Beth has a recurring bad habit she indulges in that drives me absolutely batshit. She has not one but two cell phones — one personal, one from her new job — and she routinely leaves both of them at home when she goes out at night or on weekends.

It annoys the living piss out of me.

Take tonight, for example. She and Zoe went out for “a little while” two hours ago with the promise that she’d bring some takeout home for dinner. It’s now 9:00 p.m., there’s no sign of them, and I’m freakin’ hungry. So I called her to see what’s what and to find out when she’s gonna feed her man after leaving him home alone to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen disaster area from his Father’s Day dinner last night.

I called her work cell phone. It’s ringing on the entryway table.

I called her personal cell phone. It’s ringing in her office across the hall from me.

Great. Redundant communication modes rendered useless because they’re here and she’s there. Great.

I should count my blessings, though. If she had the phones with her, she would have called me about nothing 19 times already.

Resistance was futile, I have been assimilated. Chez Atkins is now one with the Jack Russell Terrier nation — little Sammy is ours.

There were three other people at the Burbank Shelter who wanted her this morning, so that meant another raffle. After losing Saturday’s raffle for the first Jack Russell we wanted, I had been hoping to avoid another one. No such luck. So now I needed luck. And also people skills: I had to thin the field.

It was me and three women who wanted Sammy. Two of them were sisters and were clearly trying to game the system: only one of them really wanted Sammy but had brought her sister to double her odds. I resented that strategy for two reasons 1) it cut into my odds, and B) I thought of it first but didn’t have anyone to partner with me today. So the old maid sisters were doing the old double-team thing. Bitches.

But the third woman… I sensed weakness in this one. I chatted her up and we got to talking about how cute Sammy was — and then I laid it on: full-thickness guilt trip carpet bombing. How Zoe had cried her eyes out Saturday when we lost out on the other dog. How Beth couldn’t stop talking about this one. How we had visited Sammy here at the pound every day for the last five days. How Beth had bonded with Sammy and knew in her heart that “this is the one.” I laid it on thick, boy. And it worked: she dropped out of the drawing. She leaned in to my ear and murmured that she thought I should have it and that she’d look for a different dog. And so I had cut the field by 25%. I was ashamed. Barely.

Then they passed out tickets and drew the winner and the winner was me and in-your-face, old maid sisters, for trying to game the system! I took your little cheater vote-padding tactic and negated it with my pitiful tales of woe manipulation skills and you were rejected! Whooaa!!! And besides, one of them adopted a chihuahua after I got Sammy, so they got a dog after all.

So now we have to wait for Sammy to be spayed before we can bring her home. She’s scheduled to have it done tomorrow, so we’ll have her by tomorrow evening.

Arf.