If this is Wednesday it must be Nostrum

I spent a lot of last night explaining what I used to do as Sailor coach to those who might follow in my footsteps. I know that you think I didn't do anything, but that's where you'd be wrong. I did all kinds of things, most of them analogous to being a travel agent. I do also have a dim recollection of once actually working with the plebes on their cases, but I also recall the one time someone actually took my advice and did so poorly that they swore never to listen to anything I said ever again, including "Good morning" and "The school is on fire." Glory days, glory days.

So I retreat into my other reality. Like the arrival of a pet!

We almost didn’t make it this week. The Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over leaving his job at Cambridge Ma ‘N’ Pa Pet-a-Porter. Mr. Ma ‘N’ Pa wasn’t that happy about it either. I mean, whodathunkit? One day the Mite’s going batty complaining that he wasn’t born to be a master of the hounds, and the next day he brings home a black cocker spaniel puppy and announces that he can’t take being the jailer to all those poor pooches and he’s liberated this one using his employee’s discount and the next thing you know there’s now three of us in the apartment, the Mite, me and the Nostrumutt, and two of us are unemployed, present company excepted, and one of us is a piddlin’ fool, to put it mildly, present company also excepted.

I hate dogs.

Ah, the Nostrumutt. It was always fun to maneuver all manner of things beginning with M: the Mite, the Mate, the Mutt. 

At this point we went on hiatus, and when we came back? Oy.

We almost didn’t make it this week. The Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over the fact that we take a wee sma’ break for a lousy month, and the world pretty much goes to hell in a hand basket as a result. The stock market collapses, the only person left in Russia with a job is Lenin’s corpse, our Commander-in-Chief admits putting his hand into the naughty-bit cookie jar while Mrs. Commander-in-Chief is lionized for yet again standing by her man (there is another Tammy Wynette song, “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”; somebody might want to play it for the First Lady while there’s still time), and if that isn’t enough, at least two of the remaining Spice Girls are pregnant. We can’t leave you people alone for two minutes! Get a grip!

Anyhow, we’re back now, the four of us: me, the Nostrumite, the Nostrumutt, and a new arrival, the Nostrumite’s mustache. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. A mustache? I mean, talk about going out of style with the leisure suit. The only people in the world who still have mustaches are policemen, baseball players, and Saddam Hussein’s cabinet. What is this boy thinking, anyhow? He looks like he should be standing at the edge of the grammar school playground selling heroin to fourth graders. He claims he’s been so busy training the Nostrumutt that he hasn’t had time to attend to his tonsorial chores, but I know a deliberate cookie duster when I see one. And I won’t even go into the subject of the cocker Nostrumutt who does, by the way, finally have a name. Unix. For two reasons: the Mite likes the operating system, and it will plant a subconscious idea in Unix’s mind of the eventual fate of certain aspects of his anatomy. I shiver at the thought.

School’s open; drive carefully. Especially if you see a mustachioed drug dealer walking a cocker spaniel.

So why, I have to wonder, didn't I call it the Nostrumoustache?