scooping poop for disneyland

to-do lists seem to be the bane of every relationship. ours is no exception. sometimes i will get home from a long day at work just as mrs. blogmaster is heading out to yoga, the latest birthday dinner party, book club, church youth activities or some other extracurricular event but not before she slips me a to-do list. to put it nicely, i hate it. generally, the last thing i want to do when i get home from work is more work, but that's the way it is.

thing is, i'm not any better in that some mornings i'll wake up, get dressed, and jet off the work only to send mrs. blogmaster an email of to-do items that she can busy herself with during the day (it's not like she has myriad other things she has to get done). to put it lightly, she hates it.

thus, the moral of the story is that we've both learned the hard way that to-do lists are a menos eficaz (that means less effective in spanish) way of making deposits in one's emotional bank account. in fact, it typically has just the opposite effect. as such, we tend to only make these types of requests when there has been a recent direct deposit in the emotional bank account such that the emotional cup runneth over. on the other hand, sometimes we don't care if the account is overdrawn and just want the other spouse to get something done we don't want to do ourselves (how's that for mixing metaphors? does anyone even have an idea of what i'm talking about anymore?).

moving on...

as with all things blogmaster related, there is, of course, some endearing anecdotal evidence, sitting as an illustrative backdrop, against the moral of this story which you zombies should wisely view through the ever-changing to-do list lens of life.

partake...

if memory serves, i was the latest perpetrator in the union of mrs. blogmaster and myself to unleash a to-do list on the better half. one of items on this to-do list included: make sure you sign us up for disney's give a day get a day. for those unfamiliar with this type of sorcery, the bottom line is that if you sign up to volunteer a day's worth of service for some noble cause, then you get a free ticket to disneyland. not a bad deal if you think about it: volunteer a day and get something in return. nothing says charitable service like a quid pro quo beneficial arrangement. thus, in the spirit of providing philanthropy with the intent of being compensated for it, i thought the cooperfive might as well throw our collective mickey mouse eared hats into the ring and get some free tickets to disneyland by serving our fellow human beings.

thing is, i didn't actually end up serving human beings... i served animals. pets at a pet fair to be more specific.

yes, you read my words correctly. my lot in this whole ordeal was to serve animals at a pet fair. to my pleasant surprise, i only discovered my assignment upon receiving my confirmation email from the program. at first i was pretty stoked since as an active member of the mormon church and an eagle scout i have had plenty of opportunities to serve; however, these opportunities have usually involved manual labor and physical exertion. it is not uncommon for me to profusely sweat or hurt myself during a mormon service project... and all for something we generally refer to as "blessings", not tickets to disneyland.

lest ye think i'm complaining, i'm not. i enjoy helping out where i can, i'm just saying that service for me doesn't traditionally involve helping out at a pet fair. it usually involves blazing a trail in the vegas heat or carrying a piano up the stairs on my back. a pet fair sounded like a nice change-up from the usual... kind of fun, actually. i especially got excited when i saw that part of the job description included being a pooper scooper. rad.

to illustrate...

having grown up a cooper, i heard my fair share of cooper pooper scooper name calling. as funny as is to hear that over one bizziliion times as a kid, it's still a barrel of laughs when i hear it today as an adult... even like three moths ago when someone dropped it on me at church. i was laughing so hard that i wasn't laughing at all. name calling is one thing, but with this pet fair, though, i had the opportunity to actually put my money where others' mouths had been for so long in that i could actually dig in and scoop some poop, thus, earning my rightful moniker.

funny thing is, on the other end of this machination mrs. blogmaster anxiously awaited my reaction thinking i would be bummed about an assignment that involved scooping up canine feces given my sour disposition towards coddling pet owners, coddled pets and, one could safely assume, their poop... au contraire mon frere! for, unbeknownst to me, mrs. blogmaster had specifically chosen pooper scooper duty as my service project in direct retaliation for my having left her a to-do list which included signing us up in the first place. the funnier thing is that i was actually looking forward to the event for some odd reason... maybe i was because of its potential blogability. how's that for backfired, lover?

unfortunately, i didn't really get to scoop any poop as there wasn't much excrement left on the ground at the event. either all the dogs were constipated or the owners were responsible enough to clean up their own stuff. i'm not sure. i did get to count some dogs, hand out some doggie bags, and assist in unpacking a car to help set up a ferret display, though. it was good times.

i especially enjoyed the idiosyncrasies of the near fanatic pet-owner crowd. they definitely are their own culture. in fact, i once authored a blog post touching on my feelings towards those who seem to value their pets more than their offspring (although, i think some of this crowd can't tell the difference anymore).

i'm not hating on the peta type, their hearts are in the right place and maybe the pets are all they have... to which i say, i'm glad you have someone. but then there's the couple with the ferrets that seem pretty normal on the surface, but upon closer look something just doesn't seem right and i have to wonder...

for instance, how does that first conversation about being a ferret owner (and not just any ferret owner, but a multiple ferret owner that goes to pet fairs to parade ferrets) go over with the significant other for the first time? maybe there's some bar or online dating site where pet lovers go to chat/hang out and there's this pretense that everyone involved is little over the moon for their pets. if that's the case, then fine: caveat emptor... that's one thing (although, with the stigma on-line daters already have, do you really want have the potential for weird to the second power by making it an on-line dating website for ferret groupies?).

in contrast, if the conversation is more of a coming out of the closet event in the sense that it's a sudden "hey, i know we just met, but i've got to tell you that i'm really into ferrets... i mean really into ferrets! i've got five of them that i parade at pet fairs every once in a while. they're a big part of my life. are you down with that?" well, then that's quite another situation.

and then i have to wonder if there's even proper etiquette in that culture to govern when such news is properly sprung. is it proper to lay it all on the line during the first meeting/date? or is there some more strategery involved in the sense that one is better off waiting until a few dates have gone by and here's some emotional investment already in the bag? inquiring minds want to know.

hey, if you want to refer to your pets as your children, more power to you. i get the bond. i cried every time we lost a pet as a kid. in fact, i got a little emotional when i just found out my parents took the cat we all hated to the pound the other day... and i seriously disliked that thing. i get it. i just don't get the dog strollers. unless your dog is injured, old, or legless, dog strollers are an abomination to humankind.

in summary, the service project was fulfilling. it was especially fulfilling when i printed out the free vouchers for disneyland yesterday. at least i got to do something interesting like count dogs rather than something boring like prepare meals for homeless people like mrs. blogmaster did. where's the fun in that? my mom, on the other hand, takes the cake. special k's project consisted of her reading to birds. i said birds.

what is this world coming to? do i need to remind you all of what happens to the humans on planet of the apes? consider yourselves warned.