3000 Hail Marys

During the separation leading to my divorce, I had worked too hard to slum-it on move-out, busting my ass only to walk away from my $1.8 million retreat in the fashionable Lynn Ranch area of Ventura County, California.


So I guess my apartment was a little lavish, $2700 a month with upstairs and down, but what really sold me on the place was the idyllic view of the greenbelt at patio's edge, and the ocean-lined horizon.


A week into the lease, I came home to a note tied to the collar of my wife’s giant French poodle, "Chéri," a bitch (the dog) who had bitten me, urinated in our home at-will, chewed my shoes, crapped on the loveseat in my study, and only chewed cords of appliances and office equipment primarily used by me, a four-legged nightmare now mine by abandonment.


I always had a 'special' nickname for this canine demolition expert, and now officially renamed her in honor of my soon-to-be ex-wife.


The next morning, with 3 elderly neighbor ladies sitting on the adjacent patio, I executed a careful balancing act of espresso cup, newspaper, and bagel while negotiating the French doors and, in a blink, the dog fled, running for the ocean like a Cuban refugee.


I was pissed, yelling again and again, “GET BACK HERE, DOUCHE BAG, COME ‘ERE!!” and instantly realized my faux pas, worsened only by learning, later, that my wide-eyed, blue-haired neighbor-ladies were Franciscan nuns who taught school up the street.