The home of silence, and living with a dog who wins every time

I have 10 days of silence in front of me. Ten days of utter calm. Noiselessness. Peace. Stillness.

The children have gone to camp, and the house has returned to the World of the Adults, where All Goodness equates Life Without Noise.

I'm often at a loss when the kids go away to camp, because they're really a pretty big part of my life. OK, I'll admit it. They are my life. I eat, drink, dream and poop kid crap all day and night long. But I won't complain, because they fulfill me and make me whole. Gag.

Seriously, though, they are a very large part of my every day, so when they go away, it makes a big difference in our home. Suddenly, there is no more screaming, "Stop sitting on my neck!" and "I'm telling Mommy you said 'Shit' for the fifth time today!".There is no mess being made on a continual basis. There is no slamming of doors, and no pounding of feet on wooden stairs, and no milk being slurped a litre a minute, and no very expensive sliced meat being eaten haphazardly, and no complaints that there's no food in the house, or it's too hot, or too cold. You get the picture.

There is none of that.

Instead, there is this:

All.Day.Long.

This dog does not know what to do with himself. Instead, he sits beside me, and stares. And stares some more. And then, when I ignore him for too long, he gently places his little shaved head on my lap, and looks up at me with those big brown eyes.

So I tell him to go get his toy. And he does. And then he comes back and does this:

Again.

And again.

And again.

If he could talk, I wonder what he would say.

And the ever-present

And, of course, there's always

I'm hoping he figures out sooner rather than later that I have a lot of studying to do while the kids are gone, and finally gives up the sad routine. It's either that, or I'm failing chemistry.

This dog's got a lot of pull around here.