the stack of packed boxes, looking for the one with financial information. I finally locate my register and see the check was written, so I grab the phone, ready to tell ComEd, “Bitches, my bill is
paid
.” But when I pick up my phone, it’s not working because it’s cordless. I know we’ve got an analog model that would work, but it’s buried in one of the bottom boxes and I can’t get to it.

At this point I notice all my contemptible neighbors are gathered outside, and for once I’m thrilled to see them because it means it’s a neighborhood thing and not a
Jen didn’t pay the bill
thing. I head out for information and learn we’re in the middle of a brown-out, meaning there’s a slight electrical feed running. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to run my coffeemaker, but it
is
enough to power my wireless router.

I settle in with my laptop and a bowl of vanilla yogurt and granola. I may not be watching TV, but that’s okay. I can still enjoy this precious downtime. As I scan the headlines on FoxNews.com, I get a physical longing for coffee. I yearn for a frothy concoction of milk and espresso and maybe a quick sprinkle of cinnamon. I practically ache for the delicate layers of spice and sweet fruit and the subtlest hint of caramel as the caffeinated goodness jump-starts my nervous system. Coffee is so essential to my morning that failure is simply not an option. I give the Cuisinart another whirl, but it sits there mute. Ever resourceful, I grab my keys and decide to treat myself with Starbucks.

I back out of my space, pull up to the gate, and hit the remote to open it…and nothing happens. Damn it! Electric gate! I punch the button again and again, but no luck. I get out of the car to inspect the gate’s mechanics, looking for the fail-safe. I scrutinize every inch of it, getting grease all over my hands, but find no key, switch, or button that allows me to open it manually. Then I walk over to the mouth of the gate and give it a Herculean tug, but I can’t budge it an inch.

I pull back into my assigned spot. I look down at my legs and realize God must have given them to me for a purpose other than simply having an excuse to get pedicures. I decide to hoof it the six blocks to the coffee shop. I march over to the gate and enter my code, fingers flying across the keypad, expectantly waiting for the lock-releasing buzz that opens the steel cage standing between me and my ultimate prize.

But the buzz does not come.

I’m trapped.
Trapped!
And with no possibility of garnering the sweet elixir of life, my raison d’être, the source from which all that is holy and righteous flows! I’m on my knees crying,
“It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”
when a gentleman in a ComEd vest catches sight of me. From the other side of the fence, in reassuring tones, he gently says, “Ma’am, he didn’t feel a thing.”

Huh?

“The squirrel,” he said, holding up a hideously blackened yet distinctly still reddish-brown-furred carcass, “when he chewed through the wire, his death was instantaneous.”

“Yes, the squirrel. I’m, um, devastated. Of course,” I say.

“Yeah, anyway,” he replies, “your power’s back on.”

And suddenly there’s naught but a vapor trail between the man holding a barbecued Winky and my coffeemaker.

As I sit here with my third cup and reflect on this morning’s happenings, I realize in fact that I’m a big ass.

Because I’m really glad that pesky squirrel is dead.

“They’re going to go bananas!” I exclaim. Everything I hold most precious is in this car—my husband, my dogs, my Cuisinart. Fletch is driving us to the new house before doubling back to meet the movers. He could have caught a ride with them and had me drive over myself, but he wants to be there when the dogs see their yard for the first time.

“I bet Loki spins in circles and Maisy rocket-dogs back and forth like she used to when we’d take her to the beach,” Fletch predicts.

“How great is it going to be for them to go outside every time they want?” Upon hearing “outside,” the dogs, who are already bouncing all over the backseat, begin to yip and howl.

We get to the house and park out front. We figure the dogs should go in through the front door the first time, kind of like being carried over a threshold as a newlywed.
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We open the door and find all the cats lying Jonestown-like in giant pools of sunlight. Bones, the spokesman for the cats’ union, looks at the dogs and then us, as if to say, “Oh, you brought
them
here, did you? Fine. But so you know, this means we’re going to have to keep wrecking the couch.”

We let the dogs off the leash and they tear off, dashing up and down the stairs for a good ten minutes. We stand in the living room, watching streaks of black and tan fur fly by, building the anticipation until the moment when they finally see their yard. We call them to the den, and when they settle down enough to come, they sit and wait for us to put on their leashes. “Not today, guys,” I tell them. I open the back door and the dogs explode out into the yard. Loki runs around in laps, inspecting every nook and cranny of the property. He woofs and prances in between peeing on every single vertical surface. Then he notices the gravel area and squats to do his business, and I swear he’s smiling.

Maisy, on the other hand, takes a few tentative steps on the flagstone before running back up the deck’s stairs. “What’s wrong with her?” Fletch asks.

“I don’t know—maybe she’s just nervous?” I try to coax her out into the yard, squeezing her favorite toy—a squeaky pink rhinoceros—which normally pushes her into overdrive. I throw it in the direction of the gravel and she makes no attempt to go get it. “Maisy? Baby dog? What’s the matter?” I fetch her rhino and toss it again, getting the same reaction, while Loki practically tap-dances with joy. “Maybe she needs a drink?” I grab their bowl, fill it with water, and place it on the patio. She doesn’t go near it. We spend the next half hour trying to get the dog enthused about her new yard, but she just sits on the landing, shoved up against the door, looking at me with big, soft, black-rimmed eyes and pouting her bottom lip. Fletch has to get back to the old house, so he leaves, and I bring Maisy inside with me, as Loki refuses to leave the yard.

When I bring my box of toiletries up to what will be my bathroom, I notice Maisy’s already gone to the bathroom in the guest room. Poor thing’s probably just nervous, I think. I take her outside again to do her business and she simply stands on the stairs and looks at me again.

When I go into the bedroom to unload a wardrobe box, I catch her midstream, and I drag her outside, where she refuses to finish. Again I chalk it up to nerves. At some point, she has to come around, right? As soon as she calms down, I know she’ll love her new yard. After all, having spent most of the summer trying to find the perfect place for us and the dogs, there’s no way our efforts will have been made in vain. I mean, really, what kind of dog doesn’t love her own backyard?

Apparently,
my
kind of dog doesn’t love her own backyard.

After almost three months, we’re finally to the point where she’ll dash out, pee on the patio, and return the second she finishes. She patently refuses to loiter outdoors, even if we’re in the yard with her. And she’ll occasionally consent to make a big potty outside rather than on my pink plaid rug
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in the guest room. I consider this progress.

It snows for the first time today. I’m sitting on the love seat in the den drinking coffee as fat flakes drift slowly down from gray skies. Maisy spends her requisite eight seconds outdoors and comes immediately back inside. She curls herself into a small bean next to me, tail thumping, head resting on my lap as we watch Loki snap at snowflakes.

She wags harder when she sees our neighbor Dan get into his Jeep. He’s the only person we’ve met here so far, and we’ve talked to him maybe a handful of times since he gave us a bottle of wine over the fence on our first day here. We’ve waved at a few of the other neighbors on the rare occasion we’re out front, but that’s about it. Funny how much less you know about people—good, bad, or indifferent—when you don’t live in a big, glass, U-shaped fishbowl. I scratch Maisy’s head and she stretches, giving me a big whiff of corn chip. She sighs contentedly.

So she hates her yard.

But she loves her house.

And that’s good enough for me.