Protect Me - Please?

Time once again for Mama Kat's Writer's Challenge. This week the prompts are:

1.) My animals are making me nuts.
(inspired by Jody from Take Me As I Am).


2.) List the 5 best things about the first day of school.
(inspired by Lane from Sneaky Daddy).


3.) Tell us about your crush.
(inspired by Lisa from Just Lisa, No Filler)


4.) How did you break it?
(inspired by Brandy from Not Your Average Soccer Mom)


5.) Show us a favorite summer craft.
(inspired by Kristin from The Way It Is)

Some fun topics this week!

I'm going with #1 and #3. #2 doesn't apply here and #4 I covered last week here. #5 isn't really applicable unless you really want to see pictures of my renowned noxious weed crop. Something about Russian thistle and bind weed and sand burrs just don't make for pretty pictures.

#1 - I don't even need to go for plural here. Just the singular Molly is doing fine in making sure my sanity is slowly ebbing away. Molly is one of those dogs that combine the best and worst in one anxious body. She has developed a strong dislike and fear of thunderstorms. The subsonic noise from the distant storms brings her slinking in to my office to lie on my feet, periodically standing up on my leg looking for a reassuring word and a rub of the head. There is nothing like the sudden appearance of a a shaking and panting dog in your face to make it hard to continue working. Especially when her breath smells a lot like she intentionally gargles with a solution of garlic and onion mixed with hint of ripe road kill when she is scared. In the thunderstorm this afternoon I captured this part of the normal sequence.

C'mon, lets get into the office so I can lie on your feet! Can't you hear that thunder?

See- I'm ready to lie still. In spite of my licking my nose like mad. (It's a nervous tic she exhibits when she hears the subsonics from thunder.)

I'm just going to lie here on your feet and keep my head down.

Look, I'm off your feet and ready to go lay in the sun since the storm is gone. Are you going to stay here in case I need to hide again? If I don't hear anything for the next fifteen minutes, I may even stop licking my nose for you.

So here she is laying in the sun, recovering from the stress of the storm. Doesn't it make you want to rub her poor pitiful head?

In spite of the immense amount of fur she sheds on a daily basis, her neediness when thunder is in the area, and the fact that she snores at night, i find her oddly appealing. Maybe it is true love?

#3 - My first crush that I truly remember was in junior high school. Of course there had been Julie and Jackie and Beth and Kristi as I went from kindergarten through 6th grade. But then I hit a dry spell in the crush department until late middle school. That's when I fell into deep like and crush with Annette. Annette was an older woman who seemingly inhabited other worldly realms, but I just knew that we were perfect for each other. I fell asleep at night dreaming of Annette and all that we would do together someday. I day-dreamed through classes with Annette sitting in the front of my mind.

There was just one problem - I could see no way I was even going to be able to talk to Annette. For you see, Annette was a person who appeared only in TV reruns, the movies, and fanzines. For my first real crush was on Annette Funicello, the Mouseketeer par excellence, the star of Disney beach movies with Frankie Avalon, the girl of my dreams. I still remember her fondly, and she hasn't aged a bit!

So there you have it - another embarrassing admission of normalcy. {*grin*}