Last night I slept like the dead. First I slept on the couch then I slept upstairs with two dogs at the foot of my bed. Sleeping like a log also came to mind. It fits with the topic under discussion, but I don’t know why. Logs sleeping? Maybe that’s from the old days when logs were floated down river. Sleep like a baby would be dismissed by new parents. My mother often accused the teenage me of sleeping my life away. She could lever the same maxim at me now. If I woke up grouchy, not enough sleep was the culprit. My favorite of them all was, “Sleep tight. Don’t the bedbugs bite.” That one scared me a little.

Today is a repetition of yesterday. It is damp and cloudy. The high will only be 72˚. When I went to get the papers, I was surprised at how warm the air felt so I left the front door open to the world. Outside is perfectly still for the meantime. The smallest of breezes appears only every now and then.

Today I have no plans except to do some stuff around the house. It is also time for laundry, step 2: bring the basket downstairs by the cellar door to make me feel guilty.

Nala is the first real counter surfer dog I’ve had. Shauna did it a couple of times, but counter food was safe from her. She preferred to trash pick. I have learned not to leave food on the counter, cooked food that is. But yesterday Nala did the unexpected. She stole unopened packages of the treats I had bought myself and ran outside before I knew to look there. Later she ate the cat treats behind what I thought was an impermeable wall, my own Maginot Line. The treats were hidden but Nala found them. The oven is my new go-to-stash container for everything except can goods and the stuff in the fridge. Nala hasn’t yet learned how to open the fridge, but she watches me every time, a sort of Hitchcock or King plot devise, or is it Hitchcokian and Kingish?