Moose in the Kitchen

This is Schnozz. That’s me on the right, molesting a pineapple:

I met Schnozz here:

I spend inordinate amounts of time staring at this glowing, gray box. Whenever I open the laptop, the dog heaves large, breathy sighs because she knows all my love is being siphoned off her and straight to bloggers I’ve never met and who would be scared if I started petting them on the street. Meeka feels this is a misuse of my time. Time that would be better spent adoring her. But I need my daily blog fix. My daily research – yes, that’s it – into the human condition.

I’d never made the leap from Reading a Blog to Having an Actual Relationship with Said Blogger. This violates the rules of Blogging Credo Number One: “You only know what I choose to tell you – and I could be a dirty liar.” It’s not without its risks, even if your lying leaves you only slightly dusty. Meeting someone in person could utterly deconstruct your carefully created online persona. It’s easy to be both entertaining and grammatical with multiple edits.

I’ve been known to writhe with joy when certain unnamed bloggers update. I’ve even sent out the occasional adoring email to a blogger or two, but I never seriously considered stalking anyone. Until I found Schnozz. Learning that she lives in St. Louis put a serious kink in my plan to plaster my (distressingly small) nose to her living room window, motor running in the getaway car to facilitate my escape from her burly husband who, I’m assured, kicks some serious stalker ass. Schnozz may be completely awesome but, sadly, I am completely lazy. There was no way I was hoofing it from California to Missouri just to be chased down the street by a gun-toting husband. I resigned myself to reading her daily essays featuring Hugh the Insulation Eating Bunny and leaving the occasional slavering comment.

Slavering comments turned into slavering emails. Which I craftily maneuvered into an offer to redesign my masthead. Then it got really scary. Because we live parallel lives. Concentration camp collar bones that belie a love for cheesy foods? Check! Houseguests that send us to the retiring room with smelling salts? Check! Ability to withstand the laughter of our friends and loved ones who can’t believe what stupid things a smart woman can do? Check, check! Fabulous hair? Check! Sure, I don’t have a husband who was deployed to Iraq for ten months but…details.

She asked if I wanted to do lunch. I thought “do lunch” meant “email me at 1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time and we’ll both eat roast beef sandwiches while staring at our screens.” Then she tells me she can jet off anywhere she likes for the most nominal of fees. After stifling my envious exclamation of “miserable wench!”, I quickly offered her use of the guest room – otherwise known as the dining room/kitchen with view of the neighbor’s backyard – and sent her a list of house rules. Which are as follows:

1. You must tell the dog that she is the best and cutest dog ever each time you pass her. Don’t think you can walk by with just a distracted pat on the head. You must fawn. Constantly.
2. I am the worst tour guide ever. If we try to go somewhere, we probably won’t find it. If we do find it, we may never find our way back.
3. Dog hair will adhere itself to you and every item you bring with you. You will not simply endure it, you will love it.
4. Disaster will strike. Be ready.

After signing and notarizing the document that declared she understood all stipulated rules and, furthermore, that she liked them, Schnozz arrived on my doorstep.

In my world “arrived on my doorstep” means “I circled the airport for 50 minutes searching for a woman who assured me she was wearing a green sweatshirt.” I would like to note here, on my blog, where nobody can contradict me, that there were no green sweatshirts in sight. Anywhere. I drove in an endless loop, making phone calls of the “No, really, where are you?” persuasion to the phantom green sweatshirted woman. After about half an hour, I called to ask if she did, in fact, fly into San Francisco. She checked. Yes, she was in San Francisco. I hadn’t jumped the space time continuum, so I was still in San Francisco too. There was no good explanation for why I couldn’t find her. Sadly, I never need one. Until we discovered that one of us could see the sky. The other saw only concrete. This was both a stunning metaphor for my inability to see the oh-so-obvious light and a reasonable fascimile of directions. I located the Schnozzster two minutes later. She was wearing a green sweatshirt.

In Schnozz I found someone to whom checking email and blogs 67 times a day isn’t one power cord away from Dungeons and Dragons in our mothers’ basements. She recognizes this for the healthy and acceptable habit it is. When one of us said, “We should check our email. And our blogs. Just in case something happened. Or someone needs us,” we would trample each other on our way to gaze lovingly at our respective screens.

We didn’t spend all our time staring at the computer. I did show Schnozz the Golden Gate Bridge. We didn’t actually travel over it, because such a thing would 1. Bump me from my pedestal as Worst Tour Guide Ever, and 2. Imply dedication to something other than dinner. The trip to the Golden Gate Bridge was simply a detour on the way to the grocery store.

Our big plan was to cook something. Hopefully, something edible. Edible is not a given with me and Schnozz understands this. She was quite understanding when the sauce I was in charge of morphed from “tasty garnish” to “lump of sodden glue.”

I ate it anyway. She didn’t. She is much smarter than I am. Or, perhaps, less stubborn.

Photo Essay Entitled “It’s Amazing These Were Taken Before Any Alcohol Was Consumed”

Not Drunk:

Doesn’t she look lovely? Such nice pink gums that indicate stellar flossing technique. While I look like a muppet on crack.

Hey, look. Still not drunk.

Yet…we seem to be singing. Performing ritualistic sacrifice with dish towels and fresh garden vegetables.

Then we discover the danger of not reading recipes ahead of time:

They want us to debone a sheep? Number one, I thought this was a vegetarian cookbook. Two, Schnozz doesn’t look too perturbed. She’s obviously done this before. Her attempts to lure our sheep back into the kitchen confirm my suspicions.

Oh, Charles. Please come back. I’ll change. I will.

What you don’t see here is the cleaver in her back pocket. Charles didn’t see it either. Until it was too late. Moral: don’t mess with this Harlequin heroine. She’ll debone your sheep and eat your spatula while singing a Broadway show tune:

Still not drunk, and yet, in the time honored tradition of men with gold chains and copious chest fur, I’m making a gun with my hand and shooting you with it. Right back at you, Schnozz:

Schnozz and I had so much fun the dog is still jealous. And not just because Schnozz sheds even more hair than Meeka does. The city remains entirely uninvestigated but our cookies were superb and our throats hoarse. I’m looking forward to Part II.

The pineapple, however, is not. Instead, our abused pineapple plots its revenge:

Mission Pineapple Vengeance: Accomplished

Bloggers looking to meet other bloggers: Beware. The blogger you befriend will probably not string you up in the basement to make an invigorating stew of your toenails. But you might be offed by a miffed pineapple. Let that be a lesson to you all.

(If you simply can’t live without more pictures of our escapades, go here. Or here.)