There is NO place like home

We're home. Recovering from the time change. I thought it would be fun to have a guest piece! (Until I can get some sort of intelligible thought going in my sleep-deprived brain. And yes it's 4:22 AM and I'm up. Oh joy.)




Molly with Mama Pajama last year - photo by Laurie Erickson

So today's guest writer is my niece, Molly, who came and stayed with the dogs for the TWO WEEKS that we were in Italy. (Note to self and the rest of the world: two weeks is too long to be away. Never again.) Anyway, Molly knows the whippets really well, since she stayed with us for a few months last year, and she was gracious enough to come and stay with them while we were gone.
I got a couple of emails from her, and I thought you dear readers would enjoy this one! Molly is a great writer, as you'll see.

I am usually a little confused about what day it is, let alone what happened on which day (I can hear you now saying, "Just wait 'cause it only gets worse... teeheeheee"). So here we go. Wait... did I just think "alone"? Did I say "alone" out loud? Crap. Here we go again... I'll be back in a minute. One, two, three and four in the TV room. Five, six and seven in here with me. And eight and nine in your bedroom. Okay, I’m back. I usually do a headcount by number first because if I go through by name I might miss a name and be feeling okay when really it’s time for another Biscuit Meeting (or a national Amber Alert). If I only get to seven (or six, or eight…) after counting at least two or three times (to be sure that my math is right) then I can figure out which one is missing and hunt them down like a Whippet on a rabbit. Or a squirrel. Or a cat. (I won’t say deer because I didn’t know that Whippets chased things bigger than themselves until I started reading your book.) Anyway, I try to do a headcount before I start a Biscuit Meeting if they’re all relatively close to the same location (me) so that I don’t use crazy amounts of biscuits. I break them into pieces but I am probably going to need to go get some more in the next couple of days… Running out would do irreparable damage to my reputation around here. Counting the babies always takes a minute or two because sometimes I lose track, which is another good reason to count because it makes me feel a little more stupid but a little less crazy. Whatever. Feeling a little stupid is waaaay better than losing my mind. Even though my math sucks I can normally count from one to nine with no problem. These aren’t apples or oranges though, they can move around. And they do, right when I am up to five. Or six. Or eight. And I have to start over… but that is okay, because fruit doesn’t give kisses. If one (or horrors, maybe more than one) is missing, Anal Retentive Paranoid Interim Servant runs around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to locate the offender, who is usually doing something horrible like lying innocently in his or her crate (or on the couch, or on a dog bed, etc.) sleeping soundly until I come careening into the room screeching his or her name at an ever-escalating volume. Then they wake up, look at me like I’ve lost my mind, and go back to sleep. Or I have to pay out a biscuit for waking them up.
Either way, as long as I can find them I am happy...

Molly has recovered now that we are home, and will be going back to her own dogs tomorrow. I can't thank her enough.

hug your hounds