Rise-n-shine!

It's morning.

Angela is gone, and last night I stayed up extra late looking forward to the fact today is the only morning in the next month that I can sleep in. Like a lot of people, I sleep best from about 5:00 a.m. Sometimes during the week I get up with Dean and visit with him while he has his morning POT of coffee (no wonder he pees every 5 minutes!) Keep in mind that "sometimes" is maybe like once a week, because "sometimes" is at 4:30 a.m. and "sometimes" I'm not able to get back to sleep! UGH, I hate that!

So today I'm sleeping in. I never hear Dean get out of bed. Ever. It's other things that wake me up, like the front door creaking when he lets the dogs out, or the beep of the coffee pot that is actually very quiet, just a noise that happens to go right up my spinal column to the back of my head where it bangs like a hammer and makes me feel anxious and stuff. Another thing that wakes me up is Angela. Ok, she's not a thing, but my darling sweet daughter who stands in the bedroom door and says, "Mom, can I lay down by you?" Yeah, don't be fooled. She doesn't really want to lay with me, she wants the warm spot that Dean left.

This morning it was none of those things that woke me up. No, instead it was SCREECHING PUPPIES!!!!! I love the puppies, but I don't love them at 6:00 on a Sunday morning when I want to sleep in.

Everyone knows the rule about waking a sleeping baby, right? Well, waking sleeping puppies is even worse! Especially when all eight of 'em are going to wake up hungry and have to pee and poop. Normally Dean can get to the basement smoking spot (that will be another post) without waking the puppies because they're out in the 3 season porch. Only yesterday we decided it was too cold out there and they needed to be moved inside. (this is why I've always avoided winter litters, and why I'll never do another winter litter again.) Now the puppies have 1/4 our our basement (which is actually pretty big) PLUS the porch to run around in AND a potty area.

So Dean tries to sneak downstairs to the fireplace/smoking spot when he hears a tiny "ruff". That's all it takes for all the puppies to leap to their feet and start throwing themselves against the side of the pen, screaming in excitement and hunger, in hopes that Daddy has brought breakfast with him.

Daddy does not have food (he hasn't yet figured out you don't show up at feeding time without food!) but he does let the puppies out of the pen into the porch so they can go potty in the big litter box we have set up for them. Only they've waited all night and not one puppy makes it to the box. Instead all 8 of them immediately squat and poop, and since I just wormed them a couple days ago, it's liquid poop. It's impossible to get it cleaned up before every puppy runs through every pile. (later today I'll teach him how to get all the puppies to the litter box in time.)

While he was cleaning up the poop everywhere, the puppies were still screaming and clamoring around his legs, jumping and trying to tell him "Please...feed us...we're starving...we can't wait 5 more minutes." And since they'd just run through poop, well...he needs a shower now.

All of this noise made it's way to my ears which had been sleeping peacefully upstairs. There is no amount of blanket rearranging, or holding pillows over your head that will drown out screeching puppies. Besides, I needed to make sure he was doing everything right, so I dragged my body out of bed, grabbed my robe, then waddled to the kitchen where I got puppy food ready. While that was soaking for a minute I came here to check email and stuff. See, I haven't gone downstairs yet because I KNOW it's silly to do so without the food to shut the puppies up!

Now it's 8:15 and all is quiet. The puppies are fed, and after they ate they all pooped in the litter box where they're supposed to. Rubee went in to play with them a little, which is very funny, and now they're tired and getting ready to nap. My pillow is now begging me to come back and cuddle with it some more. Since it's Sunday, and Angela is gone and the puppies are all taken care of, I just might do that!