Midnight Moments of pure Happiness... ;)

    Tonight I lost it.
    We have two large "outside" dogs except that one, Buster, has been hiding in the laundry room because.. .he's afraid of flies. And gnats. And moths.  We made the mistake of letting him in the house a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to get him in the back yard since.  He'll go into the front yard but he won't go into the back yard and when you try to take him back there, he becomes absolutely frantic. However, if you leave him in the front yard, he digs under the fence and frolics down the street.
     His companion, Heidi, is the smart, calm one.
     Tonight, just a few minutes ago, as the clock was approaching the witching hour, Buster started whining and then scrabbling at the laundry room door.  I let him out thinking he needed to go potty.  Not so.  He just wanted to go outside in the front yard and  get under David's bedroom window - David has to work early tomorrow - and bark.  Loudly.  At the neighbor's dog, an indolent mutt who is too lazy, most of the time, to bark back.  (If the neighbor's dog would bark back, Buster would add Hurricane to the dreaded Enemy List and rank him right up there beside moths, gnats, the weekly tornado siren, and mosquitoes and consequently leave Hurricane alone.  But that hasn't happened yet. Because, as I said, Hurricane is too doggone lazy (pun intended) to respond to Buster's challenges...)
     So let's say I was a tad stressed.  And let's say I raised my voice just a bit.  And let's say that I started speculating vociferously about how many brain cells Buster has - two by my current estimation.  And how many he is lacking - about a million I figure.
      As I began my raised-voice diatribe, Heidi, the smart one, looked at me nervously and moved several feet away from Buster as if he were the canine version of a human lightening rod. Which at that point, he was. Buster continued to stand in my flower bed, oblivious to my increasing ire, and proceeded to bark his head off.
     Soooo ... I lost it.  I turned on the water hose and started chasing both dogs around the front yard while maintaining my larger-than-life soliloquy about Buster's defects, which were increasing by the minute.
     Was one of my neighbor's out in his yard?
     Um, yes.
     Do I care?
     Absolutely not.
     It actually felt good to chase those dogs around with the water hose!  Plus, our plants got watered, both the ones near the house as well as the ones by the fence (where Buster had been  mindlessly barking and wagging his tail).  I got some exercise. And both dogs went meekly back into the laundry room and I haven't heard a peep out of them since!!
    I went; I saw, I conquered!!!   Score!
    I came in, a bit damp I admit,  but still exhilarated by my own victory,  to find my husband sitting up on the bed in the spare room, relishing his own victory from earlier this evening.
    "Wow. Supper was really good tonight!" I didn't cook it. A friend who can cook circles around me did it.  And it was good!  But his sister has also cooked for him and she is an excellent cook. And I made him a pizza a couple of nights ago that he said he really liked ;)   So.. I wondered... Why the rejoicing?
     He elaborated. While he was probably wondering - why are her slacks and shoes wet?
    "You don't know how much better food tastes when you can sit up and eat!!!  It just doesn't taste the same when you have to lie on your back like a beached turtle and try to stretch your neck up in the air so you can eat!  I don't know why but it just takes the flavor right out of the food!  Now that I can sit up and eat, everything tastes so good! Amazing!"
    I rejoiced with him and then shared my own little moment of pure happiness.  "You have no idea how good it felt to chase Buster and Heidi around with the water hose tonight! I think Jason and maybe CArrie saw me running around like a lunatic at midnight but that's what they get for hanging out at midnight in their front yard.  What is it with this neighborhood???  Anyway,

And, yes, I know they are cute. That's primarily why Buster is still around...

 it was wonderful to see that idiotic dog finally get out of the flower bed and cower beside the fence for a change!  And maybe we'll all get some sleep tonight!  And I think they both got soaked enough that it sort of counts as a bath. Man! I wish I'd had the flea soap out there with me! Maybe next time..."

    So goes it at our house. You have to grab joy in the journey whenever you can...
    And we are :)