Lemonade and chocolate

On the down side, it's 5:23 a.m., and I've been up since 4:28 (never let anyone tell you that digital clocks are not a scourge.) Oh, and I was awake at 2 a.m. or thereabouts, as well, on the heels of a day where I had about three and a half anxiety attacks. This was a night where I needed sleep, and didn't get much.

As I was laying in bed with the Boy, scratching his back to help him fall asleep and silently praying to the god I don't believe in for health, I heard an odd rustling sound downstairs that could only mean one sequence of things: puppy. bad. chewing. I kissed him quickly and ran downstairs. I'm not sure what the expletive of choice was, but insert your own as you read what I saw. Two destroyed golden foil bags and one with a few remaining pieces of chocolate still inside. She'd eaten three bags of the best chocolate chips I could find at our crappy local market (as distinguished from the expensive health food market) to make a friend's birthday cake for a dinner party tonight.

We've all read about dogs and chocolate, right? It's rumored to be a lethal combination. I love my dog, but truly, after the week I've had, no emergency trips to the vet were going to happen. Plus, she seemed fine (duh, she hadn't started to digest it yet.) She usually sleeps in our room, but with visions of late night digestive explosions a possibility, we left her in her crate for the night. The H heard the 2 a.m. wake up call, and instead of just handling it himself (what I would have done, and, in fact, did on the night's second tour of duty) he woke me up too. He took her outside, I hosed out the crate (pretty much full of melted chocolate) and we put her back to bed.

She barked. She's not much of a barker, and never barks if she's crated--she likes it there, unless we're at the dinner table tormenting her by our presence and our non-shared food--she usually just turns around three times and then falls instantly asleep. But tonight, she barked some more: sharp, sad little cries. The H went down two more times to let her outside. Finally, he sacked out, but at 4:28, I opened up my Grinchy heart and went down to her. She went outside , again, sniffed and rolled around a lot while I sat hunched and bitter on the front stoop, and then she came back in, heading straight for the water. She drank--a lot--and then promptly headed up the stairs to her bed as thought nothing had happened. I followed, but couldn't settle, because neither could she--I heard her rustling and rolling and turning on her bed, agitated. And then--a geyser of chocolate scented water erupted. I sprang out of bed, herded her down the stairs, but not before another geyser. As I was about to get her out the door, again, I heard an emphatic, wide awake small voice: "Momma? Daddy? I need a CUDDLE." Ah. But of course. My feet were covered in chocolate dog vomit, so this was, clearly, the very moment that my daughter would awaken and need blanket arrangement and snuggling. I managed to find some towels to contain the mess, and spent ten minutes getting her back to sleep. Then I tackled the stairs, the entry hall, and my bedroom floor--all without the H so much as stirring.

On the plus side--I'm up early, and the house smells...like chocolate.

P.S. For Betsy--Pasha seems fine, if a little enervated (kind of like the time she found the two pounds of espresso beans the UPS man delivered and left on the front porch. That was a fun night, too.)