Birthday's Everywhere!

Happy day after your birthday, Trisha!

I have been drawing a blank as to what to write in here these last few days. So I will tell you about birthdays. Obviously, it was Trisha's yesterday. Which, incidentally also falls upon the day of birth for our little dog Sam! He turned 9. Which is something like 63 in dog years, so Sam would be the oldest in the Mumby family now. Good job.

Since my parents are away in Arizona right now I have the house all to myself. It is a glorious thing. Except for the fact that Sam has an inability to sleep anywhere but on a bed. He normally sleeps on the bed with mom and dad (that alone is all the athiests need for cold hard facts that there is a God) but since they are far, far away Sam opts for my bed.

Sam is a strange dog. I have been testing some things with him these last couple of days. He really has fallen in love with sleeping and when you say, "Time for bed" to Sam, it almost causes him as much joy as when you say, "Where's the cat?" So last night I turned the TV off after watching the most stressful Amazing Race ever recorded and said to Sam really quietly, "time for bed."

Sam raced up the stairs and was on my bed long before I got there.

This morning I thought I would try his reaction to other seeming random comments. I slept in longer then Sam is used to. Mom and dad get up painfully early, so he was getting restless and decided it would be fun to lick my face. I didn't think it was as fun as he did. I laid there for a long time and then whispered as quiet as possible, "Want to go outside?" and Sam did a flying leap off my bed and ran downstairs to the doorway. He ran outside, barked at the imaginary cats that plague his mind and then came back inside, got up on his chair and promptly went back to sleep.

I don't understand this animal.

And now I will push another one of Sam's magical buttons and get the keys to open our mail box. Somehow Sam knows the mail key sound and will come running from wherever he is in the house to join me in walking all the way across the street to get our mail. This is glorious fun for him.