The Third Hand

The problem with keeping odd hours and eating all over the house (read: at my computer) is that I usually find myself having to make two trips to the kitchen - once for food, and a second time for drinks. To me, this is kind of a pain in the butt. Not only because I am inherently lazy about inconsequential tasks, but also because it delays things I actually want to do. (Eat, read, watch something.)

I am fortunate in that I often get my drinks from cans. (Pop.) A can being a closed container at the start, it is easily transported in unconventional ways without loss of product.

When I have a bowl in one hand and a plate in the other, there is nowhere for the can to go. Now, I know you might think - "Why not put it in your pocket?" For anyone who has ever dealt with girl pants, you have probably also dealt with girl pockets.

Girl pockets are only large enough to hold our hopes and dreams. Good luck putting anything substantial in there.

(To me) The next obvious solution is simply to grow a third hand. In the absence of practical science or sufficient quantities of radiation, I must think a little more widely. For example: can the beau carry the can for me? Well, he also has a plate and a bowl, so, no.

Expanding my scope yet again, I alight upon a delight of my life who is also usually underfoot. Being half border collie, he delights in doing and completing tasks no matter the consequence. (Read: He is less lazy than me in that circumstance.) It was but the matter of a moment to teach my worker dog his task, nay duty to assist the one who feeds, bathes, cleans up after and cuddles him. Being that I have a very good relationship with him, he will patiently sit and wait for me to take the can back, practically forever. I am very much of the "nurture" side of the argument. My dog was able to do this at nine months old.

I will give a small disclaimer in that Ajax is extraordinarily gentle and does not chomp down on things when offered them. It makes the first five minutes of "Tug" very easy to win.

So I give you, my Third Hand:

The Cokephant and Other Tales

Something in my dog's tiny brain has wired him to do some pretty outrageous things. For instance, when he gets out of the tub, if you put a towel on the floor he writhes around like an irate water moccasin (a snake), ready to destroy.

Sometimes he'll forget how to run up the basement stairs and set up a mournful howl, the likes of which is only seen on some lower levels of hell.

He also sniffs dandelions until they make him sneeze. EVERY TIME.

But one of the most bizarrely inexplicable things about him, has to be his love of pop containers. Not the cans (though we recently had some success teaching him to carry single cans from one room to the next, more about that if anyone is interested?) As I said, not the cans but the boxes, themselves! It doesn't matter the size, he just loves them. He loves to carry them around, sometimes he worries them, but mostly he just trots around ENTIRELY BLIND to his surroundings because his head is encased in an empty pop box.

So, weblings, without further adieu, I give thee,

THE COKEPHANT!

In order to take this shot, I had to get him to sit still, which meant five minutes of hearing him blundering through the house while I called for him. He turned left, right, left... crashing into the wall and stalling his progress no less than six times! That is determination! We could learn a thing or too from my outrageous mutt :)

You'll notice he has a Coke container, please, let me explain! I'm a Pepsi-lover, die-hard, at heart. But the fact is, we don't have a lot of money, so when we do splurge for it, we go for whatever is usually the cheapest sale. Thus, the Coke. (Else we would have The Pepsimadillo. Sadly, we have the Cokephant.)

Other Tales
The Pirates of K-Mart

The container from above was tossed from the fridge to make way for the NEW containers. K-Mart had them 3/$11, so I picked those up. As I mentioned, we are not the richest of folk, so we do what we can with what we have... for example, changing our regular dollars into GOLD dollars. They're just more fancy.

With tax, it was around $11.72, so naturally, having only gold dollars at my disposal, I paid with 12 gold dollars. The woman took them and looked at me suspiciously.

"What're these?" she demanded. "Fifty cent pieces?"

I admit to a moment of surprise. "They're gold dollars?" I answered questioningly, as if her ill-founded mistrust had persuaded me that I was in error.

"Twelve of 'em!" she growled.

"Yes..."

She punched a few buttons on the register and snarled, "Your change'll be twenty-eight cents!" To be honest, I half expected a "YARRRR!" thrown on the end.

None was forthcoming.

Perhaps I will have to hoist my own Jolly Roger.