Shredding Six

Six straight days of rain. Six straight days of super-24-hour-bladder-and-poop-control on  Mr. Blue's part. Six straight days of having to pick him up and shove him outside to do his business. Six straight days of him refusing to budge from the door unless he really is almost bursting! The garage is flooded. The hot water heater is out again tonight, so no hot water. This is my week so far and compared to a lot of other people, a good one, considering. But "cabin fever" is starting to set in for everyone.


Luckily, in a weekend email, my friend suggested we go out for coffee today. She picked me up (in the rain) and we went (in the rain) to the Starbucks with the comfy chairs for coffee and knitting. Stayed for three hours. It was so relaxing. While we were there the store's lights went out twice. 


I've found that when I have to leave the house but can't put Blue in his outside run, I can put him in the bathroom and close the door. This is not something I would ever do to a dog but have concluded that he really had to have been crate trained. He's quite happy with his little den...until today. I made the mistake of leaving my favorite nightgown hanging on an over the door hook. I really thought it was totally out of his reach. It wasn't. First, he somehow got hold of the hem and made long fabric strips for me. Then (and I can't picture how) got both straps to break so it fell on the floor where the real shredding ensued. He then wadded up what was left and made a nest of it to lay on.


Somewhere in all this, he attacked the toilet paper on its roll. I must have left half a wisp of it hanging and he did the classic pull, unroll, shred until half the roll was decimated and the other half remained reasonably intact though unusable. 

This was so much fun!!

The floor was covered in a menagerie of shredded TP and nightgown!!! Problem was, that I still had to run out and do two short errands. After cleaning up, I closed the bathroom door and attempted to leave. I heard clawing at the door, something he hadn't done before. Fortunately, I'd purchased a rawhide bone when I first brought him home. At the time he showed no interest in it.  I figured it might be worth a try to keep him occupied. 


The clawing immediately stopped. When I got back, he was happily gnawing away on it. Now he's carrying it everywhere he goes! It's so funny to see such a "miniature" since I'm used to dogs and bones three times the size! Very comical!


My second errand was supposed to be Trader Joe's. The parking lot looked really crowded but I didn't think anything of it till I got closer. The entire side of the mall where Trader Joe's sits was black. Even the parking lot lights were out. So I began to exit. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea. To top it off, the main thoroughfare that the parking lot empties into was packed. Thankfully I remembered a frontage road and was out of the lot in no time, taking side streets home.


The rain seems to have increased the seasonal desperation and hysteria in people and it's most visible in their driving. While at Trader Joe's, in the process of getting out of the parking lot, the lines of traffic weren't moving fast enough for one individual who blithely pulled out into the oncoming traffic lane. Since everyone was leaving and no one coming in, he sailed right out and topped it off by going through a red light. No one moved because it was so blatantly jaw-dropping! I'll be happy once the holidays are over just to have a modicum of sanity (at least as much as one can expect here) return.