Annie Knits

Earthquake! or Dogs Have Awesome Powers Part 2

In case you live under a rock (an iffy place to be around here yesterday morning...) we had quite a shaker yesterday.  It wasn't the big one, but it was certainly disconcerting.  Since everyone else got out of the blocks on this story sooner than I did, I can do some commentary as well as tell my story.

I let the dogs out as usual Thursday night, about 10 or so, and went to bed.  Monte could not settle in.  He had me up at 12, 1, 2 and 3.  He was barking at the windows and doors, whining, and generally making a fat nuisance out of himself.  I was ready to strangle him by 3 a.m. I tell you.  I let him out each time, thinking he may have eaten something bad for him while he was outside earlier in the evening, but to no avail.  He'd sniff around and come right back and jump at the back door.  What was Sophie, the big dog, doing during all this hullabaloo?  She went out the first time, but no more.  She even quit getting out of her chair.  She was not agitated at all -- so I knew there were no bad guys involved.  After the 3 a.m. shuffle, I huffed and puffed at Monte and put in my ear plugs. 

Next thing I know, someone is shaking my bed, waking me up.  Which I did actually do.  Wake up that is.  I can't hear anything though, 'cause I've got in earplugs.  I pull them out, and  daughter is at my bedroom door asking me if I've been in her room shaking her bed.  Huh?  I told her no, I had not been shaking her bed... had she been shaking mine?  It dawned on me then that we were having an earthquake.  But it seemed to be over.  Daughter told me she was going back to sleep, but if we had another earthquake to wake her up... I went back to sleep too (instead of getting up, checking the house, getting my kids the hell out of that death trap!  Um, right... great Mom I am.)

Of course, by 6 a.m. our little quake was all over the news.  The city inspectors were going around checking the safety of roads and bridges.  They, of course, found that my shortcut to Son's school is now unsafe, chunks of concrete having fallen from the underside of the bridge, but that is really the only lasting effect for me.   Oh, and the fact that now, every time Monte whines or cringes (which is like hourly) I've got EARTHQUAKE! in the back of my mind.   It's one of the burdens of owning an Earthquake dog I guess. 

Here's Monte practicing earthquake preparedness -- he's gotten under the heaviest piece of furniture in the room.  Good dog.  Now, go find all of the centipedes in the house.

There is knitting in the house. 

It's Filey from Alice Starmore's Fishermen's Sweaters.  It's out of the Rowan Denim I bought when we were in England.  The pattern repeat is very simple -- memorized after the first few rows -- so it's certainly carry around knitting at this point.  The sticky Starmore Gauge Question?  I'm achieving  her gauge by dropping only two needles sizes down, so it's all good.  I'm doing ribbing on US2s and the body on US3s.  I assume this will be my summer knitting. 

You'll remember that I really don't love knitting with cotton.  And, you'll think, well hoo boy this is cotton.  Twine-ish almost.  And in response, I'll tell you that I carry around a little swatch of this stuff that's been machine washed and dried and boyohboy is it yummy.  All the motivation I need to knit through the pain.

The baby cable jacket is in the seaming process, and will be ready to be gifted soon.  But in another babyish development, I ran into Daughter's beloved basketball coach's newish wife and, well not to be indelicate, but she is as big as a house!  Due in a month.  And sure it's a girl.  So, I'll have to knit some of these, don't you think?

I've seen a lot of bootie patterns in my time, but these are among the cutest.   I've read through them (straight forward directions and lots of pictures)  and I have the yarn.  So.  I'll get right on this.

And for friends and family?  The renovations are all but complete.  Yay, me!

The hallway is the first picture, and yes, that wall is orange.  The rest of that space is beige.  The dining area in the second picture has walls the same color as the fireplace area in the third -- just a bad picture.  The family room adjacent to these rooms is a leaf green that doesn't photograph well today...  Area rugs, drapes, and furniture to come in a few weeks.  Again, yay me.   

Dogs Have Awesome Powers...

Is what Dear Son said when I told him this story this morning.  Um.  Right.

It's been awhile since I've talked about Monte, hasn't it?  He's 10 months old now, about 50 or so pounds, perfect on his electronic collar but not so perfect when it comes to chewing furniture... 

At 12:30 this morning, Monte began to bark.  Sophie trotted out to check the front window for goings on, and I followed her.  Monte scrambled through the kitchen to the back door (as only dogs can do, claws trying to grab linoleum) barked some more and whined.  Sophie and I followed.  I couldn't see any problems and Sophie seemed supremely unconcerned, so we began to make our way back to bed.

When we all got to the doorway to the living room, it's pitch dark remember, Monte froze.  He backed away, whined, and then stretched himself to sniff the air as far as he could without actually stepping foot into the living room itself.  Hmm.

Sophie had passed us and was standing in the hall,  looking over her shoulder at me as if to say, "I'm going back to bed, are you coming?" 

So all must be well, right?  I mean, there couldn't be a bad guy in the living room, hiding behind the couch if Sophie was willing to go back to sleep.  But Monte's body language said different.

Realize now that this dog is really just a chicken in a dog suit.  He's very tentative and easily spooked.  In fact he rarely does something, be it chase a squirrel, meet a new dog, chew a new toy even, unless Sophie does it first.   

So, I flipped on the lights.  Sophie sighed (no really, she sounded completely exasperated), circled the room as if I'd asked her to do just that, and climbed up into her day-sleeping chair.  She circled in the chair once, let out another long-suffering groan and plopped down, her head on her paws, watching Monte and me.  I'm now absolutely reassured that there is no bad guy in here hiding and waiting to pounce.  Monte, however, is not. 

He's willing to set foot in the room now, but he's still stretching his nose toward the big chair in the corner -- clearly something there has him upset.  Other than my knitting of course.  Which is piled on the arm of said chair, where I left it earlier in the evening.  Did I mention that it was o'dark thirty?!  I try to reassure him, and to coax him over to the chair, but he won't come.  He sniffing madly at the Kauni Cardigan and her yarn from like 3 feet away.  What the heck, dog?

I move the knitting, and under one ball of yarn, on the arm of the chair is a 3 inch long centipede.  Yeeeuuuucccckkk!  I hate those things.  The legs keep right on kicking even after you've squished them.  And my bug guy was just here this afternoon!  (Fall is spider season in MO.)  Probably why this guy was off the floor, looking for a hiding place.  I squished him. 

Monte sniffed and sniffed at the spot, at the paper towel, at the yarn, reassuring himself I guess that the monster was really gone.  And I wondered... how the heck did that dog know that a house centipede was under my knitting on the arm of my chair in a pitch black room?!  Can dogs hear centipedes?  Can dogs smell them?  Do centipede legs make little skittering  noises when they walk across the room... on carpet? 

Did the centipede somehow awaken Little Dog, and then hide causing the barking to begin with?  And how, pray tell, does a centipede, no matter how big, wake up a sleeping dog? 

Maybe Monte wasn't sleeping.  Maybe he was guarding my knitting.   Ok.  The chair leg incident is forgiven...  'Cause if I had picked up that cardigan this morning and this had crawled out onto my hand, I'd be dead of a heart-attack right now.  Seriously.

Good doggie.