But The Caravan Moves On...

The bathroom in this house is right inside the front door.

The blueprint, as I mentioned, actually intended for this to be the back door, so it’s not as if I can blame the little incident I’m about to describe on the architect. But still. The bathroom in this house is right inside the door.

(Anybody out there know where this is going? Can we have a show of hands? Very good. Now I’m going to tell you anyway, so sit down.)

When you live alone, see – and especially when you live alone in a log cabin in the middle of the woods – you don’t always so much bother with the clothes. I don’t walk around naked all day or anything, but while I put the coffee on in the morning? While I brush and floss before I go to bed? While I go from shower to bedroom, and vice versa? Sure.

I mean, why bring clothes with me to the shower? This isn’t summer camp, or college, after all (although now that I mention it, I don’t remember lugging clothes in either of those places, either; I think we just wrapped ourselves in towels, but whatevs). I finish working out in the living room, I strip and throw my sweaty clothes down the basement stairs on my way by, and then I just keep going down the hall. I leave the bathroom door wide open while I’m in there, too, because I like to listen to music while I wash and the sound of the exhaust fan drowns it out (I turn the fan on when I’m finished, Dad, don’t worry). Then, when I’m done, I stand at the sink and complete my morning ablutions in my altogether. I don’t even have a robe up here.

I will, though. The next time I go home, I’ll bring a robe.

Because today? After I was out of the shower but before I was out of the bathroom? Somebody came to the front door! And both the bathroom and the front doors were wide open!

Fortunately, I was in the sweet spot, pressed up against the sink, so whoever it was couldn’t see me.

Unfortunately, I still had the music blaring (Funhouse, okay? I’m still listening to Pink. I'm sorry, but you leave your husband and a place like the AssVac and try not to become obsessed with lyrics like “This used to be a fun house, but now it’s full of evil clowns.” I mean, have you been paying attention to this blog recently at all?) so I didn’t hear whomever it was until they knocked.

Fortunately, I am in semi-permanent possession of a 92-pound (yes, he’s gained a little weight since we’ve been up here, so?) Great Dane/Black Lab cross. And as long as you’re on the wrong side of the threshold, he passes for a hell of a junkyard dog. Barks like sixty, in an enormous, 92-pound, I'll-eat-your-face-off kind of way, and sounds – and looks – really frighteningly fierce. Of course, should you actually take so much as a single step inside, what he'd do is bring you a toy or a bone and run around and wiggle at you and beg you to please-please-please-please scratch his butt. But as long as Whoever It Was was still outside, they couldn’t possibly know he wasn‘t salivating for their throat.

Unfortunately, I was trapped. In the right-inside-the-front-door bathroom. With the I-guess-I-just-lost-my-husband music blaring. And really not so much with the clothes.

My options, as I saw them, were thus:

1. Remain pressed up against the sink and hope Whoever It Was went away.

2. Close the bathroom door and hope Whoever It Was didn’t get a flash of boob while I did it – and also, after I did it, went away.

3. Pause the music, wrap a towel around myself, and peek.

I don’t know why I chose #3. I guess I assumed it was a neighbor, and since I was quite obviously there, I didn’t want to risk giving offense. So I hugged the wall around the corner to the towel rack, grabbed the only one on it (why oh why did I have to throw the extra-giant stripey L.L. Bean beach towel in the wash today?), and wrapped the teensy thing around my bare.

It wasn’t a neighbor. Or at least, if it was, it wasn’t one I’d ever seen or met. It was a man – a rather large, strange-looking man at that – with an orange t-shirt on and no front teeth!

I said: “Whoa, Charlie. Easy there, boy.”

Charlie said: “WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! I WILL EAT YOUR TOOTHLESS FACE! UNLESS PERHAPS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SCRATCH MY BUTT!”

Mr. No-Teeth said – to the dog, mostly: “Is the owner home?”

Charlie said: “WOOF! FACE! BUTT! ETC.!”

I said: “I live here, can I help you?”

Charlie said: “I WILL EAT YOUR FACE! I WILL EAT YOUR FACE!!!! BUT ARE YOU SURE YOU WOULDN’T RATHER COME INSIDE AND SCRATCH MY BUTT?”

Mr. No-Teeth looked at me for the first time, noticed I was in a towel, said: “Oh. Sorry.” And ran away. Well, not “ran away” so much as trotted over to his truck in the driveway and peeled out.

Charlie said: “YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, GIT!! UNLESS YOU'D LIKE TO COME BACK HERE AND SCRATCH MY BUTT!!!”

I said: “You are a good boy, Charlie-dog.” Then I gave him a treat. And scratched his butt.

I don’t really think the guy was trying to get in. I think – I’m not sure, but I think – it might’ve been the same guy who knocked when I first got here, asking if I wanted to seal-coat the driveway. I was dressed that time -- sort of -- and I don’t remember him being toothless then. But whatevs.

I know – I don’t think, but I know – that the next time I go south (by which I mean “to Massachusetts,” so shut up) I’ll bring a robe back with me. I already threw an old t-shirt in the bathroom closet, along with one of the six or eight pairs of jeans I have lying around that are too big for me now. And maybe – just maybe – I'll start shutting and locking that front door. At least while I’m in the shower.

You know, being a Rock Star.

And throwing fistfuls of Glitter in the Air...

But in the meantime? I am really, really glad I have the dog.

Fierce-lookin’, ain’t he?