Me and four fleas

Tonight was a relaxing evening in our humble abode. Hubs and I were deeply engrossed in a phenomenal episode of "Dr. G, Medical Examiner" and couldn't wait to find out who the third burnt body was, and how the hell did he end up with the Mexican Mafia guy?

PPT was watching The Military Channel in the playroom and asking rousing questions like, "Did Adolf Hitler kill himself before he was caught?" and "Did you know that China has been at war for over 200 years?" Damn that Current Events class he's been taking in school. The other day he actually asked me what I thought of the $750 billion dollar bailout plan. I just blinked and walked away.

The Dictator was on the computer under the pretense of playing games on Cartoon Network, but I'm fairly positive he was perusing midget porn or looking up ingredients for a McGyver house bomb. That's just how he rolls.

All in all, a soothing, electricity-hogging night.

Then, as I was rubbing Good Dog's large belly, this happened:

M: You're so cute, Good Dog, yes you are, you're such a good...WHAT. THE. HELL. IS. THAT? Oh my God, it's a flea. It's a freaking flea. Good Dog has a flea. I'm going to barf. Seriously. Get me a...OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD, there's another one. What are we going to do? If there's two fleas, that means there's 300 fleas, and-

H: Calm down. It's just a flea.

M: No, it's TWO fleas. Which means 8004 fleas. Which means they're going to crawl up my nose and eat out my eyeballs when I sleep and-

At this point, I've started scratching my arms like some sort of heroin addict on a bad fix. And I'm on a mission. A mission, dammit. I'm going to find every damn flea I can and make it suffer. Because that, you dirty little vampires, is how I roll.

I call Bad Dog over, and she immediately flops on her back for a tummy rub...and WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS? Two more fleas. Sons of bitches.

Now I'm in a full fledged panic.

M: Oh my God, what are we going to do? Do we have to bomb the house? What if they eat The Dictator whole? What if we wake up and he's missing because the Flea Tribe has carried him off in the middle of the night to meet their leader and he's going to be their human sacrifice, because you know there are 4 billion of them in the house now and-

H: Seriously.

M: I'm going to Petco, and I'm going to buy every single flea product I can find to wipe this whole God-forsaken flea species off the planet. I'll teach these little jerks who's boss around here.

And so, at 8:30 p.m. on a Thursday night, I went 185 miles per hour down Tustin Avenue to Petco. And I got flea shampoo and flea medication, and held a lengthy conversation with a Labrador owner about the benefits of neutering.

But that was just the beginning of my evening.

This was the rest of it:

1. Drag both dogs outside for a flea bath at 9:30 at night with freezing hose water. Relax, they were fine.

2. Strip their dog beds of all washable materials and put them in the washer, on high, high holy-crap-my-eyebrows-are-burning heat and the 'Sanitize' cycle. Put both dog collars in there too. EVEN THE LEATHER ONE.

3. Vacuum the ENTIRE house. At 10:00. Move everything. Fleas are tricky little bastards.

4. Scrub walls behind dog bed area with baby wipes, because...well shit, I have no idea why.

5. Stay up waiting for dryer cycle to be done with dog beds so I can put the white load I need by tomorrow in the dryer.

6. Blog about it at 11:40 p.m. and watch Snakes on a Plane to stay awake.

And so, my peaceful little evening turned into a flea hunt of epic porportions. I'm scouring every square inch of this house looking for the fallen fleas' angry brethren, and when I find them, they'll wish they'd never stepped foot on Good Dog or Bad Dog.

But here's a neat little fun fact: fleas can't swim. They paddle their loathsome little legs and try, but they can't. So hypothetically, if you were to get a plastic Islands cup full of water and shove them in there, they would drown. And you could watch and laugh maniacally at their suffering.

You know, hypothetically.