Funny the World...

IT'S RAINING DOGS

April 11, 2000

Best laid plans.

Walt's gone for the week. I love my husband, but I do enjoy his week-long business trips. No rush to clean up, dishes can sit in the sink. I can eat at the stove and not set the table. I lounge in front of the TV. You know...like every other day, but without the guilt!

I did have a meeting to attend, which I went off to at 7 p.m., leaving the kitchen a mess, still from breakfast (OK...if I'm going to be honest it was from breakfast last week, OK? Sheesh. You're so particular!). I came home to kick back, write a nice journal entry about something which would probably end up being profound, and then settle in to pretend to watch TV, but knowing all along I would fall asleep in the recliner in front of the TV and probably sleep there all night.

As I pulled into the driveway on my way back from the meeting, I heard a greeting called from across the street. My daughter-in-law Audra had just arrived with her friend Chris and her two dogs, Mutt and Jeff. (Audra always swore she'd never have a dog named Mutt, as Paul wanted, but when Mutt turned up the month after Paul died, she couldn't name her anything else). The girls have hit town for a couple of days and stopped by to see Buddy (Chris was the one who gave us the dog). Then, Audra told me, they were going to try to find a hotel where they could spend the night and where they could sneak the dogs in.

Well, I couldn't send them off to a hotel. I told them if they didn't mind stepping over the crap in the upstairs bedroom/junk room, they were welcome to stay here and wouldn't have to be sneaky about the dogs. So I finally met Mutt and Jeff.

Mutt is a basenji/pit bull mix and Jeff is something tall and lanky. Audra found him abandoned on the beach on Kauai when she was vacationing there last week and brought him home with her. The rooms of this house are small. Four dogs, two of them large, fill the place. Just walking down the hall reminded me of some of those sheep jams we encountered in Ireland. Also, Jeff is tall enough to reach anything on any counter, sink or tabletop (which is going to make me clean up real quick now!).

We decided to put up the dog gate to keep them confined to the back part of the house at least and then Audra and Chris decided to go out for dinner and to play some pool. Audra suggested that we just put the dogs in the back yard and close the door. She reasoned they were too big to fit through the dog door. but within 10 minutes of their departure, Jeff, who is still painfully thin, had squeezed through the dog door and sailed over the gate to investigate upstairs. That left Mutt outside pawing desperately at the sliding glass door to be let in. I gave up and let her in and moved the gate to at least block off the living room (the only relatively decent room in the house). I put very tall chairs at the back of the gate and hope this will at least discourage Jeff from trying to sail over that.

And then all the dogs decided they were finished with their "getting to know you"/ sniffing butt phase and so now we're into the territorial phase..."this is my person and don't you DARE get near her...." so there's a lot of refereeing that I'm doing. Jeff is also very horny. Buddy is also confused because he's been so happy here and suddenly there's this person who took care of him for a year back in his life and he's not sure whose lap to sit in or who to bring a ball to--and he wasn't at all happy when Chris decided she was going to leave with Audra.

So what was anticipated to be a nice leisurely, laid-back evening has suddenly turned into an active evening of cleaning up, refereeing, and trying to wade through a sea of dogs.

I suppose there's not enough time to tile the upstairs bathroom before the girls get up in the morning.....

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