Three Things I Hate- Starting With Candied Beets

Number one: Candied Beets. (I told you). Why at Thanksgiving would you serve a dish that looks like cranberry sauce? Why would this dish not be clearly labeled “Beets”? What are you supposed to do with a large mouthful of beets while red juice leaks out of the corners of your mouth, and you are sitting around the dinner table with 15 relatives? Unforgivable!

Number two: Commercial super roll toilet paper. You know the type: two 12” diameter rolls with a mile of paper each, housed in a dark plastic wall mounted container. The paper is not the issue. The custodian leaving the roll taped up is the issue. I have literally spent a half hour spinning the roll trying to find the loose end. Somewhere a custodian is giggling. Unforgivable!

Number three: Technology. Why do they have to keep upgrading my operating system? Why do I have to invite my granddaughters over to show me how to work my phone, my TV remotes, the microwave? Why can’t Pong still be played on my computer? I really need technology to stop for about six months just so I can catch up. It’s all very unforgivable. Which brings me to my wife’s friend Becky and her Pekingese dog Ginger.

Becky has money. I haven’t yet figured out what she does but she’s a “techie” and everything in her house is wired for the latest innovations. Her state of the art security system with cameras and facial recognition covers all areas of the property. Spot lights detect and come on from the smallest movement in the yard. An Amazon Alexa sits on a table in the entryway and turns on her inside lights, her furnace, the 72” ultra hi-def television, and floods her deck overlooking the bay with stereo sound so you can enjoy the evening in her six-person hot tub. Really, I don’t know what else it is capable of but one thing it can’t do is walk Ginger.

Becky was frantic to find someone she trusted to house-sit for her while she was away for a week at a corporate meeting. So, after my wife Cheryl was asked and she confirmed with me, we accepted the job. I know about dogs since my granddog Milton Barry lived at my house, and it would be cool living in a rich person’s house. Nothing beats watching the Seahawks on a 72” screen with surround sound while asking Alexa to make a pizza. Really, after the first night things went fairly smoothly.

Ginger is an emotionally unstable ball of whiney fluff that moves around the hardwood floors picking up lint like the robotic vacuum cleaner Becky has moving about the house during the day. She was fit to be tied that her momma wasn’t home and she spent most of the first evening crying at the front door but at around 10:00 pm she finally settled down in her bed so Cheryl and I could also turn in.

I should make a break in the story to inform you that I don’t sleep with anything on. It never has been a problem, but then I don’t live in a techie house.

Somewhere around midnight, I was awakened by the sound of Ginger whining and yipping at the back door. She was in need of a potty break. Without awakening Cheryl, I groggily got out of bed and felt my way through the unfamiliar house in the dark to find the dog. Since the house is in a neighborhood of very rich homes and very few of the windows had curtains on them, I didn’t want Alexis to accidentally turn on any lights thereby having to explain to the neighbors and police why a naked guy was wandering around in Becky’s house at midnight. I opened up the back door for Ginger and she ran out on the back porch and onto the lawn.

“Hurry up you little fur ball. I’m not standing here all night,” I muttered.

If I had done the procedure correctly, as outlined by Becky, Ginger would have been on her retractable leash but that would have required I get dressed. The backyard was lined with a hedge, not a fence. I wasn’t too worried because I could see her shadow in the light of the moon. And then, realizing I had broken protocol, Ginger bolted into the hedge.

“Blasted doggone dog,” I hissed to myself as I stepped out the back door onto the moonlit deck. I closed the door behind me.

“Ginger, Ginger, come here girl. Come here, I have treats.”  Ginger didn’t come but I could hear her snapping twigs in the hedge.

“Blasted doggone dog!”

I stepped off the deck onto the lawn and headed toward the hedge. And then, two things happened that I had completely forgotten about: 1) The motion sensor/facial recognition system turned on and illuminated the whole back yard like a night football game at the Civic field. 2) The recognition program, not recognizing the shocked face of the naked guy in the backyard, locked all the doors.

I ran to the hedge where I heard Ginger.

“Ginger, you blanking, potty mouth, pile of fur. Get over here!” To which, Ginger stuck her head through the branches, and I swear she giggled. I grabbed her collar and pulled her out and into my arms and headed back to the porch. It was then that I realized that the back door was locked. The only thing to do was to wake Cheryl by ringing the doorbell. I set Ginger down and started repeatedly pushing on the doorbell button.

What techie house wouldn’t be complete without a doorbell with a phone app and a camera that sends a live feed to the homeowner? I am standing on the deck under the bedroom window yelling my wife’s name and thinking that I should compliment her on what a sound sleeper she is, when all of a sudden I hear, “Hey Marty, you look like you’re cold.”

Becky? It’s Becky?

From her hotel room, her phone had gone off warning of an intruder and now she was watching a naked guy run in circles on her deck.

Instantly my mind jumped to the Bible story of Adam and Eve. “For when they had eaten the forbidden fruit, they realized they were naked and they formed fig leaves to gird their loins so they would not be ashamed.” I had no fig leaves, but I had Ginger! I scooped her up off the deck and used her as a fashionable fur cover-up.

“I’ll unlock the door for you,” Becky said, but I swear she was giggling. Wherever she was, she hit a button on her phone app and the door unlocked. “Sleep tight,” she said as Ginger and I entered the house. I can imagine that she followed me all the way back to the bedroom with her techie security cameras.

It was just this week that I received a text message with a damning photo and two smiley face Emojis. Unforgivable!

I have thought of a way to even the score though; before we left her house, I wrapped clear Scotch tape around her toilet paper rolls. Also, she is joining us this year for Thanksgiving where I will conveniently slice up beets to look just like cranberries.

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