What a day...

of nail-biting suspense (hey, any excuse in a storm) whike I waite to see if I had in fact triggered Armageddon. Turns out my polite email to the office was well received and I am not in the doghouse after all.
Nor will the doghouse spontaneously explode.
I hope.
Our deck has gone bye-bye today thanks to an industrious builder and his lovely beefy assistant. I'll put up a pic tomorrow. Hilariously, Lucy is VERY confused by the removal of her deck (home to kennel and transition area between back door and backyard. The fact that our sliding door is now some eight foot above ground level has not deterred her from asking to go out several times today.

The latest experience: Pug scratches at door. We kindly explain door isn't working and redirect to laundry door. Pug insists. We open door while holding onto pug, who noses about and promptly freaks out, thinking we're about to throw her into the abyss. Close door. Pug asks to go out. Sigh...

After facilitating manual exit from laundry door (read, carry Lucy to THAT door and firmly shove) pug can be heard loudly asking to come back in. At the bottom of the eight-foot drop. No, I'm not belaying you up the brick wall. Nice try.

As long as neither of us sleepily open the door for her tomorrow morning, we should be fine. I'm going to put a chair in front of that door right now just to stop myself...

In other news, my lovely father in law celebrated his birthday yesterday and my cake turned out beautifully. LOTS of chocolate, butter, cocoa, almond meal and egg white baked in a water bath (roasting dish half-filled with hot water) AMAZING. Ate far too much of it, but glorious. The sugar content incited hubby to skype some very funny interaction to his little bro in London... we're now experiencing the long, slow crash. Ow. We're so very very lucky in our families and all their acts of kindness. ow, if I can pay it forward by getting an OLD friend to move in with us for a while...happy days.