I’ve just upgraded movabletype, the software I use to run the weblog on this site, to the latest version. It’s been a couple of years since I upgraded so I was a little worried things wouldn’t go smoothly. And they didn’t, but I managed to recover before anyone was likely to notice. Anyway one of the side effects of this is that I’m turning comments back on, at least for the short term, as the update supposedly helps tremendously with comment spam. If you post a comment now you’ll have to wait for me to approve it for it to appear, which is a little frustrating I suppose but less frustrating than having to plow through 100 viagra and cialis spams to read the actual comments on the weblog.

I also spent 2 hours (!!!) cleaning out all the comment spam that was in the system since the newer movabletype provides a mechanism for more easily deleting unwanted comments. Hopefully legitimate comments remain but some might have fallen victim to me trying to wade through a lot of data as quickly as I could. So if you’re comment is gone, sorry. I did my best.

Consider yourself warned – if you’re weak of stomach, eating, have no taste for tales containing more scatological detail than a proctologists report, or hate dogs, move on to the next post and do not read this one. Everyone else is in for a fantastic if maybe slightly disturbing laugh at my expense.

Soolin, my 6 month old golden retriever pup, is crate trained. I get up around 6AM and most mornings I let her out of her crate then crawl back under my covers. She hops on the bed and we play for a little while before I let her out. It’s our morning ritual. This morning she woke me up before 6AM, scratching at the door to her crate and making a racket restlessly moving around. I let her out, figuring she had to go to the bathroom and would make a beeline for the door. Instead she hopped up on the bed. She was spade on friday and I’ve been keeping her from engaging in too much physical activity so I concluded she was just restless because she’s spent half a week laying around. Anyway, I crawled back into bed with her. Not two seconds after I did this, Soolin hopped in my lap and exploded in a miasma of wet gloopy diarrhea so foul, so utterly and completely disgusting that I literally shrieked in horror and shock. I couldn’t fucking believe what had just happened. It was everywhere. On me, on my spendy down comforter, an old and beloved blanket I’ve had since college days, and all over the bed itself.

Soolin herself was terrified, partly I’m sure because she is completely aware that she is not supposed to excrete inside, and partly because she’s never heard me shriek. I don’t think anyone has ever heard me shriek, come to think of it. She ran off to the corner of the bed (my bed, which came with my cottage, is enormous – a california king which is more than 6 feet wide) and cowered. I sprang into action, trying to contain the damage. I didn’t want it to penetrate into the bed mattress, and I managed to get everything off the bed before it did, though I left a trail of poop across my house that still reeks despite hours of cleaning.

The down comforter and college blanket were a total loss. It took three cycles through the washer to cleanse the bed pad. The sheet took only 1, thankfully. I had to go buy a new comforter, a cheapy at target since it’s summer and I won’t need a full thick one like the one I lost until winter.

Thank god I’m basically an easy going person. I was infuriated at nothing in particular for most of the morning – there was no one to blame, it’s not Soolin’s fault she got sick and there was nothing I really could have expected to do differently that would have saved me this travesty. By the afternoon though I was laughing about it and figured ehh, might as well share. So laugh it up at my expense, assuming you can stomach imagining a poop-drenched me, murfled hair and angry glare ablaze, running in my skivvies through the house this morning cursing up a storm and dripping unspeakable horror about the house. I don’t mind 😉

Check out this dog powered scooter. I want one! Soolin could easily pull me into work every morning using one of these, and it would be good for both of us as well as the environment. All told it would run me about $500 to get one of these. A bit steep, and I’d probably catch grief from folks who think it would be cruel to Soolin. If I had a husky this thing would be perfect, they have energy to burn.