At the Beach

Matisse's mission: to see how fast he can have the carpet replaced with hard wood floors. It seems that no matter what that dog does his lunch ends up on my beige carpeting. He either eats to fast, eats something he shouldn't, exercises too soon after eating, drinks salt water to ensure that he only digests half of the calories given to him. I'm pretty sure that if our dog wasn't so overweight, he would be an anorexic. But I really just think it's a case of - geez it's so hot down here and I love lying on the tile. I wonder what it would be like if the whole house was tile!!?? What can I do to make that happen?! Oh, I know, turn on the projectile vomiting.

N and I have invested stock in Spot Shot (carpet cleaner).

Yesterday, we took Matisse to the beach. Good idea. Bad reality. We packed too much and had even more grandeur ideas of how this all would go down. We thought we would spend a quiet afternoon at the dog beach where Matisse would play in the water and N & I could read on the beach. It was more of Matisse in the water and then coming out and shaking all over us. I had the understanding that he's a dog and therefore attracted to anything dry and belonging to humans but this being N's first real dog (besides one he had as a small child) didn't understand that the dog lacked a human's ability to reason. WHY DOES HE SHAKE ALL OVER THE CLOTHES?! WHY IS HE SHAKING ALL OVER ME! WHY DOES HE INSIST ON LAYING ON THE SHEET!? WHY IS HE DRINKING THE SALT WATER WHEN HE HAS A WHOLE BOWL OF FRESH WATER?!!! WHY IS HE SITTING ON MY LEG?!! WHY WON'T HE LEAVE ME ALONE??!!! WHY IS HE LOOKING AT ME?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was finally when he (N not Matisse) sat down on the beach, wrapped his arms around his legs and pouted that I had to turn away to surpress a laugh. He's a dog, I kept saying. What do you expect? N expected him to lay down, chill out under the umbrella and catch some rays with a corona light in paw so that N could do the same thing. It was funny and tragic and short lived. As soon as I was able to look at N without laughing I suggested we pack up the things and go. That this was all sorts of not working. N looked at me like I had finally saved him from a brutal hell.

It was then that N finally regained the ability to talk without using capital letters and exclamation points.

We packed up and headed home. I suggested that next time we make less of a show of it. Meaning, one bottle of water. Leash. Dog. An hour max. No cooler or sheets or towels or change of clothes or snacks or water games. Just he. Me. Matisse.

Sometimes, simple is just better.