The Secret Lives of Dogs and Cats

Today before I left for work (at a new job which this is only the second day of) I gave Briggs, my Old English Sheepdog puppy very specific instructions. 1. Don't Chase Cars. 2. Don't Chase People. 3. Stay OFF the road. Then I left for work.

He likes to follow people home and they are all too nice to him. If one would scream at him in a very Alpha Female/Male voice, he would get the picture and go lay down. But no one ever wants to shriek at my dog because he looks like a walking mop so instead,  he follows them home. Their only choice is to put him in our basement to await our return. Usually I remember to lock the basement door that leads to the kitchen, not to keep people out, but to keep Briggs from pushing it open and entering the house. Usually. But today I forgot.


When I returned around 1:30 he was nowhere to be found. I opened up the door and walked into the house. And surmising from what I found inside, this is how I imagine his day went.

6:15am - Kiss Mom goodbye & send her to work.
6:20am - Chew deer skull on the porch
6:22am- Drag rug out into the dewy grass. Pee on it.
6:25am - Finish eating breakfast. Lay on the porch.
6:30-7:55am- Take nap.
7:55-8:00am- Drag peed on rug back onto porch in a rumpled up heap.
8:15am- Spy neighbor walking up the road. Romp after her.
8:20am - Follow neighbor back to the porch. Foil her attempt to keep me on the porch.
8:30am - Get put in basement by neighbor.
8:30-8:40am- Sniff the basement. Maybe pee on the rug for good measure. Find one of Dad's hats and put it on the floor.
8:40-9:00am - Lay on the recliner. Get bored.
9:01am - Check the door to the kitchen. Find it unlocked.
9:02-9:10am- Re-arrange all the kitchen rugs. During re-arrangement, knock over full watering can with water in it. Bark at it as it runs across the floor to the center of the kitchen.
9:10-9:30am- Find the pile of newspapers in the kitchen that were stacked and awaiting recycling. Take some into the living room. Take some into the dining room. Scatter some across the water puddle on the floor.
9:30-10:00am- Lay on the living room floor and read the papers. Find an old quilt on the couch. Chew the binding off of it. Take a nap.
10:00-10:30am - Take every sneaker and flip flop that Mom has and put them in different rooms. Hide one under a rug. She'll never see it there. Make it look like a shoe factory exploded.
10:30-10:45am - Tug the afghan off of the rocking chair. Knock the mug off the end table. Pee on the living room floor.
10:45-11:00am.- Bark at the cat. Chase her upstairs.
11:00-12:00 noon - Explore the spare room that was discovered while chasing the cat. Find the Christmas decorations that were in the Goodwill bag. Take them into the hall and chew them. Go back in the spare room. Grab a swim suit and hide it under a pile of winter clothes. hee hee.
12:00-12:15pm- Go in Mom & Dad's room. Poop in front of the mirror. Admire my form. Find their slippers and fling them about.
12:15-12:30pm - Discover THE BATHROOM! Drink out of the toilet - oh delight! Dunk my face in the toilet as far as it will go. Blow bubbles. Track water from my long dripping mouth hair across the entire bathroom. Drink some more, make the puddle bigger.
12:32pm - Go pee in Mom & Dad's room beside the poop pile.
12:35pm - Chase the cat under the bed. Get slapped and hissed at.
12:45pm-  Find a pile of books and knock it over.
12:55-1:30pm- Take a nap in the upstairs hallway. Wake up to the sound of Mom calling for me. Run downstairs past the cat who was sitting on the steps looking disgusted about the whole mess. Get hissed at as I run past. Give Mom toilet water kisses. Get thrown back outside. Hear Mom scream something about installing an underground electric dog fence.

Best of Show, Worst of Directions

This year, for the first time ever, I entered a quilt at the County Fair. I think. Using the official Premium County Fair Flyer, a special publication to help direct one clearly and concisely as to all the rules and regulations of the Fair, I was able to divulge that all entries must be turned in by 7:00pm exactly two weeks after the third full moon after Easter but only if we were celebrating the Chinese year of the Scorpion. Otherwise, all entrants should have had their stuff in already, as was communicated via mental telepathy. The official Premium  County Fair Flyer, as it turns out, is actually a complex labyrinth of writing where, in classic labyrinth style, you get eaten by a Minotaur when you reach the center.

After determining that 2011 is actually the year of the Rabbit, I cross indexed my birthday with the number of stitches (estimated) in my quilt and then divided that by 15 to find out which page of the Premium County Fair Book the quilt stuff was listed under. Having no success with that process due to my lack of math skills, I was forced the read all 50 pages of the Table of Contents to find where the Senior Needlework Section was. 

From there, it directed me to see Department 11-24 Rules. That was much easier to find because all I had to do was catch a Leprechaun and threaten to steal his gold and he just showed me where the Department 11-24 Rules were located. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. There was only minimal confusion reading the Department 11-24 Rules but I managed. 

Then I flipped back through my Premium County Fair Encyclopedia, back to page 329 to see what category my quilt would fall under. I found it under Section 5, Class 43, Division W, Code Red, Alpha One Niner Delta, Genus cotton, Sub-Genus hand quilted. But that only applied if the quilt was not entered in any other class. Well clearly. I think. I really wanted to get this part right for fear that instead of entering a quilt, I may accidentally sign myself up for the Axe Throwing Contest, which is listed under sub-genus hand thrown. 

After filling out the necessary paperwork the Oracle of Delphi must be consulted. As per page 542 B XI of the Premium  County Fair Publication of Confusion and Hysteria the next step was to drive the quilt to the fair and enter it, so I did. 

I went back today to see how my quilt fared (at the fair, ha ha.)  It turns out I won Best of Show for rock painting and I may be a winner of the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes. Score. 

The Enthusiast

Today I was working at my church secretary job. (Yes, God allows people with a sense of humor to work for him, don't be so shocked.) While I was there, the conversation between our pastor, Bro. Mike, and I turned to personality traits and since we both tend to enjoy letting a tangent run, it ended with me taking a test to see which one I was.

Normally I cheat at these tests to get the desired result because they are usually the same old boring test and you end up finding out if you should be a fireman, or work in forestry, or be a mathematician or be a nurse but this one was so sneakily set up that there was no way for me to cheat. (I cheat because I hate math and will do anything to avoid any kind of career that involves it. This is why I am a church secretary. Although I still deal with "Numbers" as a book of the Bible and I am totally O.K. with that.)

The test results indicated that I was probably a #7- the Enthusiast. At first I was skeptical. But I took home the background reading that went into depth on this personality type. I parked my butt on the couch and started delving into it. There were lots of things I agreed with. Like how #7's don't like rules and authority, how we like to have a bunch of different things going on at once, and how we're easily distracted but generally cheerier and more optimistic than other personalities. It went on to say that usually the Enthusiast will turn any horrible event into something positive. It also said that a #7 has no qualms about looking foolish in front of others (so true, so true) and that we can be a bit of an Entertainer. (Welcome to My Psychosis, ha ha- No- Really!!) Robin Williams is a #7.  It was quite indepth and accurate.

Everything was making sense but I kept feeling irritated every time it said #7's were "scattered."  Nooooo, not me buddy. I have got it to-gethuh! (Insert double finger snap and head swagger.) Scattered? I don't think so.
I was making notes in the margins and underlining things that were right on the money. That's when..... I smelled it.  The smell of burning. So engrossed was I in reading about myself that I totally forgot that I was boiling potatoes for ham pot pie. They had been boiling for almost an hour and a half by themselves. The house was starting to get smokey. I don't know about the other #7's in the world, but I lose most of my 5 senses when I'm reading. Luckily my sense of smell remains vigil.

I ran in to the kitchen to find blackened mashed potatoes stuck to the bottom of my pot. This removed all doubt from my mind that I may be scattered. The proverbial scales fell from my eyes and the truth landed on me like seagull poop at the beach. I laughed so hard the dog came running to the screen door to see what the hubub was about. He likes my scattered-ness because he got to eat the burnt potatoes that I had to throw away.

So I cut up more potatoes and put more water on in a different, unburnt pot and set them on the stove. Then I went upstairs to email Bro. Mike since I thought he would get a kick out of it. This time I set the timer on the microwave so at least I'd get a reminder beep.  Ten minutes later I went down to the kitchen to check the potatoes.

They were still cold. I had forgotten to turn the stove back on.