Sunday, September 6, 2009

Lazy Sunday Morning

It occurred to me in the night that having a dog who has (infrequent) seizures and (much more frequent) ear infections so she flaps her ears a lot is a lot like having a new baby or sick child: you sleep with one ear open all the time and wake easily because your attention might be required quickly. We stay on top of her ears all the time, and because Michael hangs out with veterinarians these days due to his work with the animal poison control center, we’ve managed to minimize her seizures. Still, I miss the days when the dogs slept in Shea’s room so that she was the one responsible for waking in the night and could summon us when needed--and not for all the false alarms. Yet another reason to miss her. Other than that, we’re adjusting well to our empty nest, though we’re still trying to restore some order to the chaos left behind in her wake.

Yesterday, for example, I set out to clear the floor in her room for vacuuming. I figured it would be a 15-minute job to pick up the big clumps of dog hair, lift various tubs and baskets, get out the vacuum cleaner, vacuum and then put it all back. Was I ever wrong. This was one of those tasks that had a huge mushroom factor. First, it seems that she’d adopted an approach to garbage cans that involved simply getting another one any time the existing one approached overflow. She also seems to have had a fairly relaxed view of what “in” the garbage can meant, so picking up the floor was more involved than I’d envisioned. There were many trips to the garbage and recycling, as each time we thought we’d finished, we encountered yet another cache. Then, she’d made a great little nest between her bed and the wall in an odd-shaped nook. To pad it, she appears to have appropriated all the flannel sheets and sleeping bags in the house. Because I’d hoped to vacuum in there to clear the accumulated dog hair, we started excavating. The layers were archeologically fascinating, and appear to go back to the middle (school) ages. Of course, every single flannel sheet had gotten caked with dog hair and, I regret to report, crumbs from various eating endeavors. Yes, we have rules about that, and no, we didn’t act as the food police, so it was worse than I’d feared. We’re still doing the laundry from excavating the reading nook. The idea is a great one; the execution leaves a lot to be desired from the parental perspective, so we’re contemplating what might make a reasonable padding replacement, as all the sheets are going back into the linen cupboard. I had noticed the depletion of the flannel sheet inventory but there’s been enough else going on that it never really grabbed enough attention to trigger investigation.

With the sound of the washer going in the background, we’re having a lazy Sunday morning and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the weekend, since we spent a much larger chunk of yesterday afternoon than planned on our archeological expedition. So far, other than moving the mounds of laundry along, we’re just reading the papers, and moseying through a quiet morning. The sudoku today is the most challenging of the week, and it's providing great pleasure. Thank goodness for three day weekends.

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