Busy day. Productive day in Studio Grande. Six works-in-progress. YAY!!!
Comfy chair time. Nachos. TeeVee. Settled back to write my post. Post pics of the W-I-P. Then Sophie got involved.
She wasn’t impressed. Told me she could do better. Said she was way cuter than pictures of half assed finished art work. Which she is.
But she’s not a writer. She’s a napper, just like Ingrid. (Read about Ingrid here).
When she woke up she decided to eat her words.
Then she went back to sleep.
I woke up in the middle of the night, dog must’ve woofed or sumthin’. Not a totally unheard of event, living in the country. A lot of distractions going on outside in the big woods. Four legged distractions. Sophie in particular fancies herself a watchdog. Twelve pounds of Maltipoo vs. the wild beasts.
Bean tends to sleep through it all. Most nights I roll over, stuff a pillow over my head and go back to sleep.
But last night was different. I was in the middle of a dream. And there was a blowtorch involved. Which meant I was making art, doing the encaustic dance in my sleep.
I lay there thinking about that. About sleep as a means of recharging and refreshing and yet here I was carrying on the activities of the day on a whole ‘nother level.
As I write this many hours later, I have no memory of the the dream itself, of the content. But I still see the image I woke up with, the torch in my hand, the flame on the wax.
And I’m thinking it’s a good thing I don’t sleepwalk. And if I ever did, there’s a couple of locked doors and a gauntlet of wild beasties between me and that torch.
I’m sitting here at the kitchen table doing my best to tune out the mayhem in the living room. I. Do. NOT. Want. To. Know…the details.
Sophie caught a mouse tonight. THE mouse. The one that’s been getting into everything. Pooping on the kitchen counter. Pooping pooping POOPING EVERYWHERE. Gnawing on everything gnawable. And some things that aren’t gnawable. And pooping that stuff out too.
I was doing the dinner dishes when I saw her (yes, Miss Mousie is a her because I have declared it so) I saw her out of the corner of my eye, a dark shadow racing from the pantry to the fridge. I yelled and stomped and made scary human noises because I just want her to go away, go outside . I will even feed her outside, make a nice warm nest for her if she will only go THERE and not HERE.
But she didn’t listen. She went back to the pantry where Sophie cornered her behind the (rodent proof) dog food containers. I saw her cowering there and all my mom instincts kicked in. I WANTED TO SAVE HER!!! And then Sophie made a move and Miss Mousie made a move right towards me and I did what they do in the movies–what they do in the cartoons–I jumped out of the way and SCREAMED.
Screamed like a girl.
Then I ran out of the pantry. There was a scuffle behind me. When I turned to look, Sophie was standing there with a tail hanging out of her mouth.
It was not her tail.
She trotted off to the living room, growling at anyone who came near. Growling with her mouth full. With a hairless little tail dangling beneath her chin. This was her first kill and she was not going to share. She spit her prize out by the sofa and that’s when I realized the poor thing was still alive.
Oh crap.
I grabbed some paper towels thinking I’d catch Miss Mousie and take her outside so she could die in peace, carried off from this world (this harsh, cruel world) on the wings of mouse angels.
Because surely she was dying, right?
What the hell do I know… Next to nothing about revival of the fittest. EFFING RODENT made a spontaneous recovery and a successful dash for the safety of under-the-sofa-land. Sophie is beside herself. No matter how much she tries, Sophie can’t fit under the sofa.
But she can bark at it. And growl. And make scrabbling sounds on the wood floor as she scurries from one end to the other. She’s been doing that for, oh, a good two hours now. Won’t even stop for her pre-bed potty break…which is not a good thing.
I can handle a puppy potty accident, lord knows it wouldn’t be the first.
But I really–I mean REALLY–don’t want to wake up with a dead mouse in my bed. Or worse–a live one.
R.I.P. Miss Mousie.
Holy shades of winter, Batman–it’s cold out tonight!
Got a fire in the wood stove.
Lapdogs. Laptop.
So much for writing tonight!