Yep, there's nothing like having a fever, a car inspection, and an audience when you go to the bathroom! This day is shaping up to be a real winner!

We did survive last night with Canine Client in the house. I was WAY impressed with The Hub who, by dint of serious effort, seems to have forged a bond with the CC. She was too wound up to sleep last night, and understandably so. She was in a strange place with people she just met and another resident huge dog.

When we started to wind down in the routines of bed time, Winston was hip and followed along....he's a big couch potato anyway. But CC was still upset, confused.....

and wound up. I knew she was tired because when I seperated her from Winston in the office with me for a little while she did lay down. We tried putting her in her crate, hoping that the familiarity of it would help and after awhile of yelping and barking she would settle down.

And probably she would have. However, since I started to run a fever and I had somehow managed to forget exactly how intense the high pitched whine of a puppy is, we caved on that option after about 15 minutes.

So, the CC ran right up the stairs directly into Vio-kitty....who is clearly the first cat she had ever seen. I say this because the CC showed know signs of recognising that this was anything other than an extremely interesting interactive dog toy, even when Vio-kitty fluffed out her tail like a bottle brush, hissed like an angry cobra, and then stood all of her fur straight up on end so she looked like 5x the kitty she is. Consequently, Vio-kitty had to be contained in the basement before she ripped the CC's ears off.

I volunteered to let The Hub take the sofa as a sleeping spot and spend the night in the bedroom with The CC. Usually when I have a fever I can't sleep so I thought I could just sit up with her and do crosswords or knit. No, he said, he would try it at least for a "first shift". I thought that might last about 20 minutes. The Hub is not good about having his sleep disturbed....I wouldn't be either, except for that my sleep has always been disturbed so I almost can't tell the difference between internal and external factors. I used to say that the one part of motherhood I was sure I would have no problem with was getting up for a 2:00 feeding since I almost always am up or get up anyway.....but Nature has not given me the chance to find out.

So, I lay on the sofa working crosswords waiting for him to announce that he was done. But all was quiet upstairs, and remained so. The Hub even came down for a dose of cough syrup at about 3:00 in the morning, but he reported that the CC was sleeping peacefully in the bed with him. "She rests her head on my stomach....she woke up once and started chasing her tail in the bed, but I just petted her and she calmed down." He woke up all cheerful and refreshed with his new buddy by his side. I haven't exactly been to sleep yet.

Meanwhile I have to take the cruiser down to pass it's Maryland state inspection. I hope I can get new tags before anybody important notices that my MA plates expired yesterday. The guy at the inspection station said "Ah, don't worry about it. I seen people drive for six, eight months on expired tags. It ain't murder." But most people don't have my luck. The truth is, I did write to Chase, the lein holder asking them to send the title to the State, but they didn't do it. With the inspection certificate, the insurance information, and the form I picked up from the MVA yesterday, I should be able to prove that I have done everything in good faith to get the tags....but I could still be in a world of crap. Thankfully, the snow is melting, and the inspection station is only down the street....but I don't even feel like leaving the house .

The CC doesn't like to be alone. She follows one of us EVERYWHERE, including to the loo.

The good thing about this day is that if the house is still an utter mess at the end of it, I will have several good excuses. I was sick, I was playing with the dogs, the dogs were playing with each other/ the toilet paper roll/ the cat,/the potted ficus / the sofa...the stress from dealing with the MVA paperwork caused my head to blow up, etc. The Hub has a job today!

Lucky him.