Who’s in charge here?

I was on the phone earlier today with Jesse, giggling like an idiot over a joke I made up about a bus driver and his lunch – you know, one of those things that’s HILARIOUS because when you originally said it, it was three am and you were kind of giddy from lack of sleep?

He said if I was feeling all that funny I should write a blog post.

So of course I’m just sitting here blinking, totally unable to be even the least bit interesting.

It isn’t my fault, really. I blame lack of sleep, and for that, I blame THE DOG.

You see, it’s spring, and we live in an area with a lot of open fields. We’ve had all sorts of beasties in the area, and because of our avocado tree, lots of them have visited our yard. Mice and rats are the usual. Last week we even had a big raccoon, which quite frankly scared the dickens out of me. I had seen raccoons before, and somehow thought of them as small cute creatures with human-like paws.

The one in our yard had human-like paws, but small and cute were not words I’d use.

Enormous and raunchy are more accurate.

Well, not really that big, but certainly the size of a medium-sized dog.

Way bigger than I expected, and severely deficient in the cuteness area.

I was pretty sure we had El Chupacabra in our yard.

Anyway, little skittering creatures in the yard, and the dog is thrilled because his JOB is to patrol the yard and keep critters out of the house. Our standing rule with the dog, when we go to bed, is that he is supposed to wake us up when he needs us. Currently, he interprets this as “whenever I really want to go outside and chase things”.

Also, since he has a fairly limited vocabulary, he isn’t any good at telling us exactly why he desperately wants to go outside, so in case it’s an emergency (note the clever euphemism there) I get up and let him out.

Jesse and I both wake up when this happens, so my memory of the past week or so includes a lot of staggering around in the dark, often so groggy that I don’t really remember whether it happened or whether I just dreamed it.

Last night was the kicker. Bander came in and woke us up – causing me to get out of bed and put clothes on and then drag myself down the stairs. I was just standing there wondering where I put his leash when I realized that the dog was not even with me.

You know where he was? Sleeping on my side of the bed, that’s where. The sneaky sod came and woke me up and tricked me into going downstairs so he could bogart my mattress space. And he was so cute when I came back that I just rubbed his belly and spent the rest of the night cliffhanging so I didn’t have to move him.

I TOLD you guys the dog was in charge. Now do you believe me?