Ode to the Commode...Because You CAN Take it With You!

There I was, sitting quietly at home on a Friday night, basking in a little pre-birthday calm, when imagine my surprise to hear the doorbell ring...at 10:30pm. People my age don't routinely enjoy visitors after the respectable hour of say, 8:00pm, so to call me surprised is the understatement of the Western world.

Further imagine my surprise to find this beautiful specimen of a portable potty chair, full of UT (Texas, please) orange mums, sitting on my porch, complete with toilet paper. Step into my shoes for a moment, as you scan the horizon, looking for "friends" who you know are lurking behind the bushes, to no avail. But your eyes focus on something in the yard...what is that?

Of course! A giant "48" spelled out in brand, spanking new Depends, right there in the dew-coated grass! The sudden POP POP POP of flashbulbs suddenly blinds you, and then voila, here are three women in ski masks, giggling uncontrollably as they try to speak.

I am going to kill them, but you can't quite figure out who deserves this death sentence, because of those danged ski masks! Finally your son, up way past his bedtime, recognizes his school librarian, which is another topic for another day, and all hell breaks loose.

My husband invited these perpetrators, these violators who have revealed my age to the neighborhood, into the house for lemonade! My son found not only his digital camera, but the video camera as well, and began to record this moment for posterity, no pun intended.

Then these "friends" of mine relay, in great and hysterically funny detail, how they just happened to run into 27 mutual acquaintances of mine at Wal-Mart, as they were rounding up the Depends, and the pink thong undies they strapped to my mailbox (which we didn't find until 11am the next morning, don't you know the mailman is my new best friend!).

And then they "got lost" looking for the house where the real owner of the potty chair resided, which of all places, is only 4 doors up from my house...so of course they had to stop for directions 18 times...so not only do my neighbors think I have bathroom issues, they also know I have friends who go around in ski masks late at night when they should be home sleeping!!!

But I'm nothing if not a good sport, and I do love a good practical joke. In fact, this is probably a mere fraction of a payback for all the pranks I've pulled on friends over the years...but the ultimate insult in this case is that the next day, I had to roll the potty chair up the street to return it to its rightful owner. Naturally I waited until dark...

All I have to say is that I'm blessed to have such fun, inventive pals, who have their very own birthdays to look forward to. If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly. And now, with portable potty chairs, well, let's just say that bears don't necessarily have to do their business in the woods anymore, do they?

POTTY PERPETRATORS, BEWARE!

My German Blood is Boiling in this HEAT!

Ok, last time I checked, I was living happily in Middle Tennessee...a land of four distinct seasons, none of them too extreme, or too lengthy. I am of German heritage, and it is a known fact Germans follow the rules, we don't deal well with extremes. My German genes built me for cooler climates...extra fat layers, and all that. While summers where I live can be humid and hot, for the most part they're bearable. Especially with a cold German beer or two.

Not this summer. To say it's hot is to say Elvis sold a few records. Where I live, we haven't seen a raindrop since early June, and for the last ten days, the mercury in the thermometer has red-lined the 100 mark or higher. I fled Texas, and Arizona simply because I'd seen more than my share of eggs frying on the street. (Ok, maybe not, but haven't you always wanted to?). But in this stifling, steaming situation in which I find myself, all I want to do is sit around in a t-shirt, hold the cold beer can to my head, and scream at The Weather Channel when they announce, with a smile, that this ungodly high pressure phenomenon will extend at least another week. My German blood is boiling, and I simply can't function when temperatures soar above 90.

"It's summer, it's supposed to be hot," people lament, as I shove my face under the ice dispenser at various fast-food establishments around town. I hate hot. My friends know how much I hate it, because they've heard me whine every August. "It's SO HOT! My thighs melted to the car upholstery! Do you know that the Heat Index is 200? Feel that hot wind? It just seared off my face! It's SO HOT, I can't breathe. I'm going to die, right here in this parking lot, thighs stuck to my front seat."

Last night I was so hot, I called my girlfriend to commiserate. (co-mmiserate: to be miserable with another person, such that the misery escalates to unrealistic proportions). My girlfriend resides in Greensboro, NC, which is also painted red on this week's newspaper weather map. She is a fellow Heat-hater, and soon we engaged in a friendly game of I'm Hotter Than You, and I don't mean Lohan vs. Spears. Our conversation went something like this:

BL: It's SO HOT! The heat index was 110 today!

BL's FRIEND: Oh, please, where are you, Seattle? Our heat index was 125, and tomorrow it'll be 140!

BL: (pausing, pondering the plausibility of friend's exorbitant claim). But it's SO HOT here, we have Ozone Alerts!

BLF: At least you still have an Ozone. Ours vaporized last Thursday. I saw it fly away with my own eyes, right before my retinas began to smoke.

BL: Those were your false eyelashes melting, you tramp! What kind of idiot glues extra body parts to herself during a heat wave, anyway?

BLF: This coming from the woman who wore a sweater when it was 108.

BL: Who?

BLF: You, you moron! In 1984 we toured the Jack Daniel's distillery, and the digital thermometer over those vats of mush read 108. You were wearing an orange sweater. Not a good look, major perspiration stains, as I recall.

BL: Hello, that would be vats of "sour mash," not mush, and it was cooking, which explains the 108 degrees, and it was winter! And those 'perspiration stains' were from me hanging onto that vat for dear life, after you tried to push me in, so you could have the cute tour guide for yourself!

BLF: (muffled, garbled noises) Oh, sorry, bad connection, must be the heat. Weatherman just said tomorrow's gonna be 150 here, gotta go freeze my pantyhose. Bye!

BL: THIS IS SO NOT OVER!

I have another friend, a man, and therefore not so competitive when it comes to tour guides and temperatures, and I recall every August he would step outside our place of work and exhale with a loud sigh. "I want it to be hotter," he would broadcast. This usually happened when the mercury approached the century mark, so he was, in fact, being ironic. But we always laughed at the people who took him seriously, and occasionally would comment, "Oh, you'll get your wish! Tomorrow's supposed to be 105."

For now, I'm going to crawl inside my freezer with a Hershey bar and hope that when someone comes to thaw me out, it will be October. I wonder how a beer popsicle tastes?