Getting a call from my realtor for a house-showing always makes me feel torn. On one hand, I may have a sucke... uh, prospective buyer coming over, but on the other hand, I get to spend my Friday Night making a concerted effort to conceal the fact that I am a complete slob, if not downright neglectful in regards to this partially empty house.

My alarm clock and I don't normally get along under normal circumstances, but early on a Saturday morning and nursing a mild hangover, we fight like a couple of fat bikers over the last of the Buffalo Wings.

I'll be honest though, there is something about seeing the Rocky Mountains first thing in the morning, while the rising sun is hitting them just right. After I free-based half a pot of coffee, I was able to fully appreciate the fact that even though I had to be up, I didn't really have to, and I was more able to enjoy the morning.

Since Asshead will furiously tear at the protruding body parts of any human in the house that I didn't specifically introduce, she has to leave the house with me while strangers dig through my collection of Legos and dead hookers under the auspices of "viewing my home with their realtor."

The fact that Asshead loves riding shotgun in the truck, hanging her head out the window and barking at other cars, combined with the way the mountains had captivated me that morning, led us up Highway 285 into the Rockies for the day.

I confess that I am as guilty as the next person at taking for granted the beauty that Mom Nature consistently puts her back into every day, and it was important to get up there and fully appreciate why I love where I live and all that she does for me.

Up until the point where Ol' Mamma N tried to kill me again.

After a half hour, Asshead was becoming antsy, and I found a place along the river for us to pull off and run around a bit. I leashed her up and was admittedly quite excited at the fact that if she randomly dropped a big, smelly turd, I wouldn't actually have to pick it up unless it was directly on a trail, scenic landmark, or Park Ranger's shoe.

We wandered the rocky shore of the river, Asshead sniffing and snuffing every tuft of grass and rock for potential victi... um, playmates, and myself enjoying the fresh mountain air and quietly muttering, "shit... shit... shit, damn you... I don't want to stop on the way back... hunker down and SHIT..."

Whenever I'm somewhere important to me, I try to make sure that I am fully experiencing the situation, so I always do my best to immerse myself into it. If it's cold out, I want to feel the cold so that I may more fully appreciate and remember it.

At least, that's what I kept telling myself, instead of continually smacking myself in the forehead for forgetting a jacket of any kind on my little trip.

While Asshead busied herself with a bank of grass, I knelt down by the crystal clear water and put my hand into it. Jacket or not, I had to touch the water. I felt my fingers quickly go numb, and I touched them to my lips to fully appreciate how incredibly frigid the mountain stream was. Apparently the ice that lined the banks and the surrounding rocks wasn't evidence enough for me.

Since I had Asshead's retractable leash in my right hand, I knew that if I was going to get a sip of water up to my mouth, I was going to have to do it with my left hand. I found out this left me a little off-balance and vulnerable to catastrophe if Asshead chose to vigorously pull on her leash in a particular direction. A slight movement of tiny, brown, furriness in the rocks ignited the feral fire in Asshead's bitchy little brain, and she did exactly that.

She lunged, her leash pulled on my arm, and my balance left me. I teetered out over the river and attempted to pull on the leash and use Asshead's forward momentum to at least steady myself but, unfortunately, she had her fuck-that-hurt leash on, and instantly stopped her chase when she felt it pinch.

This meant that I couldn't lock the handle and have her reel me in to safety, like those real dogs on TV, oh no. If I pulled, she yelped and jumped backwards, giving me nothing but slack on my only lifeline. I steadied myself enough to make a token effort towards shore, but I knew I wasn't going to make it. My best bet was to jump towards a nearby flat-rock, and try to leap-frog to dry land.

It was about mid-leap that I realized a couple things about the rocks involved in my situation. One being that, since they were mostly in the water, there was a good chance that some of it had splashed up onto them. The other being that while it was 65 degrees in Denver, it was about 25 up in the mountains, and said "splashed" water on those rocks was now ice.

Most of the grace normally involved in my river-rock-leaping was lost on the ice of the rock I leapt from, and any semblance of dignity to follow vanished on the second rock, when I hit it squarely with my boot and then watched as the same boot shot straight up into the air.

As my other foot was on it's way to that bastard frosted rock, I decided that I would rather be completely wet and cold and end up landing in the river, as opposed to landing flat on my back on that fucking rock, and still ending up mostly wet and cold, but with a broken body. I aimed for a shallow spot that would produce a minimum amount of body-breakage and water-submergence.

The words "aimed" and "motherfucking ice" don't play well, and I ended up in about 4 feet of used-to-be-snow-three-hours-ago river.

As quickly as that water had numbed my fingertips earlier, it now froze to a stop every last cell and synapse in my body, with the exception of the ones that were screaming, "Get outta the fuckin' water, dicknose! Now! Now! Right Fucking Now!"

As pissed off at me as Asshead was for repeatedly yanking her fuck-that-hurts collar, she looked genuinely concerned as I stood on the bank and slapped my hands against my body while trying to discern what was still working and what was going to simply snap off and fall frozen to the ground.

The drive home was not pleasant as Asshead is a poor road companion and, if she isn't able to stick at least her nose out the window, will bitch and whine while stomping across the seats and my groin. In lieu of attempting to warm myself properly and having my balls repeatedly stepped on, I chose to crank the heater, warming myself slowly but placating my bitchy dog while I drove 85 down the mountain road.

After getting home, hastily stripping down and climbing into the shower, I discovered something. As much as any man can feel even remotely well-endowed first thing in the morning when he is at "full mast," it will absolutely flatten his ego when he looks down only to find a couple of shriveled-up raisins and a stack of dimes.

To quote the IdiotBox:

"The water was COLD... shrinkage..."

"You mean it SHRINKS?!..."

That shower saved my life, if not my ego.

That may take a while.