Atlas Shrugged

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. I woke up and after a few minutes, I looked at my phone. There was a new notification from Facebook Marketplace exhorting me to check out the latest thing they had decided was “Just For Me”. And obviously, it was a clock. But not just ANY clock—a mid-1800s gingerbread clock, and it was only $10! So I contacted the seller and made arrangements to pick it up. I was about to leap out of bed, but then Ken came in with a card, inside of which was an assortment of LCBO gift cards, and if you don’t live in Ontario, LCBO stands for Liquor Control Board of Ontario, and that’s what they do. They control the sale of liquor here, and you can only buy it from their stores or other ‘official’ outlets instead of at grocery stores and corner stores and off people on the street like you can almost everywhere else in the world. But now I was flush with the potential of buying a lot of wine, and on that high, I demanded that Ken take me clock-shopping:

Ken: But you already have 47 clocks.
Me: Most of them don’t EVEN WORK, KEN.
Ken: But I was going to make a little wooden boat and put this plastic lion on it.
Me: That’s very cute. But the clock is just up the road, and coming with me can make up for you not bringing me breakfast in bed.
Ken: Sigh. Fine.
Me: Great! Also, I bought a jigsaw puzzle from someone in Brantford, so if we leave now, we can feed two birds with one…bag of birdseed or whatever.
Ken: You mean, kill two birds with–
Me: NO.

So off we went. I had put the address into my GPS, and it directed us to a house. A white house with a blue roof. But the number on the house was different than the address the guy had given me, so I messaged him:

Me: We’re here but the number doesn’t match. Can you resend the house number?
Guy: It’s the white house with the blue roof.
Me: OK, we’re here.

So I rang the bell, and I saw a woman through the window scurrying around inside, but she didn’t come to the door. I rang the bell again, and she yelled, “That door is locked!” and I was like, “OK, I’m just here for the clock!”  Then she poked her head out the side door and yelled, “I don’t have a clock!” and slammed the door.

By this point, I was a little frustrated and also feeling gangster-y, like “Give me the clock and no one gets hurt!” but then Ken realized that the guy lived to the north of the highway and we were south and I was like “Is that up or down from here?”, but long story short, we found the guy’s house, and wouldn’t you know it—it was also WHITE WITH A BLUE ROOF.

Then we picked up the jigsaw puzzle and made it back home within the hour. And within that very hour, Atlas decided that the remote controls for our satellite dish and our ROKU streaming stick were exactly the thing for a mid-morning snack. We walked into the house, clock and puzzle in hand, and were greeted by shards of plastic strewn all over the family room. And out of the four AAA batteries involved in this scenario, WE COULD ONLY FIND 3.

So that’s how I spent my Mother’s Day—terrified that my dog was going to die. As for him, he was quite nonchalant about the whole ordeal:

Me: What’s wrong with you?! Those aren’t food!
Atlas: Says you. They were quite tasty.
Me: You could get really sick!
Atlas: Meh, I feel fine now. I can’t guarantee how this will play out around 3 a.m. though.

At any rate, it’s been a week. We still haven’t found the battery, either in the house or in his poo, but he seems perfectly fine, and based on the sheer quantity of the poo over the last seven days, it doesn’t appear that he has a blockage. But now, whenever I want to watch Netflix, I have to push his nose.

Also, competition on Facebook Marketplace must be getting pretty stiff, because people are starting to use sex to sell the most random stuff:

67 thoughts on “Atlas Shrugged”

  4. Congrats on your 48th clock Suzanne, you should post a picture of it. I’ve never seen a gingerbread clock before. As for Atlas, he seems to be the exact incarnation of Titus if you ask me. But, I’m sure your waiting that he comes of age before letting him have some wine. 😝

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  5. You never ever fail to make me burst out with a chuckle that make the cats look at me like what is she going on about now? But never enough to make them come over and discover that I am usually laughing about a dog. ’cause that one may get me smothered in the middle of the night. Have a happy Sunday! 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  13. Uh, dog stories are a lesson in why dog owners need a trainer. Like me for instance, when I owned a puppy. He became a very large, beautiful dog (like a pony big). One day the bath stopper was missing.”Hmm, I wonder where that went?” I looked around, but it was no where to be seen. Several months later, my handsome dog starts horking loudly! He had never done this before. He did it several times and was heaving in the end, when a somewhat moldy, large, intact stopper came flying out of his mouth onto the floor. I was stunned. Feeling guilty that I had no clue a dog would swallow such a thing. He was probably playing with it. Anyway, Best of luck with the missing battery.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  16. Now I’m going to tune in regularly, like I don’t already, to see where the other battery turns up. I have a feeling it’s around there somewhere because I know how it is when a dog destroys something like that. It sounds almost certain that he didn’t eat it because it would have passed through by now, although I was expecting a trip to the vet for an X-ray and for the X-ray machine to be activated by him wagging his tail.
    I’m also very concerned about buying those roasting chickens. They’d probably be fine but I’d be worried about them going bad in the amount of time it took you to find that the seller was up instead of down, or vice versa, and I could just see you stretched out on some stranger’s lawn saying, “I want the chickens that look like this!”
    I’m not worried about the slutty brownies, though. They’ve already gone bad.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  20. I have been right there with you this past week! It’s been stressful! Let’s just say my cat (also not dying!) Moon Pie and Atlas need to be “partners in crime”. Confirmation that she’s also probably not blocked came in the wee hours today. Stoopid cat.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  24. I never thought of a chicken as a centerfold. I wonder if you’d get a charge from sampling the breast? Batteries not included? (Although, at 20 dollars, even Canadian, that’s already quite the charge.)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s