Hiding

Our neighbors upstairs are dog sitting this week and my dogs are freaking out. They can smell the other dog and so they just walk around the house barking at the slightest noise, expecting this other beast to come barreling after them at any moment. In reality, the other dog is this timid mutt who shakes violently when you throw a tennis ball. He’s not quite the beast that my dogs are picturing.

Anyway, their barking is driving me insane. One of them barks once, which startles the other one who then starts to freak out, which triggers the first to freak out, and before I know it they are unstoppable. Even throwing treats at them doesn’t shut them up (…for long).

When Chris got home from work, he went outside to mow the lawn and locked the dogs inside so they couldn’t terrorize the visiting dog who was out in the yard. I sat on our couch and yelled at my frantically barking dogs for a while and when I’d had enough, I gave up and went to the only place I could think of to hide – the shower. At 5:15 on a Thursday afternoon, I got into the shower to hide from my dogs. I wasn’t even dirty. I’m pathetic.

And as I’m standing there, trying to keep both my ears underneath the steady stream of water, to block out my frantically barking dogs, I had a thought. What if this is what its like to have children? What if I’m one of those parents whose children are so out of control, they lock themselves away somewhere? It’ll be like Steve Martin in Cheaper By the Dozen when his wife goes out of town and he loses control of the children and ends up locked in a closet, covered in silly string, with his kids yelling through the closet door for him to come out and “be a man!”

Every now and then on a whim, I’ll stop and think that maybe having a baby would be fun. You know, like when the weather is really nice and we’re out at some park, I’ll sometimes think, “If I had a baby, I’d take him for a walk in my oversized stroller on days like today.” But then, there are days like today. Days where I find myself hiding in a bathroom from my dogs. And I know that we’re just not there yet. And I’m fine with that. Because I have too much to do right now than spend all my time hiding in showers.