Housesitting in the Carolinas: DAY ONE

Apologies for the lack of pictorial illustrations for the next few entries. I do not have picture-posting capabilities at the moment, as I am working via satellite.

As a preface, the girls, Wooster and I are now at the Carolina homebase, keeping our many watchful eyes over Arbouse, Mini, Regi, and many plants while Nana and Papa are gallivanting through Paris (paREEEEH).

We arrived last night at approximately 22:00 hours eastern time (that's so you military folks out there can understand what I'm talking about). It took a lot of prefacing, preparation, and pep talking to explain the unfortunate fact that while we were going to Nana and Papa's house, Nana and Papa themselves would not be there for the duration of our visit. This was a difficult and sometimes emotional concept for some of us to wrap our minds around, but Eva grasped it right away and explained it to Brendan I thought quite succinctly: "Hi Daddy we're at Nana and Papa's house but they're coming and Madeline's going to the hospital and Vern said yai yai and then they're coming here and Madeline is better and we have Wooster and okay bye Daddy I love you." Or something like that. Madeline, it turns out, was a combination of dog and the little Parisian girl of children's literature that we are all familiar with. I tried using her as a template for Eva to understand where Nana and Papa were going to be, but she couldn't quite keep them separate. Vern, as you may or may not know, is a character from the computer animated film "Over the Hedge". I can only assume he ended up in the conversation because the movie was on at the time.

So far, everything is going smoothly, if you don't count the fact that Estella, who has just been "sneaking around" my chair for the past few minutes when she should be in bed is now in tears because I repeated for the tenth time that she needed to get into bed. Her position was wedged between a railing and the back of my chair and she burst into tears because "I WAS going to bed! Can't you see that I'm going that way?!" When I insisted that I could not have known she was going anywhere in that particular position, she only became more intent that I had wronged her. She did in-wedge herself from behind the chair exlaiming that I should have known she was going to bed.

Overall, though, Estella has been an invaluable resource helping out with the girls and the chores. She watered the plants on the deck this morning and even managed to sneak in a small training session with Mini. I did have to bring her copy of "Dog Training for Dummies" back in the house when I went out to do a follow-up check, but I think we all made out pretty well, especially Mini, who I am sure has been deeply enlightened in the art of obedience. Estella told me she made sure the other dogs had a good view of what she was doing so that they could learn how to do it as well. I believe she may be doing some background work for the starting up of a Hotel for Dogs, since she has become a rather big fan of the book.

Libi remains content in all things as long as she is being fed at all times, so if I can continue to throw things like bananas, cereal, pork, cheese, crackers, cookies, pasta, yogurt, cereal bars, cheddar bunnies, and bagels with cream cheese, I should be alright.