Yesterday morning, my peaceful slumber was destroyed at the unholy hour of 9:57 AM by the doorbell. The ringing bell set off the doggy alarm, and the resultant fusillade of barking propelled me from Dreamland to Total Wakefulness at about mach 12. I wasn't expecting anyone, so I grumbled, "No one I know would drop by at this hour!" (which turned out to be true) so Alan dragged on shorts and a T-shirt and went to the door. He opened the door, setting off the secondary security alarm, ran back to punch in the code and returned to the door, by which time the doggy alarm had ramped up several hundred decibels.

I have a very small dog, as you may know first-hand or via Flickr. Despite his small stature, Sprocket is not a tiny-yappy-voiced dog; he has a very deep, big-dog bark, to the extent that the Domino's delivery guy once asked where the other dog was, whom he'd heard barking from out on the front walk. He's a Rottweiler trapped in a Shih-Tzu body. And by the time Alan had turned off the apparently unnecessary monitored alarm, Sprocket is barking his wee head off and it sounds like I've unleashed a pack of wolfhounds, while Alan tries to talk through the storm door at these two dudes.

It turns out they were Jehovah's Witnesses selling some Jesus door-to-door (TOLD YOU it was no one I knew), but it took quite a while to ascertain as much because Sprocket was barking barking barking and eventually became enraged at Alan's failure to grasp the seriousness of the situation (MEN! STRANGE MEN! ON OUR PORCH!) and began flinging himself bodily into the storm door, in an attempt to break it down, get to the strangers and BITE THE BLOODY HELL out of their ankles and calves.

BarkbarkbarkbarkWHOMPbarkbarkbarkbarkWHOMPbarkbarkbarkbarkWHOMP
barkbarkWHOMPbarkbarkbarkbarkWHOMPbarkWHOMPbarkbarkWHOMPWHOMP

Alan, struggling to hold the storm door closed against the furious onslaught of Shih-Tzu rage, told the fellows, "Thank you for stopping by but I can't open the door and I obviously can't let you in," and they walked off down the drive to save others. Sprocket, however, is extremely put out with Alan for disagreeing that Attack Mode was in order, and preventing him from wreaking carnage and destruction on the front porch.

Then today I was awakened at the even-more-unholy hour of 7:20 AM to get ready to attend Alan's family reunion. As I type, I am feeling very betrayed. I was promised that there would be no screaming children and that it was mostly older people, so I was looking forward to a fun afternoon of messing with the heads of the elderly, insisting on being a grand-daughter and acting affronted when no one recognized me. But, sadly, I was denied. Even worse, there were LOTS of screaming children running amok, but the best one wasn't running anywhere. I wish I had a picture.

This cousin, who scandalized the family a few years back by turning up in a "Chelsea's: A Gentlemen's Club" t-shirt (it's a nudie bar in Athens, my brother told me) had procreated and very new twins had resulted. One of them looked like a normal 1-, 2-month old baby, just an ordinary, standard-issue rug rat, but the other one was a MONKEY BABY. Seriously. It was a girl monkey, and it had this little bitty head, sticky-out ears and this really hairy, total MONKEY FACE. Something about the cheeks or mouth - it was a MONKEY BABY. I'm sure you think me uncharitable, which is 100% true, but my assessment of the Monkey Baby was spot-on. Alan's niece Eliza, aged three and non-malicious, asked her mom, "What's wrong with that baby?" Keelyn rushed her off and tried to interest her in dolls, slides, food, etc. which rather disappointed me. I wanted to know the answer, too. What was wrong with that baby???

I have agreed to attend future family reunions, something I don't do even within my own family, which Alan thinks is a sign of my love and devotion. Really, I just want to see how that Monkey Baby turns out, and how much they get when they sell her to the circus.

MONTOYA DELENDA EST!