“In case of loss of oxygen, please place your masks over your faces to hide your terrified expressions from the other passengers.”

It’s 4 am and the 2 wussy dogs for which everyone ignored my veto when buying them are barking in the garage directly under my bedroom. I live in a ‘carriage house’. I have no clue what that means and it may very well be something my husband made up to tell people when they ask why we live over a 5 car garage. I like our house, it’s the perfect size for us, not too big, not too small, and downstairs there’s a L shaped room and space for, that’s right, 5 cars. The fact I will eventually hit one of the support beams while parking and cause my whole house to fall down is a story for a different day. Today we’re discussing why I was woken up at 4 am for something non G related. I bitch and moan the next morning to J, and he says to me; “That’s why we got the dogs, to protect us from animals.” We got them to scare the foxes, who were getting rather bold and also destructive and messy with our garbage even though we put the lids on the cans. I told him there’s no way in hell there was an animal anywhere near where they were, they are wussies. My MiL and FiL tell us how they heard a bob cat growling at the dogs from the fish ponds at the end of their house farthest away from ours, so about 100 feet away from where the dogs were, and I give my husband a pointed look. Two nights later I’m on the computer and I hear non dog growling. The dogs are silent, I assume having heart attacks. It growls again, and they start barking from beneath my house, in the garage. I turn on all the lights and go downstairs with the stupidest excuse for a flashlight that exists. I open the front door and am attacked by the dogs. They literally push me back in the door, and in my head are saying; Bitch, don’t go out there, we’re coming in!! Usually they do the nail me in the back of the knees with their cold wet noses hard enough that I almost fall 700 times thing, but not often do they jump on me from the front, and never so frantically. I reassure them everything’s fine and go look around. I don’t see anything, but the light sucks, so that doesn’t mean much. My house and my in laws house form kind of a wider then right angle L in their placement to each other. In between the houses, about 30 feet wide, is G’s play area. She has a grassy knoll, a plastic playhouse, sandbox, and flower garden her daddy planted for her. There’s also a table with chairs and an umbrella. I want a fence around it as our houses are built on a large hill that I can just see her rolling down and injuring herself, and it would also stop the dogs from digging up her grassy knoll. Her dad is pushing for a hedge that will do neither of those things, but will introduce a poisonous spider and snake habitat to her play area, which I think is lame as hell. The next day we were on the grassy knoll when I noticed a paw print in one of the dug up sections that seemed….larger than the dogs. I chalked it to maybe a skidding footprint on the run so it just looked that way, but J turned on the sprinklers before I could show anyone. A little later I notice another one by her playhouse, and I call my FiL over saying; “This isn’t the dogs’ print is it?” My unflappable FiL raises his eyebrows and says; “That’s a big fucking cat.” Bob cat has now been upgraded to mountain lion, who’s name, through a FB conversation between myself, an old friend, and J, is Motherfuckin’ Puss Puss. MFPP for short. My BiL also joined in, but only to angrily demand why he was finding out about a dangerous animal on FB instead of me warning him as he spends every evening on his front porch smoking and drinking, making him an easy midnight snack. In my defense G’s area is in the opposite direction of his house, so it didn’t even occur to me, but from here on out I will tell him first. This is not the first time there have been mountain lion issues. When they first moved here 20 years ago, a group of trackers (Bored hunters? I’m unsure how they came about their qualifications.) discovered this land is in a natural migration zone between point A and the river. They tracked the lion to my in law’s FRONT PORCH, but didn’t shoot him because there’s a ‘no shooting animals at peoples’ houses’ rule. So they waited for him to go to a clearing on the next property over and got him there. I’m rethinking the dogs’ win against the foxes, in case you’re all wondering. I have a phenomenal view out of all my windows. People fall in love with it. As I look out my kitchen window at mountain after mountain of trees and vast unspoiled wilderness, stretching all the way to the horizon, I wonder; would it kill someone to build a Tar.get? Is there a (LARGE) part of me that wishes Motherfuckin’ Puss Puss would win, taking back the land rightfully hers, sending us packing into the warm embrace of the city filled with stores and lacking in all things nature? Sure. Her kind was here first and all. The likelihood of it happening? Slim to none. *sigh* *Thank you for all the warm wishes and healthy thoughts. So far as I know, everything within my guts is as it should be. Having two weeks between appointments is the stupidest thing ever. Torture. Stress; it’s what’s for dinner. Breakfast and lunch too.*