Wax On, Wax Off

November 2017

I have seen the enemy.  And it is poop.  Literally poop.  ‘What the hell is this dog yapping on about?’ you wonder.  Let me begin at…well, the beginning, of course.

This is where we stayed in London!  Well, not quite.  We actually stayed behind these fancy buildings in a section called a mews.  Geez, I always thought mews were the noises that came out of little kitten mouths.  Well, it turns out a mews is a “row of stables, usually with carriage houses below and servant living quarters above, built behind these mansions during the 17th and 18th centuries.”  Cool stuff!

And while the place we stayed at no longer was a stable, it still housed a whole hell of a lot of poop.  The other dog who lived there peed and pooped everywhere.  The place looked like a Jackson Pollock Pawlick painting!

And the kitchen was the filthiest we had seen so far since using Airbnb.  Like Jimmy Hoffa’s body could have been buried beneath the layers of filth kind of filthy.  The cherry on top was the dog did NOT like me or Jo staying there at all and made sure to leave a fecal reminder of that for us each morning in front of our bedroom door.

November Something, 2017

Dear Diary,

If we have to be subjected to another day of pooromas wafting about, I swear Jo and I are going to yank out our fur and weave it into a rope so we can escape out the window.

As usual, we woke up this morning and listened intently for the enemy at our bedroom door.

“I think I just heard something,” I whispered to Jo.

“Well, we can’t stay in here forever.  We both gotta go to the bathroom, so there’s only one way to find out,” Jo replied.

I reached for the doorknob, my paw trembling.

“Don’t worry, buddy – I got your back,” Jo promised.

Slowly, quietly, I cracked the door open.  Other than the usual poo-present and the urine carpet art that spelled out, “You’re next!”, the coast was clear.

I motioned to Jo to follow me using the military Macarena dance hand signals I had learned while watching MTV, and we tiptoed our way down the hall to the bathroom like we had a thousand times before.  Only this time I misplaced one of my paws, and the floor let out an exasperated CREEEEEAAAK at the same time Jo’s eyes widened and she mouthed “NOOOOO.”

Just then, a pair of beady black eyes appeared on the wall, and the nightmarish little rat of a dog we’d been trying to avoid, camouflaged to blend in with its surroundings, stepped out in front of us, windsock of a tongue flapping in the air as he screamed, “Ai, yai, yai!”

“Get to da chopper!” I yelled.

Yet again, thinking only of herself, Jo hurdled over me and the savage beast as she ran towards the safe room bathroom.  With Yappy McYappington nipping at our heels, Jo shouted back to me,

“I’ll always remember you, Penny!”

We careened around the corner, zig-zagging down the hall, and narrowly avoiding more doggy landmines as we played a real-life game of the “The Floor is Lava.”

I was a whisker away from making it to the bathroom when the rat dog shot a poison dart straight out of a blowgun fashioned from a femur of one of the prior dog tenants…right into my ass.  I stumbled through the bathroom door just as the poison was kicking in, and Jo’s head melted into a rainbow-colored roasted Thanksgiving turkey that let out a gobble-gobble whenever Jo spoke.

Whatever was in that dart was some gooood shit!

Anyhow, this insanity took place nearly every day in some way, shape, or form.  Whether it was seeing rat dog’s face rise up from the top of the stairs like Martin Sheen rising from the water in Apocalypse Now or finding more poop arranged into sinister messages…it happened.  And we couldn’t wait to get the hell outta there.

So we did…off to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum!

* Hanging with my main man, Spielberg.  He and I have been collaborating for years on his films.

* Typical mature Jo just haaad to pick Shrek’s nose

* Don’t like being held.  And don’t like giant gorilla breath.  Nope, nope.

* Penny for President 2020!  Hey, weirder things have happened. 😉

* I’m confused.  This guy is neither a dolly nor a llama!

* Jo tells me this guy was really WILDE.  Sounds like my kinda human. 😀

While everyone was trampling each other to get their photos taken with the Kardashians and YouTube sensations, Jo and I were nerding out over literary heros, comic book heroes, and our favorite childhood movies.  Guys, guys…you do realize you’re not really getting your picture taken with a Kardashian, right???  So there’s no need to be rude and step on each other to get a photo.

While the wax museum was a neat experience, and the employees were beyond nice to us, I wouldn’t recommend going.  It’s overpriced and the tourists inside are freakin’ maniacs.  Even off season on a weekday…pure madness!  Stressed us both out!

Although, if you do go…tell the Kennedy conspiracy theorist we said hello!  And don’t forget to ask about his full-back Kennedy tattoo. 😀

* Oops, looks like I forgot my Princess Leia bikini!

After we got our wax on at the museum, Jo decided to keep the wax party in full effect…as in, get her nether region shaped up with a proper waxing at a spa.  Cue the horror show.  It became quickly apparent the gal doing the waxing had little to no idea what she was doing when it came to the sensitive lady bits.

She mind as well have been yanking a rabid koala off Jo’s nipples – it was that kind of pain.  And somehow she still didn’t get all of the hair.  As the cosmos exploded behind Jo’s eyes and a single tear squeaked out, she asked,

“So, uh – you do a lot of Brazilian waxes?”

“No, not in a long time,” the lady replied.

No shit, Sherlock!

* Speaking of Sherlock, we even stopped off at the Sherlock Holmes museum!

* The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Dog Countenance aka Will Jo Ever Learn to Work a Camera?

* We’re such nerds, we got up at 7:00 a.m.’ish to get on the Tube and hauled ass to King’s Cross Station so we could beat the crowd that piles up to see the Harry Potter 9 3/4 Platform.  And in case you can’t read my kerchief, it says, “Dogwarts School of Bitchcraft and Waggery.” 😀

* Not only did we celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in London, where a shit ton of fireworks go off all weekend, we celebrated my 11th birthday here as well.  And we welcomed another year of my life with a pizza and banana pajama party!

By the way, for anyone who doesn’t know the story of Guy Fawkes, in the 1600s he and some of his buddies planned to blow up Parliament with a crap ton of gunpowder and kill King James in order to put Princess Elizabeth on the throne.

Fawkes got busted, but King James was all like, “That took some balls, man…I like you.”  But that didn’t stop him from having Fawkes tortured into revealing the other conspirators.  And the punishment was supposed to be “each of the condemned would be drawn backwards to his death, by a horse, his head near the ground…their genitals cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies cast to the four corners of the kingdom to be displayed as a warning to other would-be traitors.”

Moral of the story:  Don’t Fawke with Parliament.

* Our nerd fest continued with a tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre!  The original was built in 1599 but was later destroyed by fire.  This one was built in 1997, about 750 feet from the original, and as close in design to the original as possible.  Constructed entirely of oak fixed together with joints and including a thatched roof, the only roof of this kind permitted in London since the Great Fire of 1666.

* Jo imagined herself back in time, amongst the “groundlings” surrounding the stage as they all watched one of Shakespeare’s plays.  As she was romanticizing the past, I quickly reminded her she probably would have made her living as a prostitute back then, had six kids, and either died in childbirth or from syphilis…or the plague…or dysentery…or by the hands of THIS GUY:

A doctor-barber!  That’s right, barbers were also doctors back in the day.  Need a shave, an enema, a tooth pulled, or your freakin’ leg cut off?!  Step on in to a barber shop.  Ahhh, ain’t history grand?

* The rich folk actually sat up in the balconies on the stage

FUN FACT:  Professional entertainers were regarded as somewhat disreputable.  Under the Poor Law of 1572, a musician without a patron risked flogging, imprisonment, mutilation, and even death.

* Inside the museum, there were facts on Shakespeare’s life, artifacts from the surrounding area, costumes from past performances, and examples of what a Shakespearean play would have sounded like in his time

* A Gutenberg printing press, which allowed more books and plays to be made available to the masses

* Old-school bowling balls…whaaaa?!

* Check out the design of this pie crust!

* Sword fight demonstration!

* Hi, my name is Penny and it’s been 2 days since my human, Jo, has bought a Christmas ornament.  She has a sickness, I’m sure of it.  

She named the guy on the left Guy Fox. 😀

* We crossed the Millennium Footbridge on the way home!

* Jo heard about a movie experience called Backyard Cinema, where a different theme is put together each season:  Snow kingdom, a sunny beach complete with sand and flip-flops, or Outer Spaaaace.  We saw The Labyrinth was playing for the snow kingdom and decided to check it out.  Freakin’ amazing!!

You start off by collecting your ticket.  An employee provides you with a glowing lantern, and you make your way through the cave above.

* Across a rickety wooden bridge in a fog-filled tunnel, you arrive at this door

* Step inside an ice castle, complete with throne for a photo op, sound and lighting effects, a bar with snacks and themed cocktails, and bean bag chairs!

* I slept through the movie, but Jo said she had an awesome time!  This theatre is located in the Mercato Metropolitano, a place once used as a paper factory, now home to a huge Italian food market, shops, and bars

* Airbnb nightmare aside, London was a mind-blowing experience!

Up Next:  Heading over to Europe and Doing Jail Time at Disneyland Paris!