New Hampshire Sunshine

The trouble with being in New Hampshire visiting the folks is that the sun gets up forty-five minutes earlier than it does in Ohio. Great! I'm a morning person, that's a whole extra :45 minutes--save for the fact it's at 4:45 AM that one said yellow labrador starts whining. Then there's the moment of debate, can he hold it? Does he have to go number one or two? It is my parents house... they wouldn't be horrified... but still, not a practice I want Orion to get into, so legs swing over the side of the bed, half-hearted effort at collecting my glasses and then down the stairs we go.
"I hope you know we're going back to sleep after this."
He does his business right where I anticipate my mother will walk while getting to her car, and I make a tired mental note to collect it in the AM before turning back into the house.
In bed again, he's brought up my family dog Chloe's toy stuffed opossum. That's cool, I think, I can sleep through anything. Therein sues the squeaking. And more squeaking. I'm not concerned about my parents waking up, my dad's a heavy sleeper and my mom is partially deaf, so it's just me and my sixteen pillows, trying to smother out the sound.

While I wake up forty minutes later, I notice brown spots on the bed. "What are these?" I ask. "Are these from you or me?" I pick up his feet to look. Nothing. I touch my face, having one time woken to a bloody nose and thought I was murdered, nothing. I find a brown piece in my bed. "Did Mr. Opossum lose his arm?" I throw my feet over the bed, this time accurately finding my glasses and placing them on my head. "What else have you gotten into?" I assess the room. I see corn kernels on the floor and a little Boyd's Bear. "Okay so you decided Mr. Bear had to lose his arm." Mentally I assess whether this will be a major problem with my mother and/or if I can sew it back on. I turn my attention to the corn that Orion has now redevoted his attention to and is collecting. "Ah. Maggie's heat wrap." I collect the heat wrap that my oldest sister made for my youngest sister that now has a gaping hole. This I know can be repaired. I leave Orion to the corn.

"Let's go." I peek out the door to see the parent's door is closed and then open the door and head to the bathroom. Closed, and shut tight being two entirely different things, I hear a loud noise, I move quickly out of the bathroom to find my 65 pound dog has launched himself on the sleeping party, hitting the larkin as he jumps, opening the desk part so that a tea saucer is now falling, my mother is wondering what the heck is waking her up, my dad giggles, Chloe jumps up to defend the world and I'm left dragging the dog off the parents, apologetically and downstairs we go.

Coffee. Where's the coffee.