Chelsea Handler - Are You There, Vodka, It's Me Chelsea

The following Monday she brought my TiVo back with major attitude. “Aqui!” she yelled as she slammed it down on the table. I didn’t understand what her problem was, or why I was then stuck watching twenty-five episodes of ¿Donde Esta Selena?

The next day I drove over to Lesley’s around noon to begin my dog-sitting duties, and the dogs went absolutely nuts the minute I opened the door. You’d think they’d been left alone for an entrire week already.

“Jesus,” I moaned as both of them jumped up and down, and Pepper barked in his signature high pitch. “Hi, guys.” I feigned enthusiasm as I bent down and pet them both, paranoid that Lesley and Jerry had installed some sort of neighborhood pet-watch video cameras.

I took the dogs outside to the backyard and found a tennis ball on the lawn. The backyard was enclosed by a wall made out of large stones leading up a steep hill so that the dogs couldn’t escape.

“All right, guys,” I announced, “let’s play catch.” I threw the ball once and then walked back inside and closed the glass door. I had been there for a total of ten minutes and was already wiped out.

Just as I was falling into a deep sleep on the sofa, I heard loud barking. After fifteen more minutes of this, I creaked my head up and saw a lawnmower at the top of the hill in their backyard with no one operating it. Daisy was nowhere to be found, and Pepper, of course, was doing her usual musical number, which was about as soothing as an Ozzy Osbourne concert.

“Fuck!” I groaned, and jumped up to go outside. I could hear Daisy barking but couldn’t see her anywhere.

“Daisy,” I called as I tried to catapult myself over the rock base leading to the woods.

“Daisy!” I screamed. “Daisy!”

I looked over into the neighbor’s yard and saw Daisy at the base of the tree, barking at a gardener who was hanging above her with his wrists and his feet wrapped around a branch, positioned a foot apart. Like a koala bear.

“Daisy,” I hollered as I ran along the side of the incline over to the tree, through thick branches and dirt, and along a side incline that made for very unlevel footing. Why a grown man would be afraid of a golden retriever made about as much sense as Janet Reno casually dating Kanye West.

“Lo siento!” I said. “I’m so sorry! Daisy, get over here!” Daisy turned around and saw me, then ran in the direction of the street at a speed upward of the typical ten miles per hour I’ve known most dogs to be capable of.

The descent down into the street was a steep one since both homes were set high up on a hill. Boarding a sled and heading downhill on solid pavement would have been less frightening than running down a ninety-degree angle in platforms. Not only did I roll my ankle twice, I fell into a double somersault, which, to my complete shock, turned into a round-off leading into a triple back handspring, ending with me at the bottom of the neighbor’s driveway with two bloody knees and a hangnail.

Daisy was at the bottom of the hill running away from me as I was trying to catch her. After a good minute and a half of running in the same exact circle, I realized we were in a holding pattern. I stopped, and so did she.

“Let’s go!” I said, and clapped my hands. Then she walked right over to me and sat down. I grabbed her collar and dragged her over to Lesley’s driveway and back up the hill. Luckily, I had left the garage door open, and was able to get in through there.

After I brought Pepper in from the back, I went into the bathroom to clean myself up and look for some Band-Aids. Of course, the dogs couldn’t be left alone for more than thirty seconds, so instead of using disinfectant or rubbing alchohol, I was treated to the two of them alternately licking the blood off my knees. “Stop it,” I yelled, and then before I knew it, I started crying like a baby.

Without collecting my thoughts or gathering any composure, I called Mohammed while simultaneously spitting up.

“Please come over here,” I cried, and gave him the address.

Twenty minutes later he was knocking on the front door, which, of course, made both dogs jump up and down like a couple of lunatics. I opened the door feeling incredibly sorry for myself and, once again, burst into tears.

“These dogs are gonna drive me to drink!”

“What happened to your knees?” he asked, noticing I had a piece of bathroom tissue covering each knee, both soaked in B-positive blood.

“Daisy escaped and I had to run down the hill in my shoes, and it wasn’t pretty.”

He was very sweet with me, giving me a hug and then taking the dogs into the living room and letting them jump all over him in an effort to allow me some time to comport myself. I went in the bathroom and cleaned myself off, and when I came out, Mohammed was outside throwing the tennis ball with the dogs. He came inside with them when he saw me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I can’t understand why I am always falling all over the place,” I said, sitting down on the sofa. “You’d the think the advantage of having eight years of tap on my side would help me with some of the coordination challenges I seem to regularly find myself up against.”

“I take it you’re feeling better. Do you think you might cry again?”

“Yes,” I said, as the dogs ran over to me, jumping up and down. The big one was at least cute, and as annoying as she was, you couldn’t get mad at a golden retriever. The little Peekapoo, on the other hand, wasn’t attractive on any level, and that, combined with his high-pitched squeal, made me want to throw him against a wall.

“I feel bad about the feelings I’m having toward this little shit dog,” I told Mohammed while simultaneously rubbing Pepper’s head. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I really feel like if I have to stay here for three days, I’m going to kill one of them or myself.”

“Well, you should definitely not kill one of the dogs,” he said. “You could go to prison.”

“Thanks.”

“That dog is really stupid. I don’t understand people’s obsession with little dogs,” he said. “I’ll stay here with you.”

“Thank you,” I told him, flattered he would be willing to support me in that way. “Is there any chance you would sleep here by yourself?” I asked him.

“No.”

What I did remember from last time is that Pepper spent the majority of the night crying in his cage like a little bitch, but I wasn’t about to give Mohammed the heads-up on that one.

“They have the DVD box set of all four seasons of Sex and the City,” I said. “Wanna watch?”

“No.”

“What about all five seasons of Saved by the Bell?”

“Fine.”

We walked into their media room and closed the door, leaving the dogs in the hall to fend for themselves. It was time for a break. As we were watching one of the episodes I turned to Mohammed. “Who would you rather have sex with, Screech or Star Jones?”

“Star Jones now, or before her gastric bypass?”

“Before.”

“Who’s giving and who’s taking?” he asked.

“Screech is giving, and you’d have to go down on Star Jones for one hour…after she went jogging.”

“I choose both,” he said.

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

“Wanna have sex in their bed?” he asked.

“Well, yeah, but it’s gonna have to be a quickie,” I told him. “I need to run some errands.”

We walked out of the media room, and of course the moment the dogs heard the door open they were running down the hallway from the living room, drooling all over the place. We went into the bedroom, and I put Pepper in his crate. “Are the sheets clean?” Mohammed asked.

“Yes.”

“Then why are they covered in dog hair?” he asked, throwing the comforter on the floor.