Pea's Morning

There is no sleeping in in this house, at least not for me. Of course, sleeping in for me is really only sleeping until five o’clock, which is rather sad. Not that I don’t enjoy sleep—I would happily be in bed by seven most nights. But I’ve had to make the effort to stay up later with Michael this summer. You just can’t make a nine year old go to bed at seven (unless he’s gotten himself into some sort of trouble and you can ground him and make him go to bed early, but then you spend several hours arguing or listening to him yell and moan about how horrible and mean you are, so there’s still no sleeping at seven…aaahh, how I miss the good old days….)

Pea woke me up at a little after four this morning. Someone neglected to put her in bed last night (that someone being Bill whose responsibility after I’ve gone to bed is to put Pea in bed since her short little legs can’t get her there on her own.) He’s left her sleeping on the couch lately, which surprisingly has worked for her. Well, not really surprisingly. She grumps at anyone who dares touch her space during the night, either rolling over or stretching legs, human or other canine-wise…Pea’s space is holy territory and you better keep away if you don’t want to incur the wrath of Pea and be grumped at! And now that Tucker is sharing the bed and his legs reach somewhere to California and back, invariably he will stretch into Pea’s space during the night, erupting grumping from her holiness, who then has to get up and rearrange herself and reclaim her Pea space before settling Pea-cefully once more for the night. Well then, one might conclude that sleeping on the couch by herself would make her happier with no one there to disrupt her space and we would all sleep more soundly through the night. But, life is never that easy in our house and Pea is not that easily aPea-sed.

So, just after four, a disgruntled, lonely Pea pushed the bedroom door open with a loud popping of the paint sticking from the humidity in the door jamb. She wanted to go out. Fine. Maybe I could get something accomplished before it was time to feed the babies and get the rest of the day underway. Tucker yawned and stretched—once one dog is up, the rest will follow. Well, Ruby will follow when the treats are being passed out, thank you very much. I let the other two outside and went back to the kitchen to turn the coffee on. Broke out the laptop and Bible before Tucker was back at the door asking to come in again. Pea stood stock-still just around the corner, intrigued by something on the ground. I thought she caught a moth or some other bug so I let her be for a little while,  figuring she’d be right at the door once she heard the other two gobbling up their morning treats. Ruby had her glucosamine chew, she and Tucker devoured their puppy Oreos and still no Pea. So I headed back out to see what had her so riveted that she wasn’t interested in her morning treats. There she stood, towering over a fat brown toad. Probably the only creature in the world that could be intimidated by a Bassett is a toad. It was frozen to the spot, not like it was going to outrun even Pea, so I pulled her away and got her inside for her treats. She wanted to go right back out and I thought, or at least hoped, the toad would’ve made haste and gotten the heck out of Dodge once the giant Bassett road block had been removed. Nope. There he sat, same spot. Toads must not be very bright. I gathered him up and put him over the garden fence. Lots of good bugs for a toad to eat in there and no Bassetts pinning him to the ground trying to determine if toads taste better tartar or ceviche? Go Toad, go…

And now we can get on with the rest of our Saturday. Our Pea is fast asleep under the dining room table, probably dreaming of fat brown tasty toads on toast points...mmm. Blech!

So, do you come here often??