“Remoted” – Workday Thirty-One (Friday)

Dinner experiment.

Today was another one of those days that are the new routine. Work was super busy (again), the dogs were slightly barky (mostly during work calls), lunch was ramen (shocker). Dinner was an experiment concocted with a vegan meat substitute from a can that marinated all day in Korean hot pepper paste, soy sauce, and sesame oil served over rice. It was not horrible.

Being “thank goodness it’s Friday,” the evening also included a glass of wine (ok, maybe it was two) to help with the wind down. There was also a feeding frenzy that included coconut macaroons. And potato chips. And Cheetos. And six or seven brownies (that's all that remained). 

Looks like we’re all caught up on today.Now we can roll back the tape a bit to last night.

Faces of canine confusion.

Thursday after supper, I logged back into work for a few hours to get a jump on data entry for the big special project. This confused the dogs greatly. We were in the wrong room doing the wrong thing for the time of day.

Instead of sitting on the couch together in front of the TV, we were back at the same desk where the entire day had already been spent. Moose and Winston ran around in circles. They paced. They tossed their little pillows around and traded beds back and forth. They whined to go out. They are creatures of habit and I was really messing with the routine.

When it was the regular time that we usually go upstairs to bed, they barked and danced around and spun around in circles and escalated their efforts to get my attention. This lasted for an hour before I was finally ready. A big part of the uproar was surely because of the nightly routine involving three cookies before bed. This practice started years ago when Moosie used to wake up in the morning (and sometimes during the night) with a sour stomach. Cookies before bed took the acid edge off and spared all of us the barfing. And now it’s a routine that must be executed nightly to avoid unpleasant consequences.

When it was finally time to go upstairs, the delight was palpable. They nearly knocked me over while racing past me to get up the stairs. Then it was the nightly “sit, paw, stay, come, paw” routine that earns the cookies along the way. And finally, it was time for bed.