SomaCow

This past Saturday, I had the most beautiful dream. There I was, the sole judge of the prestigious “Miss Bacon Universe and Oral Sex Skills Pageant”. It was time for the talent competition, and my loose-fitting, velcro judge’s shorts were already askew with anticipation. When suddenly, without any warning or foreplay…

…I was awakened from my idyllic vision by that sound that every married man has come to dread: the crisp rustle of parchment as my wife unfurled her “Spring Cleaning Chores” scroll that she had painstakingly compiled all winter while I was snoring in my cave accumulating body fat and trying not to expend a calorie.

She was already dressed in her combat fatigues as I groggily pulled on my sweatpants, the sweet smell of sizzling pork and smeared lipstick from my dream now just a mournful memory.

I have to give her credit. She never shrinks from taking on the toughest jobs first. This year, the festivities began with The Biggie: cleaning out the two-car garage. Or, as she calls it, written in calligraphy on her scroll, “Operation: Get Rid of All of J’s Unused Athletic Equipment And His Beloved Technical Books That Are Too Ugly To Display in our Luxuriously Appointed Living Space Because They Were Not Written By Oprah Book-Club Favorite Nicholas Sparks, So We Can Make Room to Store More Bins of Scrapbooking Supplies”.

As I surveyed the vast expanse of crap we’ve accumulated over the past year, I realized that, even though it was piled from floor to ceiling, it was nonetheless still organized. Near the front was the “paint brushes that never got washed out and two thousand screwdrivers, not a single one of which is Phillips-head” pile, the stack of “unworn women’s shoes that were on sale but don’t match any outfits made since 1989″ and the continuously-growing area for “Things Made with Green Tea”.

Little Known Female Consumer Fact: Women will pay extra for any product, including motor oil and nasal spray, if it contains Green Tea Extract or Cucumber Oil.

Off to one side, I uncovered what I thought might be the parts for building a dog house or small wooden shed. Plywood, metal, tools…but I knew we had never planned to build a dog house because we spend most of our monthly gasoline budget in driving our stoopit yappy daschunds out into the wilderness, dropping them off, and hoping they will learn to forage, instead of always finding their way back to our house and pooping on our welcome mat to show their displeasure. Finally, I realized what this pile of construction materials was, which leads us to:

Widely Known Teenaged Son Fact: Any object, regardless of shape, size, construction, monetary or sentimental value, that gets relegated to the garage for more than three days will immediately be fashioned into some sort of skateboard ramp. My last “yard sale” was a disaster, mainly because nobody is interested in purchasing things like a bust of Voltaire with a sheet of plywood nailed to his head.

So, I lifted and carried and stacked and sweated and cried and swept and boxed and whined and loaded and smoked and drove to and from the dump, all day long and well into the night.

Finally, exhausted and covered with sticky patches from where the paramedics had applied the EKG sensors after I had tried to lift a box marked “Don’t ask J to lift this”, I stood back and surveyed my handiwork, satisfied with the knowledge of a job well-done.

And also with the knowledge that there is still no way in hell that we will ever be able to fit even ONE car inside that %*#?@! garage.