Good News From the Front

Fortunately for our sanity, Darra has done much better with sleeping at night.

We have to keep her from falling asleep too hard; then when WE decide it's bedtime, we stop waking her up and after about 20 minutes of letting her slip into hard sleep, we put her in her crate without a peep from her. WHEW. (If we try to put her in the crate right when she falls asleep, she wakes right up and you can forget about sleeping the rest of the night.)

I had also decided to train her to ring a bell when she needed to go outside and figured it would take several weeks for her to get it. I set it up on Sunday afternoon, and by the time we went to bed that night, SHE HAD ALREADY LEARNED IT. Naturally, she's a quick learner. She is OUR dog. Or else it's the fact that ringing the bell has two parts to learn (first, go to the door; second, ring the bell), and she'd already learned the first, harder part weeks ago.

But this means that we don't have to watch her vigilantly! We can get other work done without worrying about her! When she's upstairs with me while I work, she even "goes to the door" there - where she knows the "exit" is to leave the area I have blocked off for her. How smart!!

To top off a great few days, yesterday I guess the lack of sleep altogether caught up with me. I left the office in the afternoon and was fighting off sleep, walking through Walmart in a daze to get some needed groceries. Got home and couldn't even think about cooking the easy stir-fry I'd planned. I collapsed on the couch to take a nap first - and John made dinner!! WHAT A GREAT HUSBAND!!

We ate our stir-fry and watched Lady In the Water, which is another sign of John's love and sacrifice, since he knows the movie will end with his arms black and blue from bruises where I clutched him to death during the freaky parts.

Guess I'd better let Darra in. For the first time since the fires were reported in Georgia, we can smell the smoke in the air, and the sky is hazy with it.