Dog for Sale. For Pet or Food.

Bodie with ice cubes, looking innocent
Four days ago, or rather four nights ago, Will's side of the bed deflated. We have a very comfortable king-sized mattress with separate air mattress components underneath, so that each of us can have it as hard or as soft as we wish. (Ben would insert here "That's what she said!" I feel like I'm traveling around the country with Michael Scott of The Office.)

In the morning Will tried to find the leak without success and spent the next night re-inflating the mattress every hour or two. This is a very loud process. Imagine that your sleeping partner decided to use a ShopVac to clean up crumbs in the bed throughout the night. It was like that.

The next day was hectic, filled with chores for the boys and writing for me, so the mattress didn't get fixed. I tried to talk Will into letting me sleep on his side. I had all sorts of good arguments for this, the most compelling (I thought) being that he hadn't slept much at all for two nights. That didn't work, so I tried "But I really LIKE sleeping on a board", which didn't fly, and also "I'm not sleeping anyway, because I'm worrying about you not sleeping." The latter had the advantage of being true, but was nonetheless unconvincing to Will.

Yesterday Will tried fixing the mattress, again unsuccessfully, plus he was also trying to fix the water pump unsuccessfully. We also had a scare with the bedroom air conditioner, which stopped working for awhile but then started up again on its own. In the evening we all piled on the bed to watch Alien and Aliens, with frequent breaks to refill the mattress. I was sitting in the middle, so I would slowly tilt to the right through the movie.

Today we went into Lawrence to run some errands. It was foodie paradise, with the high points of the day for me being Wheatfields for breakfast and reallyreallyreally good bread, and the Mercantile Coop for things like chutney and good cheese and nori and Virgil's cream soda.

We always set up the RV carefully before we leave, because Bodie has a habit of finding whatever piece of fabric is available and shredding it. He has eaten through a travel pillow, a couple of towels and put a hole in the middle of a sheet and a blanket. We lay out several Kongs filled with peanut butter and dog treats, to keep the dogs occupied. Then we put the vacuum cleaner in front of our bedroom door because Bodie is scared of the vacuum cleaner and won't nudge his way through the door if it is there (the door doesn't completely close).

Except this time we forgot about the vacuum cleaner.

When I opened the door, Bodie was standing there waiting for me, covered in a fine layer of down. I shrieked and pushed past him. There was a trail of down leading from him to the bedroom. Inside the bedroom, two Kongs lay on our duvet, which was torn down one side (the duvet cover had been eaten through). A pillow case had also been eaten through, but he hadn't gotten to the insides yet. There was down *everywhere*.

Naturally Will took a photo of the damage before cleaning up. Note the Kongs, and the down coating his laptop.
The next half hour was spent vacuuming (Will) and scolding (me). After we had a nice lunch that calmed us down (a Kalamata loaf, Australian cheddar, organic roast beef, Plugra butter, fresh tomatoes), Will duct-taped the duvet together as a short-term solution and then decided to try duct-taping the pump seal of the air mattress, which seemed like the most likely place for a leak.

This did not work. Neither did duct-taping a crack in the pump. Will began checking the seams and guess what he found? A puncture at the end of the bed, right where Bodie had hopped on a few mornings ago, trying to convince us that it was time for the morning walk, dammit.

So that is why we have a dog for sale. For pet or food.

Random pic of the day: Abi sitting in the chair that Lincoln sat in before the Lincoln-Douglas debate at Knox College. I'm missing her like CRAZY.