The evening had gone swimmingly well. I spent a couple of hours at WGTD, registering nine of my voice students for NATS. (My mac at Carthage wouldn’t interact with the on-line application form properly, so I had to use my PC at the station) and that went better than I can ever remember. (A colleague and fellow Luther alum, Brian Leeper, was quite impressed that I had finished up my application a whole four hours before the midnight deadline- a first for me!) I celebrated by spending 45 minutes or so playing my very favorite on-line game, Pathwords, and came within a hair of breaking my all-time best score. Then I realized that the dogs had been home alone since 3 that afternoon (when Kathy and two friends headed out of town) and ran home to survey the damage. There was none! But judging from the speed and exuberance with which they bolted out the door to do their business, I came home in a nick of time. Feeling badly that I had left them alone longer than I intended, I decided to let Bobbi and Ellie come upstairs with me- an exceedingly rare treat for them- but first I was careful to dog-proof our bedroom by putting all of the shoes safely out of reach- cleared the floor of any pens or pencils- and was even sharp enough to make the wastebaskets inaccessible. Proud of myself for such uncharacteristic attention to detail, I moved the gate and watched Bobbi and Ellie bound up the stairs as though we had just set them loose in a garden of Alpo-blooming bushes. They were so happy- and so was I ! I did a little ear-scratching and belly-rubbing with them before heading off for one of my favorite indulgences – a hot bath with a good book. The dogs camped out next to the tub for a few minutes before strolling off to relax someplace else.
It’s when I left the bath and walked back into the bedroom that my eyes beheld the sight you see pictured above- a bean bag kangaroo (one of the Winnie the Pooh characters, maybe named Roo?) . . . or should I say the remains of it . . . . strewn all over the floor of the bedroom. . . . and Ellie standing beside it with a noble sort of pleasure, as though it were Open House and this was her latest science project. It was certainly no disaster- had this happened to a pair of Kathy’s dress shoes or (heaven help us) my latest issue of Opera News, it would have been a different story- but it was still one of those incredibly humbling moments when you realize that all of your efforts to cover all the bases were not sufficient. . . and that a resourceful golden retriever can almost always find a way to wreak a bit of havoc. (And if I can’t keep one step ahead of a dog, how would I have done with a toddler or two? I can’t imagine!) So I got down on my hands and knees and began gathering up all of those “beans” – plus the shredded fiber that had already been ground into the carpeting – and all the while, Ellie stood next to me, smiling that lovely grin of hers, as though she was pleased with herself for injecting a bit of unanticipated excitement into what would have otherwise been a humdrum evening.