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White Lotus S1 and The Great Thanksgiving Dingleberry

We spent the Friday after Thanksgiving eating Alison Roman’s macaroni and cheese, Alison Roman’s leek stuffing, pumpkin cheesecake — I have no idea whose recipe, I didn’t make it, and thank god, since I hosted yesterday which was “fine” and “went well” but also, maybe, “never again?” — and watching most of White Lotus Season 1.

It’s only six episodes, we were two or three in when we began in the afternoon. We made it all the way to the end. Night was falling, and we sat there petting Ruthie’s silken coat and asking each other questions like, “You’re happy for the white teenager that he gets to just go canoeing forever but it’s also like he’s stealing Kai’s life, right?” “How much money did Belinda get, I mean, sure, maybe it doesn’t matter but — also —how much?” and “Are we supposed to think that Shane was “changed” by murdering someone?”

We did not know the answers to these questions. But the longer we sat there, talking, petting our dog, having such a nice relaxing time, we realized we also had some questions we could answer, like, “Why does it smell like dogshit in here?” (Because — after some investigation — Ruthie has a giant dingleberry on her ass!) “Can we get it off her somehow, and move on with our perfect day?” (Indeed no, because the second Ruthie senses your hand even in the neighborhood of her asshole, she whips around and lunges for your face.")

We couldn’t bathe her in the tub because our plumbing isn’t very good right now, it needs attention. We couldn’t bathe her in the kitchen sink because she is too big and also that’s a little too disgusting. Could we bathe her outside? No, she really hates baths. The only reason they ever seem to work at all is that something about the four walls of the tub, the safe enclosing space, seems to eventually calm Ruthie down, and this only happens after an initial period of some unpleasant, often violent (on her part) wrangling. An outside bath, we agreed, would be impossible.

We let Ruthie outside. We said that the dingleberry would fall off on the lawn. We said this aloud, to make it true. I’m not going to go so far as to claim that “The Secret” doesn’t work but I will tell you it absolutely does not work on dingleberries.

I should mention we didn’t even know exactly where the dingleberry was. It always just flashed past us, an offending dot in a mass of golden fluff.

The dingleberry really threw a wrench into our domestic harmony. T said he was out of ideas, and I was like, you can’t just be out of ideas, that’s not acceptable. He said, and I quote, “Well, I really have some stuff I need to do for myself right now,” and I was like, OK, yeah, lol, luckily I have nothing to do other than chase a fat little red heeler around trying to find and excise a tiny turd remnant I can’t even get coordinates on.

I started to feel empty and hollow. It was just me and the dingleberry, alone on this wretched planet, with no end in sight. I’m joking but T and I really were at odds and the nice day was becoming a distant memory.

T somehow managed to disappear even though our house is only 900 square feet.

I forced myself to go on. Ruthie was very nervous. I wrapped my hand in paper towel and tried casually following her around the house, whistling all the while like “don’t mind me” but Ruthie would not be fooled. Every time I got within two feet of her she’d back her ass right up against the wall, or, if available, into a corner.

People are always saying to me “Oh, heelers are soooo smart,” and I’m usually like, “Yeah, I don’t know about this one, but that’s very kind of you to say!” but you know, this whole incident made me see Ruthie in a new light. When it comes to personal dingleberry defense, Ruthie is an absolute genius at the height of her powers.

T eventually emerged and we decided to go on a sort of make-up/shake the dingleberry loose long walk. During this walk, Ruthie rolled around in the pine needles. I tried some positive visualization, like I imagined a particularly stiff pine needle or stick making contact with Ruthie’s body in such a way that it might lance the dingleberry. A few times we said “Oh, it’s gone,” but it wasn’t.

That said, the walk did prove fruitful in that it was nighttime. I let Ruthie walk ahead of me and shone the flashlight on her. As she broke into a trot, she lifted her tail up and I saw that the thing was on the underside of her tail, just a few inches from her little anus. “At least we know where it is now,” I said to T. “Does the exact location change things? Is your mind suddenly brimming with creative solutions?” It was not.

When we got home, the house still smelled. Question time again: “Why does it still smell like dogshit in our house when the dog hasn’t been here for 40 minutes?” (Because while you were sitting there eating and watching The White Lotus the dingleberry was touching things like your couch.)

We removed the couch cover and put it in the washing machine even though that was maybe a bad idea.

Ruthie usually has the run of this place. She jumps on our two couches and our bed and the little bed in the guest room. She was exiled from it all now. Ruthie darted around the house nervously as we shut doors.

Let’s try washing the dog outside, T said. We have to just do it.

She’s going to freak out, I said.

But I saw that we only had two options: We could bathe Ruthie outside and risk having our dog, the Sun Tzu of dingleberries, bite out one of our eyes, or we could admit defeat and stand idly by as she slowly transformed our house into a giant toilet bowl.

It came down to this: we had four eyes, but only one house.

T filled a bucket with warm water. He fastened Ruthie’s leash. She got excited. She assumed she was getting another walk. T handed me a cup and a wet cloth. “Good luck,” he said. He held the leash and Ruthie’s head while I slowly poured warm water over her hindquarters.

The thrashing, the menacing lunge, they never materialized. Her little back was wet, the water ran down her legs. I poured out more water on her tail. I took the towel and ran it slowly down her tail. She didn’t move. Emboldened, I gripped her tail and slid my hand underneath. She actually bowed her head in submission. I felt something, I had to pull, like you pull velcro. “I got it!” I said, “I got it!” It was in my hand, sitting on the towel. It was so small but it had caused so many problems. I flung it into the bushes.

We hung up the wet couch cover on the hallway door, near the grate heater. We wrapped the bare foam couch cushion in a random upholstery remnant that miraculously did not get Marie Kondo-ed. T read about the demise of Twitter. I read a book about the CIA written by a very smart person who is also a tankie. Ruthie, having no idea how close she had come to breaking her family into a thousand pieces, jumped back on the couch, fell asleep, and began to snore. She makes such sweet little heartbreaking noises.

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White Lotus S1 and The Great Thanksgiving…