Sometimes, when I am in the middle of a frustrating or embarrassing
situation, I look on the bright side, thinking “Hey, at least I have something
to blog about.” At eleven o’clock last night, as I was paddling around my lake (in
my pajamas, in a thunder storm), I thought this very thing.
There are some background essentials you must know to fully
appreciate the story. I spent close to a third of the day in my car yesterday. Grab a map if you aren’t familiar with
Washington state and I’ll paint you a quick picture. I drove from my house in
Port Orchard, dropped Maddee off at camp in Gig Harbor, went to University
Place to do a puppet workshop, drove from UP (as the cool kids call it) to
Bothell, sat in a three hour meeting, then hopped on I-405 at 5:20-prime
traffic time-and arrived home around 7:30. With me so far? Great. To boot, I fueled my body with
McDonalds, ice cream and cookies. Nice, right?
By the time 9:30 rolled around (kids’ summer bedtime), I was exhausted
and cranky. I just wanted to make a beeline for the bed.
I neglected to mention that Max was in tow all day. He was
such a good sport coming with me to all my commitments with no complaints. He
hadn’t slept well in a couple of nights and after being stuck in the car all
day he, too, was exhausted and cranky. Of course, the core difference between a
tired and cranky adult and a tired and cranky child is this: the adult wants to
go to sleep, the child already at the point of no return, insists he isn’t
tired. A smart, well-rested parent, wouldn’t engage in a battle. You already know my state of mind.
So things weren’t going as smoothly as I’d like in the old Allen
abode. After about thirty minutes of trying every trick in the book and then
some, Max was asleep. In fact, it seemed every living creature in my household
was settled in and sleeping. I was about to climb into bed myself, when I heard
my dog, Six, barking and it sounded like she was outside. This was extremely
unusual as Six prides herself on her beauty sleep, getting about 18 hours a
day. She is always the first to retire, so why she wasn’t already nuzzled in at
the foot of my bed, was beyond me. It
had started thundering in the distance and looked like it could rain at any
moment so I went outside to see if she might be out there. I could
hear her, but couldn’t see her. I turned on the porch light, still couldn’t see
her. I went out front thinking perhaps she somehow got out of the yard, still
no sign of her. I decided to go to bed, she has a doggy door and I figured she’d
let herself in as soon as it started to rain anyway. All I had to do was ignore
her bark. Right?
Right, I am not good at ignoring whines, complaints or
barks. When I tell my brain we are going to ignore something it defies me and
decides to hyper focus on it, until what I am ignoring gets so imbedded in my
mind and under my skin that I…well, in this case, I get out of bed, and head
back into the yard. I heard her again and it sounded like a distress bark. This
changed my state of mind from annoyed to concerned. I looked and looked but
couldn’t find her. I went back in and got a flashlight, put some shoes on and
threw a sweatshirt over my pjs. I looked and saw the back gate was open! Ugh!!
The lake in this particular area is fairly shallow, probably
just to my knees, but I really wasn’t in the mood to wade in and get her. I had
no knowledge of how to get into the thicket from the other side and really no
desire to do so anyway. So, yep, I
decided to set sail in our paddleboat and see if I could get over to the bushes
and get her untangled. This might be a good time to mention that somehow the
paddleboat was wedged on top of one of
our kayaks in the water. Now if it were daylight I would have noticed this
situation right away, but my only light came from my flashlight and an
occasional burst of lightning. I hopped in to the paddleboat, untied it and
started paddling…going absolutely nowhere, of course.
Finally, I realized that only the stern of the paddleboat
was in the water. The rest of it was on top of the kayak. I got back out of the
boat, pulled the kayak out from underneath, practicing some words I hadn’t said
in a while, and climbed back in. The paddleboat was making an unusual swishing
sound and not moving very well. The strange thing about paddleboats is that
sometimes water actually gets inside the hull , making it challenging to move.
I suppose there’s a minor risk of sinking when this happens, which makes this
story all the better, doesn’t it? And let’s add to the suspense by my admission
that even though I can’t swim I was not wearing my life jacket. The whole time that I was trying to get from
point A to point B (it should have taken two minutes tops) I heard the following:, a distressed dog bark,
a rumble of thunder, a disconcerting swishing sound coming from somewhere in
the bowels of the boat, a distressed dog
bark, a rumble of thunder, a disconcerting swishing sound , etc. And so it
goes. All the while I couldn’t help
thinking about my cozy bed.
When I finally got over to the thicket, I realized I didn’t
have much of a plan. I had a vague idea to climb out, hold onto the paddleboat
with one hand and try to get Six out of whatever trouble she was in with the
other hand. Not ideal, but it’s the best I could come up with. You would think Six would be elated to see
me, but instead she turned her head and put her snout in the air, as if she
expected to be picked up in a yacht or something. From the paddleboat, I called her name and
she did it again. I couldn’t understand it. She sometimes does this when she is
in trouble, too, like if she doesn’t look at us, maybe we won’t see her. But
why would she be in trouble, you ask?
Well, let me tell
you, at this point in my narrative, I have a good view of her and I can see
that she is absolutely, not tangled or stuck in any way!! So, I came upon the
ugly realization that her distress barks originated from the fact that she
didn’t want to go back through the thorny thicket and she didn’t want to go for
a swim either! This is where Mike would
say something like “You should have just left her then and she would have had
to swim home eventually.” Well, I don't think so, dear reader! There was NO WAY
I was going anywhere without that dog. Thunder, lake water, potentially sinking
paddleboat and thorny bushes be damned, I was getting the dog. I called her
name again and she slunk onto the bow of the paddleboat, climbed onto my lap (being
sure to get my cute pjs nice and muddy) and we were back on the water. I got us
moored up, climbed out of the paddleboat, missing the dry beach area by just inches,
soaking my feet and my not-waterproof -Toms. I then had to give my beloved canine a bath
before I could finally, finally, finally, climb into bed and get some sleep.
When, at last, I made it to my bed, Mike lifted his head and
I could see his face was marked with deep sleep lines and he had a little bit
of drool in the corner of his mouth. I was so jealous! That should be me with
sleep carved into my face, drool running down my lips!! I guess if that were
the case, there’d be nothing to blog about, would there? And isn’t that what it’s
really all about?