THREE PEES IN A POD

I have two small poodle-type dogs (yorkie-poos). Poodles are supposed to be water dogs. They're bred, I'm told, to fetch waterfowl and dead fish: hence the weird haircuts that make the sorry animals look like topiaries.

Their silly-looking, bulbous haircuts are intended to protect their vital parts from cold when working in-vitro. The shaved areas eliminate any unnecessary hair that, in water, would weigh the dog down and add drag.

My two poos are hydrophobic. They won't even allow their paws to touch the morning dew, let alone swim. Naturally, they won't go outside to pee if it's raining.

Thankfully my dogs won't wee in the house, either. By using the modified crate and gaffer's tape method early on, I was able to train my two male dogs to never, ever, relieve themselves inside the house.

It's been raining hard now for nearly 6 straight days, and my 12 and 14-pounders won't go out and urinate. I've even carried them out only to watch them bee-line it back to the house. I'm seriously starting to get worried about their health. I mean, it's been almost a week now and my 12 pounder is close to 16 lbs. And I don't recall my 14-pounder having yellow eyes.

To make matters worse, my neighbor has a new schnoodle puppy (a female schnauser/poodle mix), who purportedly drinks copious amounts of water and passes it in seconds -- and she asks me to take the dog for a day while she attends an event in the city.

As her parting advice, my neighbor informed me her dog would signal when she had to go: the puppy would circle around, sniff, and then I was to whisk her outside.

This was easy for me to remember. I, too, circle around before I go (especially if my fly is stuck), and though I don't sniff beforehand, relief usually comes at my fifth rotation. Four-and-a-half rotations, and I'm not yet free of my trousers -- and five-and-a-half rotations and I'm facing the sink. Either way I've got a problem. Five rotations, though, is good. But enough about me.

Being a schnoodle, would the dog go in the rain? I needed to know. I already had issues in that department. I was assured it would.

The moment my neighbor left, her puppy polished off the water bowl both my dogs drink from. I eyed the mongrel for any signs of rotation. She made a few wide turns, but there were no signs a storm was gathering. Certainly, an eye hadn't formed and there was no wanton sniffing unassociated with dog butts.

Then, suddenly, without warning, a quick squat and it was over. An impressive size puddle given the size of the puppy -- spread right out on my sorry kitchen floor.

The bitch! There was no leg lifting, nor any other such formalities.

And where were the circles? Where was the sniffing? Like the missing WMD in Iraq, my intel was completely wrong. Oh the humanity.

Sensing my anguish, my dogs came running over to the crime scene. This must have been an extraordinarily exciting development for them, because in an instant, they both lifted their legs and emptied their stored-up urine right on ground zero.

Lake Erie followed, with Niagara Falls cascading down the stairs from the kitchen to the Ontario sunroom. I ran for the gaffer's tape, but it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle.

I still circle before I go, except now my dogs follow me into the bathroom. It's stopped raining, at least, so things are looking brighter.

ONE IN A MILLION

Anyone who has ever seen an X-ray of a chicken (I do it recreationally) is struck by its similarity to the human skeleton. It's a fact of life that our two skeletal structures are virtually identical.

Those already having trouble believing humans evolved from apes must find no comfort in being built like a chicken. This, however, may explain how the Lord rose from the dead. But I digress.

Chickens are something you make soup out of. Not relatives. No one, except at baseball games, wants to dress up like a chicken. Yet the skeletal resemblance is striking.

Now, it gets worse. According to the New York Times, scientists studying the chromosomes of fruit flies (genus drosophila) have discovered that they share 90% of our DNA. A chicken is one thing, but a fruit fly? Even I'm a little offended by that. What the Hell was God thinking?

But it gets even worse, still. Those same scientists studying fruit flies are focusing on the bacteria in people's stomachs and they have discovered that those germs that aid in digestion share huge amounts of DNA with their human hosts. Oh, the humanity!

And get this. Yeast. I am so sorry! Yes, yeast, which leavens our daily bread--- you got it. Call it Uncle Yeast.

Look, I'm really sorry. This wasn't my plan. I wanted to stop with apes. But God has this wicked sense of humor.

I wish it didn't get worse, but it does. Evolutionary scientists are now thinking that the human being is not a singular entity at all, but millions of coordinated, symbiotic organisms working in tandem -- like a string of laptops forming a supercomputer. Each of us is a colony of individual organisms struggling to cooperate with one another for the greater good.

We are, in effect, an ambulatory reef. Wow. This explains the rough patches on my elbows.

Is this reef madness? I foresee a showdown at the OK coral. The Pope isn't going to like this crap one bit. It turns out we didn't just crawl out of the primordial soup. We are the primordial soup: The Creature(s) From the Green Lagoon.

You, as an individual, are not really a "being" at all, but billions of beings, lesser creatures, all working in concert. Wait 'til Jerry Falwell catches wind of this!

A word of caution. Try not to think of any of this when getting frisky with the spouse. Hey, as long as it looks good, who cares if your loved one is actually thousands of smaller creatures? A little candlelight. A little music. No need to visualize a bucket of worms. Unless you're into that kind of thing.

Look, Mr. Scientist. I'll be a good boy. Let's leave the similarities at the fruit fly level, okay? I need to be somebody--not some ad hoc compendium of organisms.

I (or should I say "we"), want to be somebody; to have purpose. We want to transcend this Earth, not die with it. I think all my parts can agree on this. Anyway, what do scientists know? No piece of coral with a biology degree is going to define me.

One surprising result of the DNA comparison studies is that, because of our shared, mitochondrial traits with chickens, fruit flies, bacteria, and yeast, drugs that work on us, work on them as well. Sleep aids, like Ambien, help insomniac fruit flies. Alcohol interrupts the circadian sleep cycles of both humans and yeast. Rogaine works great on apes--not that they need it. And, if you want an inexpensive chandelier, Viagra works wonders on octopuses.

Now that I'm a walking, talking microbe cooperative, I finally know where all those little voices in my brain are coming from. And like Americans as a whole, my legions of organisms are evenly divided as to whether they want to believe in evolution. Some, in the Pitt of my stomach would clearly rather be on Angelina Jolie. But we digress.

REAPING WHAT YOU SOW

This is the time of year I tally up the fruits of my wife's labor in the vegetable garden.

The yield from this year's harvest: (8) tomatoes -- (6) with chipmunk bites taken out of them, (4) servings of leggy broccoli, (12) beans -- every year is our worst year for beans, (7) carrots, (20) servings of rosemary and tarragon, (30) servings of lettuce, (2) eggplants, (15) Brussels sprouts, kale (enough to feed the British army), and snow peas, 15 pods. Okay, let's monetize this.

Adding up the yield at fair supermarket prices, ka-ching, ka-ching and ka-ching. Okay. $127.49. Sounds pretty good, right?

Now, let's rewind back to last spring to look at the expense side of the equation.

Seems like just yesterday. Let's see. We had (15) 75 lb bags pine mulch, (12) 60 lb bags of potting soil, (17) 60 lb. bags of manure, (3) bags of lime, (1) shovel, (8) different kinds of lettuce flats, (12) different herb flats, tomato plants, (1) garden fork, (8) broccoli plants, (1) gardening hat, spinach, kale, beans, eggplant, (1) knee cushion, dozens of seed packets, and assorted flowers to line the garden.

With a procession of illegal aliens pushing a train of gardening carts, we arrived at the checkout counter. My wife proudly pointed out her purchases to the clerk while I gave last rites to my wallet. Ka Ching, 14.95, ka ching 59.95, ka ching 29.95, ka ching, 12.95, ka ching, ka ching, ka ching, and on and on and on.

Out the window, I saw a forklift laden with hundreds of pounds of denatured cow dung heading for my freshly vacuumed car.

Anyway, the hills were alive with the sounds of ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. Okay, the tale of the tape? $1,636.36 for the 20' X 20' garden.

After one look into my eyes, the clerk advised me to beat my swords into plowshares and yes, my spears into pruning hooks. They wheeled me out in one of the garden carts.

So, now that the harvest is in, let’s see how we did. We have the $1,636.36 cost minus the $127 and change for the fair value of the yield. Ka-ching and ka-ching. Got it. We're in the hole $1,508.77 -- not counting the 1,930 hours of labor. And my car still smells like a barn.

It reminds me of a farmer friend of my Dad’s in Hinesburg, Vermont. He told us he bought an emaciated horse in the fall for $220, fattened him up over the winter, and sold him in the spring for $220. My father told him, “Why, you can’t make any money that way.” The farmer replied, “I found that out.”

Of course, it's not just about the money. Though it's the world's most expensive sport, gardening purifies the materialistic soul. Gardening is the new yoga.

In fact, gardening is so redeeming that those with a tough row to hoe, like convicted politicians, pimps, and pushers, are all purging themselves between the pickets. Other than turning to Jesus, nothing will get a judge to lower your sentence faster than gardening.

In all fairness to my wife, the indigenous animals seem to know exactly when she's about to harvest her crop. Every year, in a game of chicken, they arrive 10-minutes before she does, and make off with the choice vegetables. They even know our vacation schedule. So part of our harvest we write off as wildlife payola.

But think the good we're doing for the Earth, says my wife. Great point. So I computed the carbon footprint of our yield -- that is, the amount of energy required to produce our purchases. It turns out our bitter harvest has the same carbon footprint as producing (2) H-2 Hummers.

A word to the wise, though. If you love the gardener in your family, as I do mine, you won't dwell on any of the above.

KAYAKS AND "WEAK STREAM"

With the exception of urinary infections, there is nothing worse than a flotilla of $4,000 plastic kayaks stuffed with fat, fifty-something men and women with "weak stream." On a given day one can walk across any body of water on the decks of kayaks.

Referred to as "ashtrays" by the Cigarette boat crowd, these pseudo boats are a nuisance to recreational boaters and merchant seamen alike. Flotsam and jetsam are what they really are; their paddlers no more in control of their "ships" than Captain George Bush.

Outfitted with more gear than Jacques Cousteau, these sorry mariners choke up every lake, river and harbor in these here United States.

Recently, I was forced to succumb to this sorry, trendy fad. My wife made me do it. She viewed kayaks in the Eskimalian, spiritual sense. We would summon the spirits and take to the seas in small boats to reconnect with our inner whale.

I don't have an "inner whale." I have an "outer whale." I barely fit into the cockpit. What I did reconnect to was my inner backache. Trying to keep the boat from doing a lateral 180 degrees (previously known as flipping), my previously-healed back went out again.

Evil kayak designers, tripping over one another to design the most tippy, "technical" craft possible, make long, skinny boats with bottoms so round that when you find yourself upside down in the water, you can theoretically "right" yourself.

When I want to find myself upside down in the water with a large, plastic bobber attached to my butt, I'll call the local Mafia and tell them their fellow Guineas cheated their way to the World Cup.

What kind of sport is that? Inverted in the water with a paddle in your hands and the boat above? I'd rather be up shit's creek without a paddle.

It's my worst fear: Invertephobia. I've been in that situation with cross-country skis: my head pointing towards the center of the Earth, and my skis still attached, crisscrossed upside down on the surface of the snow. The only reason they found me was that an X had marked the spot.

With all the accessories that come with kayaks these days, no one has figured out how to put a bathroom on one. Bobbing in the middle of Long Island Sound with a bunch of old farts on diuretics is less sport than comedy. Even if they make it to shore, de-boating in time is a rare occurrence.

Sure, every sport (e.g.: bicycling) has its assholes who dress like clowns and go out to push the envelope. I have a titanium racing bicycle that has tried to kill me twice. The ambulance driver, who thought I was unconscious in the back, remarked to his attendants that I looked like an overstuffed sausage designed by Peter Max.

Sure, we newbies have to go out and buy the same kayaks the pros use in order to look cool -- and not like trendy amateurs. It's peer pressure's fault. And sure, L.L Bean makes forgiving kayaks, but who would be caught dead in one? The brand is everything.

Well, discretion being the better part of valor, my sacroiliac demanded I trade in my techno-touring kayak for a stabler one. My new kayak is great. I can hang a 20 lb. Hibachi (and a large, sizzling steak) off the side and the kayak doesn't even lean.

Besides, now I can dive off the side of the kayak and take a little swim between beers. While underway, I sacrifice a few knots, but then, I try to stay within a soccer field's length of the dock, anyway. You never know when fog might roll in.