Good morning one and all. The eyeballs are itchy but for the first time all week I am not stuffy. So I am hoping that whatever was in the air has now settled down and my allergies are going back into hibernation. I know you are thinking spring is just around the corner, but oddly enough Spring isn’t really the trigger for me. I have much more issue in the autumn. I’ll get hit again if the weather yo-yos because that always makes my head feel like it’s in a vise, but the standing water is gone and my allergies are in retreat. So deep breath to celebrate and let’s jump into the morning prompt. Ready? Onward to victory! or at least a potential story start.
Normally I just tell my alarm clock I want five more minutes. Today, it was my little egg timer. I really wanted just another ten minutes with this story start. I feel like I was just starting to sink my teeth into it. I will have to circle back later.
Thursday, March 3rd: The pillow exploded in a spray of white feathers.
The pillow exploded in a spray of white feathers. I saw the remains shaken vigorously from side to side, the remaining feathers aching out of the damaged sack of a pillow. Beyond the foaming white I saw a dark brown head.
“Buttercup, no,” I yelled. “Bad dog. Stop.”
The pillow stopped it’s shaking. The deflated remains drooped down to either side of the dog’s mouth as though he had just plastered a bizarre moustache to his face. I half expected it to curl up like an evil villain in a cartoon.
“Drop it,” I ordered. He tilted his head slightly as he looked at me. He seemed to be trying to interpret my words. I could understand his confusion. I doubted anyone but me had ever told him to stop in his life. He snorted, a few feathers going flying with the noise. He dropped the pillow and turned, trotting off to the back room. I heard his nails on the floor and then I heard the sound change as he descended the basement stairs back into the domain that was officially his while he was staying with me.
My guess was that when I went around the corner I would find another destroyed gate. The entrance to the basement had no door. The basement itself had been refinished into a living space long before I bought the house. If the basement ever had a door separating it, I couldn’t tell. Since Buttercup’s stay with me was supposed to be temporary I was loath to put permanent holes in the walls, but every temporary gate was easily removed by the energetic dog.
As I surveyed the damage the thought that the couch cushions and throw pillows in the basement lounge area would be perfectly intact crossed my mind. Buttercup never seemed to bother with those. I sighed. This morning when I left to go to the grocery store there were three undamaged couch cushions and two remaining throw pillows.
The rest of the sectional and the two over stuffed arm chairs along with a padded footstool had already been destroyed. ‘I never liked them anyway,’ I tried telling myself. I hefted the grocery bags and took them into the kitchen deciding to put the perishables away before tending to the mess in the living room. The furniture was given to me after the divorce. Since the furniture in our house was mostly the furniture Peter had when we got married, we agreed to use it until the pieces wore out then gradually replace them with things we chose together.
That never happened of course. Peter had what he wanted and saw no reason to change. On anything. It had been a large reason for our divorce. The furniture here was given to me when someone else decided they needed new furniture. The old went here and I was supposed to be grateful, hiding the fact that I was looking forward to picking out my own pieces.
Ten til Midnight 