Normally I love rain, because it means one less day that I have to worry about whether the lawn is getting enough water and if I have to drag out the hose to water it. Not that I ever actually get the hose out to water the lawn; I just worry about it and what the neighbors will think once our grass turns brown.
But this? This is ridiculous. I can’t remember the last time we had a stretch of more than two days uninterrupted by rain.
Chris and I finally broke down and bought a dehumidifier for our basement. Or rather, I complained bitterly about how many more bugs there were in our house than last year at this time and about the strange small puddles of water that were forming on the basement floor. Chris’s argument was that there was no point in buying a dehumidifier if we were moving soon, and that a dehumidifier was a waste of money since the home inspector, three years ago and during a drier season, had said we were buying the driest basement he had ever seen.
Eventually I wore Chris down, because he loves me and because I had lifted the 20 pound can of laundry detergent to find that a giant pool of water had mysteriously formed underneath it.
Now our lives revolve around the dehumidifier. I think it holds 30 pints, and we find ourselves emptying a full bucket once a day. The dehumidifier probably fills up faster than that, but once a day of checking is all the time we have to spare to water right now.
We lost Mina this morning for a terrifying half hour.
Chris had let the dogs out while I finished snoozing. Chris usually gets up before me, lets the dogs out, then lets them back in before he goes to work. Then I get up to feed the dogs and take them outside one more time before I go to work.
This morning I was starting to fall back asleep after Chris had gotten up, when I heard Chris yelling.
“Mina got out!” he said.
I got up immediately. Time, I had heard recently, was of the essence, and this was particularly true of Mina who was so adorable that she was liable to find a new family within minutes.
I threw on some clothes and ran downstairs.
“Maybe she got in when I didn’t see her,” Chris said.
“I’ll check the beds.”
“I’m taking Paco to look for her!”
“Why are you taking Paco?” I yelled, but Chris had already left with Paco. I can only guess that Chris thought maybe somehow one dog could find another dog by sheer smell or pack attachment.
I quickly checked the beds - no Mina. I put on my sneakers and ran outside to check the yard. Hopelessly, because I knew Mina wouldn’t respond even if she heard me, and especially if she had found something delightfully odiferous, I called, “Mina!”
As I rounded the corner of the house to the driveway, I saw Chris coming back with Paco. While Paco stopped to poop on the lawn (”Hey, I’m out, I got poop…”), Chris called to me.
“The one thing wrong with my plan,” he said, “is that Paco doesn’t want to help look.”
“I’ll check the beds again,” I said, reaching out to take Paco’s leash from Chris.
“I’m going to drive around the neighborhood,” he said.
After I’d taken off Paco’s harness, I checked all the beds once again, even the beds downstairs. The family room was gated away from the dogs and Mina didn’t know how to climb the gate, but given how many times we’ve “lost” the dogs when they were right in the house, I wasn’t taking anything for granted.
I went back outside to call for Mina. I was certain that she wouldn’t have travelled far from the yard, but I was equally certain that she was fully capable of walking for miles if she was in the mood for a lengthy morning constitutional.
I walked up and down the street, despairing thoughts crowding my mind. What if we couldn’t find her? What if she got run over by a car? What if - and this was the worst of all - some other family found her, saw that she had no collar or microchip, thought she was a stray because of how small she was and how fast she would inevitably gobble down the human food they’d have to offer her, and then KEPT HER!?
As I headed back to the house, Chris pulled up in his car. He rolled down his window.
“Anything?”
“Nothing.”
He drove away again, and I started calling again for Mina.
As I yelled, my neighbor came out of the house.
“Did you lose one of the dogs?” she said.
“Yes, Mina got out! The little black one.”
My neighbor said, “I have to go to work, but let me get one of the boys to help you look.”
She called to her youngest, and started backing out of her driveway.
“Oh, Jane,” she said, “Rex is barking next door. I think he’s tied up outside. Maybe Mina went over there?”
I started walking next door, and had gone just far enough to see Rex sitting placidly outside, staring at me, when I suddenly heard a car horn honking.
It sounded close enough to still be my neighbor, so I raced back to the front of her house.
“Jane!” she called. “Mina’s in our yard! She was in the yard behind ours, do you see her? Mina! Mina!”
I started walking toward the back of the yard, calling out Mina’s name. I could just dimly make out a dark, tiny shape, poised in the light between the bushes surrounding the boundary of the two yards.
“Oh, I see her!” I said. “Thank you so much!”
I ran toward Mina, calling her name. Mina saw that I had seen her and obediently ran toward me, pretending she was always this responsive. The jig, she knew, was up.
Mina was wet from the rain, and dirty. I picked her up and called Chris on the cell phone to report her reappearance.
As Chris drove up, I set Mina on the ground and she immediately started running.
“Mina!” I shouted. “Get back here, now!”
I caught up with her and picked her up again.
“You,” I said severely, “are a bad, bad, girl.”
Mina wagged her tail.
One of the people Chris met at his business trip is someone from Taiwan.
During a meal, when most of the group was loudly drinking wine and talking, the man came over to Chris who was eating at his booth.
“Ah, now I know why you married an Asian lady,” he said jovially. “You like the peace and quiet, huh?”
Chris burst out laughing.
“You don’t know my wife at all,” he said.
*Married Asian Female. I had to think about this for a while.
Just heard from the vet, and Paco’s tumor is benign. Whew!
This morning I dragged three dogs beds into the sun by the French doors so the dogs could lay on them. We usually keep the beds there all the time, but yesterday we had a new kitchen countertop put on and had to move the dog beds.
When I left the room to go upstairs to my computer, all three dogs were deciding which bed they wanted.
A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to refill my cup of water. Paco had already crept upstairs to sit by my computer, Stanley had disappeared, and Miss de Mina had very carefully put Tigger on one of the dog beds and her chick on another bed.
And the Bean herself? Why, she was lying on the floor.
Chris and I usually sleep with two pillows each: one behind our heads, and another between our legs or under our knees, depending on our sleeping positions. The leg pillow is intended to assist with our backs, and we’ve slept this way for years now.
The pillow I use for my legs is a soft one that I lugged home all the way from Taiwan. I’d slept on a hard pillow at my grandmother’s house and wanted to buy one just like it, but it wasn’t until after I purchased my pillow that she told me hers was hard because it had been slept on for twenty years. Since I couldn’t use my Taiwanese pillow for twenty years, I decided to use it for my legs while I waited.
A few nights ago I was on the verge of falling asleep when I suddenly decided Chris must’ve accidentally switched our leg pillows. I reached down and experimentally felt my pillow. It felt harder than usual, and not quite right. Maybe Chris had my pillow.
Rather than waking Chris up, I reached between his legs and felt for the pillow. I touched something soft and gave it a good squeeze.
Chris bolted upright.
“What the hell are you pinching my balls for?” he yelled.
And just like that, I was fully awake.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” I said.
“Ow, ow, ow!” Chris yelped.
“I thought it was your pillow,” I tried to explain.
Chris rolled over on his side, away from me.
“Stay away from me,” he ordered. “Ow!”
I was genuinely remorseful. I also wanted desperately to laugh, but I felt pretty certain that half-muffled guffaws were not going to go over well right now with Chris.
I usually don’t do strange things like this, unless I’m under the influence of prescription medicine, but Chris regularly does strange things while he’s asleep.
But probably the only thing he’s done that has even remotely approached my ball-pinching occurred one night when I came back from using the bathroom and climbed back into bed.
Chris was facing away from me, and as I got close enough to spoon him, he casually reached a hand around me, patted my left buttock, firmly grasped the edge of my underpants on that side and picked out the wedgie. Then he reached over to the right side, picked out the wedgie, and patted my right buttock. All while sleeping.
Now, neither of us is allowed to share a bed with anyone else under any condition. I’m not talking about having affairs, but even just sharing a bed with a friend or family member while, say, camping or to save on hotel fees. Because after the years of sleeping together, Chris and I could cause permanent damage to the unsuspecting person who shares a bed with one of us.