Oh, today has just not been a good day and it all started at 2am when the 4 legged house mates teamed up against me.

2am – After synchronizing his watch earlier with all the other 4 legged house mates, Fargo on queue, starts phase I of "weeknight operation" and comes to my bed and wakes me up to supposedly go outside.
While I am preoccupied dealing with a Fargo potty break. Widget (one of the cats)moves into position.
2:20am – Fargo is now back in (finally) and has settled back down for the rest of the evening. Widget commences with Phase II, the booby-trapping of my side of the bed.
As I come back to bed after dealing with Fargo, I realize that Widget is in the way and isn’t wanting to move. I finally pick her up and put her onto the floor where she quickly makes a move to get out of the way as she knows what is next. Unfortunately, in the dark I don’t see the booby-trap and as I roll into bed, realize that I am now laying on something wet. Of course being half asleep, it is very difficult to gain complete dexterity of ones limbs and manage to raise my butt out of whatever it has just landed in and maneuver back out of bed and not fall back into the wet stuff.
Finally I get back out of bed, click on the bathroom light to see that Widget has thrown up a full stomach of cat food.
2:28am – Clean up the cat puke.
2:35am – I now have to wake up sleeping beauty (which is dang near impossible) and get her out of bed so I can get the sheet off the bed (R did wake up enough to help with this), only to find that it has soaked through to the liner.
2:40am – Get a towel to cover over the wet area and try to go back to sleep.
2:55am – Fargo now commences with phase III. He comes in lays down and starts to loudly clean his privates.
2:58am – Fargo is ushered out the door.
3:10am – Sadie kicks in her part by starting a wrestling match with Fargo in the den. which I go out to stop.
At this time, I decide that I will sleep better on the couch as the towel is soaking up the yuck from the bed liner.
3:45am – Ursa, on perfect queue, starts phase IV, her scared whimpering act (not sure why other than to keep me up). This goes on for a good 20 minutes.
4:30am – Alarm goes off and it’s time to start the morning process.
5:45am – R and I decide that it’s been a long night and we decide to call in sick.
7:00am – realize that it is Friday and the lawn guy is coming by to mow and because of a late job meeting, it hasn’t been done.
7:30am – Backyard finally all picked up.
8:00am – Finally the last Phase, Phase V is kicked into gear. Leon (another one of our cats)at an earlier pre-arranged time while I was cleaning up the backyard, has deftly knocked my new, one week old glasses off the kitchen counter and Sadie has gotten them.
8:15am – a lens is found by Ruthanna. 2 minutes later the rest of the glasses are found, completely destroyed. Even worse than the first pair(which were clearly was a test run for tonights mission) that got destroyed a few days back by a particular black dog.

Weeknight mission accomplished

After a morning of cleaning off the back porch, we had decided to fill in the small mud pit that was once the garden area with dirt and gravel and I had laid down on the couch for a break.  After a bit of a rest, I got up and since every animal in the house was fast asleep for their mid-day nap, it looked like as good a time as any for a shower.

I finish a nice relaxing warm shower (which my back was happy to receive after moving a couple dozen bags of dirt and rock around, scrubbing the back porch and swapping out the old area rug for a new area rug), walk out of the bedroom and something shiny catches my eye.  Upon getting my glasses and taking a now more focused look, I realize that I am looking at a large piece of broken glass.  Where the heck did that come from?  And more important, since it’s broken glass, where is the rest of it as I look down at my bare feet!

Am I bleeding now and my brain hasn’t figured it out yet?  A reasonable worry since once when I was a child, I had been running through the neighbors yard, felt like I had stepped on a rock but kept running after my friend on across the street and finally when we stopped, my friend’s eye’s went the size of saucers and yelled at me I was bleeding.  When I looked down, there was a huge puddle of blood and after an emergency drive to the hospital for a good 25 stitches to close up two huge lacerations, I was off my feet for over a week.

Nope, no blood, whew!  But wait, as I look around, over there across the room, there is another piece.  Wait, over on the other side of the living room, there’s another piece!  What the heck has happened here?  I grab my shoes and now start a search in earnest to see where all the glass is located and to see if anybody else is bleeding as there is just no way all this glass got all over the house without someone cutting themselves.

There was a piece by the laundry room.  Here are two pieces by the ottoman.  Here is a big piece by the coffee table.  Another big piece by the back door.  Two more smaller pieces behind the couch.

I finally get over to the kitchen and find the actual red zone.  It appears that somehow a glass has been knocked off of the front counter and broken.  But how could that have happened?  And how the heck did it get from there to ALL around the living room?  It was about this time that I got the answer to the first question.  As I was bending over to pick up some of the glass, Widget jumped from the breakfast table over to the counter and once landing, dang near slide off of the counter.  Ahhh, Widget must have slid into the glass (reminder to self, do NOT put glass in the Widget landing zone).  But how did it get from there to all over?

Again, as I am starting to pick up the glass in the kitchen, Fargo walks over to me, gives me a "thanks for getting all of this rounded up for me" look, picks up one of the bigger pieces and trots off toward the living room.  Of course about that time one half of my mind thinks "Fargo, you’re about to cut your tongue off!"  But luckily the other half of my brain tells me not to yell but to sternly give him the drop it command.  Lo and behold, all those weekends at training class just paid off! Fargo actually stops and drops the piece of glass!  I didn’t know what to do next!  Pick up the glass, give Fargo a big hug for actually obeying a command or check him for cuts.

I quickly decided to pick up the glass, then gave him a big ol petting while quickly doing a quick check for blood. Everything appeared to be ok and now the mystery was solved.  But of course now it was back to vacuuming the whole house again to pick up any missed pieces of glass.  So much for that relaxing shower.

The Newfs aren’t the only ones who love their crates!

Not sure why Widget was getting the evil eye from Uku!  Could be because Uku usually has the top of Fargo’s bedroom crate all to herself!