So, after grabbing Zu from rushing headlong into traffic, the puppy spun around and bit me hard on the… chestical region. I shoved him under an arm, saying loudly that “Someone is overtired and cranky and needs a nap!” And my parents, who had seen the whole thing, agreed it was me who needed the nap and drove off, laughing wildly.
Such has been our week.
My parents came down for Thanksgiving and to see the new house, as my father has apparently really missed doing yardwork. He has spent the last three days raking. It’s fairly awesome for us, although we feel terribly awkward about it. I asked Brown what the polite custom was for offering to help (or saying help isn’t necessary), and he said in China the rule of thumb is to offer three times and then stop.
“How many times have we offered?” I asked. “Seventy billion or so,” he said. So, we stopped, and my parents do our yardwork. Which is guilt-twinging but nice.
Having people around has wrecked the puppy sleep schedule, though. Zu was on a very pleasant 45-minutes up, 4-hour down, 45-minutes up schedule, and he’s been active for most of the last three days. Puppies need sleep as much as they need to play, and he’s gotten too much of the latter and not nearly enough of the former. Zu is happy and hyper and active and his self-control is all over the place and just yesterday he learned the pool was filled with something made of not-warm-not-solid-stinkystuff.
My mother says he was watching something in the water and leaned out… just a bit… too far… Bloop! He came up and swam to the dead center of the pool, then treaded water in a blue panic. Now, I’ve seen my mother dive into a pool fully-clothed to rescue my sister from drowning, but Brie didn’t know how to doggie-paddle at the tender age of four while ten-week-old Zu’s instincts had kicked on full-bore. My mother ran around to the pool stairs and called Zu, who paddled over to her, ran up the stairs, and tore off towards the house as though chased by hungry frothing weasels.
This is pretty much typical of the past few days. But, as everyone is walked or rested or shoved in their bed inside a giant Tupperware box, I’m going to try to take a nap.
Wish me luck.
Flying by night 
Best of luck with resting up for the future puppy adventures.
Look! It’s the Canadian Husband (well…his torso, anyway…what did you do with his head???)
Parents can be akward that way. Young creatures seem to like water. Even my guinea pig, when much younger (and still alive) ran into a pool once. And promptly sank. Best of luck with Zu. SOunds like you’ll need it….;-)
Oh gosh. We had a cat once, named Sebastian, who Wasn’t Very Bright. He was very sweet and loving though, and we trained him to wear a harness and walk around on a leash — a standard short one, or a line about ten feet long. So my husband was taking him for a walk, and came upon a natural pool filled with the same stuff your artificial pool had. Sebastian took one look at it and ran over and PLUNGED in. (This IS a cat I’m talking about.) Fortunately, he was still on the leash, so all my husband had to do was reel him in, haul him back home, bathe him…. while all our friends looked on in bewilderment.