Please Turn the Lights Off!!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

 

Last night, it happened again.  Vern got up in the middle of the night and started barking.  These were not ordinary barks, either, but enough to wake the dead.  The only person in our bed that did not seem to be bothered by all the ruckus was my husband.  I followed all the noise out to our foyer and there was watchdog Vern standing at the window, looking out at something, and determined to get outside.  Fudge was not barking, except for an occasional little squeak, but she was equally excited to get outside and be Vern’s backup.  Luckily, for our dogs, someone (now fast asleep or was he?) had left all the outside lights on and our yard was lit up like the Fourth of July, making it easier for our dogs to have a clearer view of things that go bump in the night and who doesn’t want that in the middle of the night?

 

Vern may be a Chicken Doodle, but he has one of the fiercest barks I have ever heard and when he is startled or surprised, his macho dog bark is enough to scare anyone.  Vern and I have been sound asleep in bed when my husband comes into the room and several times, the bark Vern produced almost warranted me buying a Heart defibulator to keep on my nightstand, in case he stops my heart one of these days.  I was also glad I had a waterproof mattress pad. Part of the problem is my husband has spent years perfecting his “stealthy” walk in the event that he is needed for some task involving our children and he has to get out of the room quickly, without being seen or heard. I spend a large part of my day trying to remember where I have seen him last and if his current job ever falls through, I am sure he could moonlight as a Cat Burglar, because he can enter and exit a room with no detection until he is standing right there. 

 

I once was eating a bowl of cereal and wound up wearing it, when I turned to see what I thought was a Serial Killer standing directly over my shoulder, only to realize I was married to him.  Considering that the bowl of Grapenuts did not survive this attack, it did turn out to be a Cereal Bowl Killer, after all.  He swears he doesn’t do this on purpose, but I have been down in the laundry room and turned around to see him standing there and not given a good reaction enough times that surely he can see the correlation between his sudden appearance and my grasping my heart and screaming, “why do you keep sneaking up on me, you stupid ass!”   One of these days, he is going to catch me at the wrong time and find himself in a crossfire involving squirts of Shout, OxiClean Power paks, the steam feature on my iron, and a couple of plastic hangers.

 

After I got up the other night, I peered out the same window Vern and Fudge were dancing at, and couldn’t see a thing. Vern tends to react to most anything and for all I know, it could have been a stinkbug knocking on the window, but when Fudge reacts too, I start to worry.  So, I did what any person does in one of those cheesy horror films and opened up the door to investigate and let the dogs out, so to speak.  This is chancy in my house, because if I opened the door to find an axe murderer standing there, I am pretty much on my own. The only possible way my husband would get up to investigate all the noise was if I had the wherewithal to scream, “Norm Abram from This Old House just showed up with an axe that splits heads and wants you to come look at it and please hurry,” and even then, I would have to shout it two or three times before he answered. 

The last time we went bike riding together, I told him to please ride up ahead because I hate to slow him down and to just check on me from time to time.  I didn’t see him again until I was almost back at the car and when I told him I had managed to protect my virtue, all on my own, by fighting off a marauding band of old men riding bikes and wearing Love Handles bike T-shirts, who tried to pull me in the bushes and have their way with me, all he said was, “You can tell me all about it later.  Right now, I need to find a bathroom.”

Like I said earlier, because this is Fudge and Vern I am talking about, I went ahead and opened the door the other night, knowing full well I was taking my life in my own hands.  I even put on my large rubber Mucker boots and stepped outside with them to see what I could see.  After all, if it was Stewpid, back from his honeymoon in Vegas, I wanted to be cordial and if it was a neighbor’s cat I have been hearing lately, I wanted to make sure to tell the poor thing to go back home where it belongs. The two dogs took off like a couple of bats out of hell and ran back and forth along the perimeter of our fence barking and going nuts.  I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear something and I am pretty sure it was a couple of deer.  Whatever it was, two crazy doodles scared it off and the crisis was averted for another night.  Both dogs came back into the house panting like they had just seen a ghost and I made my way back to the bedroom and made sure to thank my husband for leaving the lights on, so the dogs didn’t miss a thing lurking outside.  Proving that treading lightly is not his only skill and that denial is his middle name, he muttered like he was sleep talking and said, “What lights? What happened? What dogs? ”  I wanted to say, “Give it a rest, you big faker,” but it was late, so all I said was, “get some rest, because we need to talk in the morning.”  I figured if he was awake, that last statement would disturb his sleep almost as much as him leaving the lights on did mine.

[Carol and Banjo]

Hilarious Laurie!   Sorry you're sleep was disturbed....but girl you sure look good in that bandana!!!

[Jennifer and Jack]

Your last sentence is my all time favorite sentence do all!!!!! I love it!

[Jennifer,Chloe & Myla]

FUNNY! He is good! I think he may have had nightmares after what you told him!

Doris-It's the same thing in my house whatever dog is good at the moment is his dog and sassy is mine!

Glad Vern could scare them off!

[Doris, Knox & Flash]

Why is it that our dogs become "your" dogs in the middle of the night or early in the morning?? When Knox barks at something in the wee hours, my DH says "Go get YOUR dog" or "Tell YOUR dumb dog to be quiet!" WTD??

[F, Calla & Luca]

Hey laughmaker, loquacious Laurie, another good one. I love how you deal with adversity through humor, I may have told you that before.Sorry bro is so unhelpful and sneaky. I keep the door to the bedroom shut nowadays and I'm not feeling as claustrophobic as I used to. This keeps the dogs from hearing and investigating most outside noises and prevents the middle of the night surprise barking. It also keeps the humidity up in the winter with all us breathers.

Stinkbugs! This year I find one or two daily, never having seen or known about them until they appeared in stinkbug eradication ads. It makes me love spiders, they never caused such revulsion. I flush the upstairs ones. I used to put them outside but I think this only led them to come back in. I have a special plastic container mortuary for the downstairs ones. The police tell us to leave porch light on and the stinkbug folks tell us to keep light off. What's a person to do? And to seal up all cracks--surely they must be joking, my house is about the same age as I am and we know what that means. Any good tips? Do you even have them? At any rate a stinkbug blog would be fun.

[Deanna & Desi & Cori]

SO FUNNY!!!  In our house, I'm the one who gets accused of sneaking up on my husband with the intent of scaring him to death.  He has the worst case of tunnel vision - when he's doing something, he's so focused, so engaged that the world could crumble around him and he wouldn't notice.  And we actually do have one of those personal defibrillators - just in case!!!!  

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

This is what I so love about you, Laurie.  I would have been so annoyed that my Doods had gotten me up in the middle of the night barking because DH left the lights on, that there would be no humor in my heart.  There would be no funny blog to entertain my DK friends.