Dear Internet,

I love Utah. Do you want to know why? Do you want to know some of the reasons? Do you want to know specifically about Reason #1749? Do you? Sweet. This is a story about Friday morning. Most of you (since there are very few) have already heard this story. If you have not, then you may read it. If you have, then you may read it.

Friday morning was the third morning of the 7th week of 2006 that I’d been awakened far too prematurely by a Dog Named Ethel. This is a problem we will never address because I think it was my fault and we won’t talk about that. We simply will not address the fact that I knew she’d had an accident in her crate earlier in the week and I’d removed the affected blankets to calm her pheromone-induced bladder emptyings and to provide her with warmth and comfort. No, we will not discuss the fact that this afternoon I realized that all the other blankets and the liner were quite affected and the only reason my angelic dog had awakened every two hours in the night throughout the week was because she smelled her own urine and her body needed to empty itself. We will not talk about how I feel so guilty that she might possibly stay in my warm, clean bed all night—even though her bed has been cleaned and her blankets are nice and fresh and maybe I put in another new blanket—all off her leg-twitching, puppy snoring, and wrinkly foreheaded self. Finally, we will not address that she has all of the blankets and two of the pillows and looks like a little baby cockroach dog with her feet in the air and her neck extended off the bank of a pillow and I want to consume her little snout with some Training Table fry sauce. It is That Cute.

No, this entry is about Friday morning. So we will make it about Friday morning. Friday morning, I’d awakened quite early for the third time in the week and quite possibly sworn at my dog for the crying—oh, with the crying—but I don’t really want to talk about that.

I showered and dressed and thought I really ought to take the dog out one final time before I seriously made some bad decisions that would have quite possibly been fueled by absolute Dog Crying Craziness.

This was at 7:10 a.m. We went outside where my fifteen-week-old dog relieved herself on command which she does even when she has not been lying in her own waste—Envy Me—and snuffled around in the snow just long enough to look even cuter than normal with it all over her snout. I turned toward the stairs with my customary, “Ok, let’s go. Inside. Treat,” which regularly garners an enthusiastic run inside toward the yellow Iams box. I had my pup at my side when Lo, What Is This?

The door was locked.

I was outside.

With no keys.

And frost forming on my own hair.

My first thought was, “Couldn’t I have at least brushed my hair?” and slowly, I began to realize the absolute absurdity that I’d locked myself out at that precise moment in my life. Dawne is still recovering from surgery and not driving. Not that she could do much more than bring me a spare car key and where would that get me? And not that she is … driving. All of the far-fetched solutions my hair-freezing mind could conjure involved one of them there phones which I did not them there have.

Blast.

Across the street, there was a man delivering newspapers from his eighties-model Honda. While I have no inherent problems in asking for help from paper delivery personnel, Something told me maybe he wasn’t the most upstanding citizen. I abstained from asking and my dog indulged in growling.

I surveyed the street for any sign of intelligent design and found myself slowly dying inside. Also, my hair was frozen. I kept looking back toward the next-door-neighbors’ home where I’d only moments before—oh those precious moments where I was just a wetly tousled haired girl walking her pup—seen the man of the house leaving in his company pick-up. Reason told me that since they have two boys—whom I regularly see and whom regularly ogle my dog at her most vulnerable and exclaim, “THAT DOG HAS TO GO TO THE BATHROOM”—that the woman of the house would also be awake. Ethel and I moseyed on over and I rang the doorbell. I waited a reasonable amount of time before feeling truly awkward and walked toward the street.

Where I cried.

My quiet sobs and semi-crazy mutterings to my pup were interrupted by a rustling at the neighbors’ front door. The neighborly woman peered out, in bare feet and a black bathrobe and said, “May I help you?” I explained my sad situation and cried through, “And I was wondering if maybe I could use your—” I was interrupted with, “Yes! Please! Come in!”

I gratefully approached the front door and explained that I’d leave Ethel tied up outside. I am not a dog tie-er up-er but the desperate times called for the measure. The neighbor woman cried, “Nooo, please, bring her in. I looove puppies!” and I thought the only reasonable explanation of her pure joy in being alive at such an early hour was that this woman was most definitely drunk. Most definitely.

I came inside where I was led into a sweetly cluttered kitchen and handed a cordless phone. She asked my name and told me hers—Anne. I dialed the landlord and she brought her blanketed two-year-old, Jake, downstairs to pet an extraordinarily fearful Ethel—Perhaps I’ll post tomorrow about the many ways she thought she might die this week. Through the ringing, Anne explained that she’s got the two boys and she’s pregnant and sorry for the mess and I’m sure I may have muttered something like, “Oh don’t worry, really, you might lose two boys in my apartment because the BOXES ARE GOING TO TAKE OVER,” but then the landlord answered.

“Sorry,” he lamented, “but I don’t have a car until 9:00 a.m. I could bring an extra key to you then.”

Blast.

I had this deep sense of longing that perhaps my coworker, Jane, would be uncharacteristically late to work and might be at her apartment four blocks away and just awaiting my desperate plea for help and also a ride. I called work and inquired. She was there. Incomplete. I had the secretary put Jane on the line anyway, so I could explain. I was employed in that very venture when Anne looked up and realized the situation. She exclaimed, “Ashley. Do you want to take my car to get a key? Take my car,” to which I responded with much disbelief and horror because obviously, this woman is drunk and has lost her mind.

I hung up with Jane quite quickly before Anne rescinded her offer and called the police. She grabbed her keys and looked at me—glorious woman that she is—and said, “So do you want to take the Volvo or the Durango?”

At that moment, it was apparent that Anne was quite possibly drunk, crazy, and also high on crack cocaine concurrently and when I began questioning the reality of it all.

She explained that the Durango needed to be registered because they’ve been trying to sell it and I really ought to just take the Volvo which she’d be using later in the morning and to just park in the driveway when I came back. And also, good luck in the alley because it snowed.

Did that woman really just ask me my preference in which of her $40,000 cars I’d like to drive? Does she even know my last name? Isabel, you know my last name. Would you do this? Do you have a Volvo wagon I can borrow Tuesday?

Anne handed me her keys, brought the dog inside and sent Ethel and me on our way. Once I convinced Ethel that the Volvo was not a death trap and that life would be better and warmer inside, we were backing out of the garage. The dog! The dog! OH THE DOG!

Anne’s Very Large Black Dog was rejoicing in the presence of life itself and bounding around the Volvo. I feared I may have accidentally released him to the alleyway so I left Ethel in the car to scream out her final moments before the Volvo swallowed her up into its deep belly.

Listen, everyone. This dog is quite possibly the source of Anne’s wealth as I’m certain she owns the World’s Biggest, Fattest Dog in All of History and maybe along with the title came some commercial deals and maybe also a book. He also apparently made it into the crack cocaine stash because this dog was Trashed.

He was not so much angered over the fact that I was driving his car and just leaving his house and that I had a very cute puppy in his car. No. He was not angered in the least. He was simply overjoyed at the prime opportunity he had to gain love and attention. And also ram me against the Volvo because THAT DOG IS HUGE. I finally got him back into the backyard, kind of hoping he actually belonged there because what if he didn’t actually belong to Anne?

I got to the landlord’s home in one piece and with partially thawed hair. I told him what Anne had done and all he could say was, “Oh,” in such a way that conveyed his sneaking suspicion that this woman should not be left alone with two $40,000 cars because she might go and lend it to the neighbor. Oh.

In fact, we made it back to Anne’s driveway, and to her front door with little incident. There, I learned that the Very Large Dog is very large indeed as he caught site of the scrumptious little morsel of Ethel seated on the sidewalk and rammed through the barriers Anne and I tried in vain to erect.

Again, Ethel thought her life might come to an end (I’m quickly realizing I’m ruining the post I thought I’d design about the ways in which she thought she might die because most of them happened Friday) and made us all aware through her very audible final prayers. Soon, that fear turned to overwhelming and utter bliss when she learned that Very Large Black Dog wanted nothing but playtime and joy. They were at that moment declared best friends.

At that precise moment, the German Shepherd who lives on the other side of Anne was let out and joined the fun. there was this large jumble of dogs and that is when I decided THIS IS JUST TOO MUCH FOR A FRIDAY MORNING. I scooped up Ethel, explained quietly and calmly that after she has her shots and when she is no longer so cute, she may return to her big dog clique in safety and with my permission.

Anne barefootedly claimed her Very Large Dog and sent the Shepherd, Drake, home. From my place on the driveway, I met her four-and-a-half-year-old, Cody who screamed, “And I have a brother named JAKEY!”

And so, I brushed my hair and teeth and began my day at once.

Listen, people. It’s a good thing I am secure in knowing I write only for myself and the benefit is mine, because my mind just gets restless sometimes, or I’d be offended that not everyone wants to sit down and read a novel about one. single. morning. And also about how some girl somewhere is such an idiot that it took her a week to realize there was pee in her dog’s bed.

Edited to add: I’d like to take this moment to say that at 3:03 a.m., there had been exactly 0 seconds of crying since Sunday at the same time. That’s 24 hours of crying-free bliss. Also, a free leg-warmer in the bed. A free leg-warmer named ETHEL. I awakened for asthma-related funk and took her out and she’s now chewing peacefully on her rawhide on the floor next to the bed. Nice.