The setup:
This morning at about 4:45 I was lying in bed trying my best not to be awake when it occurred to me that I needed to visit the bathroom. So, stealthily so as not to disturb Judy from her slumber, I slithered from the bed and skulked my way to the bathroom.
After a successful mission there, I decided that I was ready for a glass of Carnation Instant Breakfast and I made my way to the kitchen.
While I mixed up my early morning pre-breakfast, by the light of the refrigerator, I looked out the window over the sink and discovered that it had snowed during the night – the first snow of the year. I thought that was kind of neat, so I went to the breakfast nook to get a better look through the larger windows.
Immagine my surprise when I discovered that, while standing at the window, my right foot was partially submerged in a puddle of cold liquid…
Thinking water must have leaked in through the window, I felt around the sill and frame for more moisture. There was none.
This was, both, a very good sign (because it meant that there was nothing wrong with the construction and installation of the windows) and a very bad sign (because the only other possible sources of the liquid I could think of were me, Judy and Max).
I knew it wasn’t me, and I was cautiously hopeful that it wasn’t Judy. That left only Max.
The chagrin I was experiencing was exacerbated by the fact that the sink and everything necessary to clean up the mess is located about 20 feet from where I was standing with my drippy foot. Not only that, but there is a glass dinette set and a granite island that are positioned between where I was and where I wanted to be.
As I had not the slightest desire to track the biologically induced liquid across the entire kitchen floor, it was required that I hop on one foot from point “A” to point”B” and back again, all the while negotiating the necessary course corrections around the previously mentioned impediments.
And, because I had closed the refrigerator door after constructing my breakfast drink, I had to do all this in the dark.
After I did the cleanup job, both on the floor and my right foot, I went back to bed.
Judy had, somehow, woken up and asked me if everything was OK…
“Everything is fine. I just went to get something to drink,” I replied. “Except that the dog peed on the kitchen floor.”
“The dog?”
“Yes. I figure the only other possibilities were you and me, and I knew it wasn’t me. Plus, I assumed that it wasn’t you because you would have cleaned up after yourself.”
“But you said ‘the dog’.”
“Yes. The dog.”
“You have never referred to Max as ‘the dog’ before.”
“He has never peed on the kitchen floor before.”
“So if he pees on the kitchen floor, you call him ‘the dog’, but any other time he is ‘Max.”
“Yes….…………And let that be a lesson to you.”
As it happens, this warning appears to have been sufficient to keep Judy from peeing on the kitchen floor because it’s been about 15 hours and it’s still dry.
And this is a very good thing because I don’t want to have to call her anything other than ‘Judy’ or ‘Honey’ or ‘Sweetie’ or some other term of endearment.
I’m fairly certain that we both like it that way…
Things With Six Strings 