NStar Will Not Let Me Wear Sweatpants

Last night the power went out.

The power went out at about 10:45pm, which is about when we should be heading up to bed, anyway. My first thought was “Good lord, will the TiVo be safe?” and then my second thought was “I better hold on to the dogs because if they jump off the couch to the floor, we could step on them and kill them.”

While I held Mina back and kept the other two dogs on my lap, Chris walked upstairs to find my emergency pink flashlight. This flashlight is always kept in my nightstand drawer, with the two D batteries it uses carefully placed in the same drawer but not in the actual flashlight because otherwise the battery power will drain too fast (or so I like to believe). The flashlight is about twenty years old, and although I can’t remember when or how I got it, I’m guessing it was during my Ironic Pink Phase in which I frequently wore pink Converse sneakers.

I’ve never had a traumatic childhood experience involving a flashlight that couldn’t be found, so I can’t explain why I feel the need to leave that flashlight in my nightstand drawer. But moments like these are when my paranoia and messiness finally pay off, because otherwise we would have had to use the glare from our cellphones to navigate the many, many stairs in our house.

When Chris returned with the flashlight, he took the dogs outside and I went upstairs to look for my even larger, super-duper, Brookstone Multi-Purpose Hazard Light which my mother had bought for me when I started driving. I had never used this light because it required six D batteries, but I had faithfully moved it from house to house, always thinking I might use it in the next power outage instead of my emergency pink flashlight. Sadly, once I found the Brookstone light, I remembered that it required six D batteries, and we only had two — both of which were in the emergency flashlight.

Chris put the dogs in their bedroom, and we brushed our teeth and went upstairs to our room. Almost immediately, Stanley began to whine and scrape at his bedroom door.

“What’s his problem tonight?” I muttered.

“It’s the power outage; I think he knows something’s wrong,” Chris said.

“You think he’s that smart?” I said.

There was a pause while Chris considered this, and then Chris said, reluctantly, “Yeah.”

Chris fell asleep quickly, while I listened to Stanley. After he had moved on from scraping at the door to throwing his body against it, I went downstairs and opened the bedroom door to try taking him outside. Maybe he just needed to pee.

Stan burst out of the room and leaped over the gate that separated his bedroom from the stairs leading to our room. He ran upstairs and pawed at our bedroom door.

“STAN!” I yelled. “Get down here right now! Let’s go outside!”

Stan eyed me, and then decided he wanted to go outside.

Paco trotted out of the room, but when I looked for Mina, she was huddled under a blanket on a puff bed and unwilling to get up.

Paco and Stanley followed me downstairs. I let them outside, but both dogs just stood on the step, confused. Eventually they wandered back in, and Paco began to go upstairs.

Stanley jumped onto the couch and burrowed into a blanket.

“No! It’s bedtime!” I said. “Get in bed!” I whipped off the blankets, and Stanley growled. He leaped off the couch and ran to the corner of the room. I waved a blanket at him like a bullfighter, and with great difficulty, managed to herd him back into his bedroom.

Paco was in his crate, peeking anxiously out. He knew that the process was: go outside. Get in bed. Get a TREAT! and he was waiting for the last part of the process to occur.

I gave treats to Paco and Stanley and left the room.

Stanley whined and scraped at the door again.

I went back to his room and sat with him for about twenty minutes. When he seemed calmer, I went upstairs.

Whining, scraping…I was getting sick of this.

“Lovey,” I whispered to Chris’s sleeping body. Usually a whisper was enough to wake him up, or at least wake him up enough to respond to what I was saying.

Chris stayed asleep.

“Lovey,” I whispered again, a bit louder. Still nothing.

Chris had to get up for work earlier than I did, so I tried to let him sleep. But I couldn’t take much more of Stan’s noises, so finally I accidentally-on-purpose shook Chris’s shoulder and said, in a normal tone of voice, “Lovey!!”

“What, huh?” Chris said.

“Stan keeps scraping at the door! I need your help to get him in the crate!”

Chris flopped over and flung an arm around me. “Give him a few minutes,” he said sleepily. I could tell from his tone of voice that he thought we had just gotten into bed.

“How much longer do I give it?” I hissed. “It’s been nearly two fucking hours!”

Chris was already asleep again.

Eventually Stan’s whining got loud enough to wake Chris up. Chris jumped out of bed and stormed downstairs.

“Get in bed!” I hear him yelling. “Get in bed! Now!”

After about five minutes, I went downstairs to see if I could help, since I could tell from Chris’s voice that he was ready to throw the dog outside.

“Of course, as soon as you come in, he gets in bed,” Chris said, and left the room.

“What are you talking about?” I called after him. I looked around the room, and checked the beds, only to turn around and see Stan staring at me from the floor.

“He’s not in bed; he’s just walking around!” I said.

I wasn’t sure if Chris was still asleep and had just gotten confused, but he came back and threw a blanket over Stanley. He picked up the pile of Stanley and stuffed him in his crate.

Chris and I went upstairs, but Stan was really mad now. He began scraping at the crate door.

“He might hurt himself,” I said.

“That’s what the crate’s for,” Chris said.

“No, the crate’s only supposed to be used when they won’t hurt themselves in it.”

Chris ran downstairs again and apparently let the dog out of the crate, because when I came down to make sure Chris hadn’t started hitting the dog (because frankly, I wanted to hit the dog myself), Stan was loose.

Chris went back to bed, and I sat with Stan again. When the power came back, at about 12:30 in the morning, I left him in bed and went upstairs.

By now, Stan was so wound up that he couldn’t relax. I listened to another round of whining and scraping before I went downstairs and took him outside again. He didn’t want to do anything, so I put on his collar and leash and took him for a walk. It was 1 AM.

Stan and I investigated the neighborhood at night, and then went back to the house. When I opened the door to the bedroom, Paco jumped out of his bed and immediately ran into his crate. Clearly, he knew it was Treat Time again.

I treated both dogs, and Stanley went to sleep. Apparently, he’d just needed some exercise.

The weather today is warm, which means I now have to leash up all the dogs and walk them, unless I want a repeat of last night’s behavior. I’m wearing comfortable sweatpants, but they don’t have any pockets, which means I either have to carry a purse (for keys and unused poo bags), three leashes, and the used poo bag, or I have to change my pants into something with pockets.

Thanks to NStar, I’m going to change into uncomfortable pants with zippers and pockets. When denim begins feeling uncomfortable, that’s when you know you’ve been working from home too long.

Posted by: ssjane | March 27, 2007 | 1:42 pm
Posted in: Dogs | This Life