From Delight to Disaster: A Hot Mess Chronicle
This page may contain affiliate links. I only recommend products that I’ve tried and love.
Remember that time I had it all together?
LOLZ.
This week, I don't have any fun tips or tricks, no new recipes and no new epiphanies about life and such.
What I do have is a struggle-city story from one week ago today. Buckle up.
Once upon a time, it was a beautiful Thursday and I was off.
What do I do on my days off? I go to the dog park. When it's nice out, of course. I'm a hard-core dog mom, and I work 12 hour shifts, so on days I work, I feel like the girls are a little neglected. I try to make sure they have plenty of exercise and outside time when I'm off so that they're happy and Elliot can get some work done.
Secretly though, I love it. I LOVE going to the dog park.
Sometimes I treat myself and grab a pumpkin coffee (obviously) from Starbucks, and head on over and just enjoy the sunshine. It's probably one of the most therapeutic things I do for myself. There's no time limit, no schedule, no multi-tasking. Just me and the sunshine, and a delicious coffee. And my dogs, of course. But Mollie is usually off making friends, and Ellie just follows me around and sniffs stuff.
We're all happy campers.
It's also nice sometimes to hang out with the other dog parents. I know every dog's name, and none of the humans' names. We have chill, surface level chats about our dogs, and we don't need to know that much about each other. It's just pleasant to get to know someone and have a simple relationship with zero expectations. I don't have to show up as anyone but the girl with the Aussies who are cute but bark a lot.
Anyway, last week I took the girls to the park and we had a lovely time. I walked around and chatted and the girls played and played, and soon enough, it was time to go. We wiped everyone down, had a drink of water, and headed to the grocery store.
Disclaimer: It was 65 degrees outside, I left the windows open, and I was maybe 30 minutes. They were fine in the car.
The first thing I picked up at the store were some squashes. Most of them were okay, but there was one that had busted on one end and there was slimy squash junk all over it. I obviously avoided that one. I picked out a few, they seemed okay, and went to put them in a plastic bag. I flipped one over in the process, and lo and behold, I had missed another slimy, busted squash, it had already made contact with my shirt and I was now wearing a large smear of squash slime. On my black t-shirt.
Perfect.
As it was the very first thing on my agenda, I proudly displayed this slime throughout my entire grocery trip. I mean, there are worse things than wearing rotting vegetable on your shirt in the grocery store, and I'm not one to be embarrassed easily. But I figured that was probably the worst thing that would happen to me on my beautiful day off.
Oh, how wrong I was.
I loaded my groceries in the car, checked on the girls (they were fine), and headed home. A few minutes down the road, I smelled something.
Something.....off.
I couldn't really put my finger on what it was exactly, but there were options.
We had been at the park. I checked my shoes in case I stepped in something. All clear.
I had the windows down, maybe it was something outside?
I did smell fertilizer from a nearby field.
The smell kinda came and went, so I decided not to worry about it too much.
I arrived home, and my mom was stopping by any minute, so I quickly released my back hatch and ran around the house to put the girls in the backyard. I returned to my car, and there it was.
The reason for the funky smell was clear as day.
There was an explosion of dog diarrhea all over the back of my car.
Explosive. Dog. Poop.
In my car.
By the sheer quantity, I assumed Mollie. Never in her life has Ellie ever produced that much....anything.
My mom pulled up as I'm pulling out my car mats to hose them off.
Side Note: THANK GOODNESS for my rubber car mats. I got these from Amazon, and they are necessary for days like these! Customizable too!
She watches me pull them out, and asks why. I show her the small disaster that occurred in my car, and she goes...
"Oh no. Is that poop on your shirt, too?"