not so safe in this house!

so, the other day, john and i were re-doing our upstairs and our office. our upstairs is becoming our guest suite (since the guest room is now the nursery), and the office will also now accomodate a short-stay guest, as we put the pull-out couch in there and removed all the junk. my house has never been as clean and organized as it is now that im nesting!

poor john had the task of moving all the furniture up and down the stairs, as i am unable to do any lifting or carrying at all. i pretty much just helped him guide things along. im lucky that i have adonis for a husband! he can do anything!

since we are night shifters, this was all done between approximately 11pm and 3am. we try not to have the dogs outside too much during those hours, because they bark at everything. but they are also extremely clumsy, and extremely loyal to us. if they're inside, they're at our feet, no matter what. since we were trying to move furniture(i mean, since john was trying to move it), we locked them in our bedroom so they wouldnt get in the way and cause us to fall and break any of the said furniture, or our ankles. heh.

when we were done, we were sitting and admiring our newly rearranged office. we have tan carpeting! (heh, havent seen much of that carpet lately). we let the doggies (nicknamed "the dummies") out of our room to come be with us. it was so cute, they were all sprawled about on the floor, something they could never do before because of the lack of floorspace in there. we said "so you guys love the extra room in here too, huh?!" and pepper actually stretched his long, athletic legs out even further, hehe.

we love those dummies. they are so clumsy, stupid, and haphazard, but they love us back unconditionally. they always want love and hugs and they never judge us or hold a grudge when we make them do something they dont want to do (like be locked in our room). they are so snuggly, and they make us laugh every day. it's so true that dogs extend your life and relieve stress. they are so tolerant of us, too. john and i are both "the babies" in our family, and often the subject of torment and teasing by our older siblings. so i guess we take it out on them sometimes. we are constantly tying things on their collars, stretching their ears, putting socks on their feet (funniest thing EVER to see a dog walking in socks), or worse, putting socks on their noses (ok i lied, THAT is the funniest thing ever!) gosh, we are mean! but they love it. they love the attention and they are so non-aggressive.

so john had used a bungee strap to tie the pull-out bed to itself so the couch doesnt come apart in transit causing "someone to lose a finger", in his words. so the bungee was just sitting on the floor. to be funny, he hooked one edge of the bungee cord to pepper's collar, and hooked deputy's collar to the other. then, he left the room and called pepper, who is a bundle of energy and never ever walks. when he called pepper, pepper came RUNNING out of the office towards his daddy, and deputy.. stumpy, slow deputy, was dragged behind. i of course, the mean bully mommy, who never had a younger sibling, found this exremely amusing and begged john to come back in the room and call him again, which they did. they were all smiles though (you know doggies smile!). again, they dont mind the torture, they just love the attention. after a few laughs, we all plopped down on the floor together. and promptly forgot that the bungees were still on the dogs.

i left the room with a small kitchen chair that was to be returned upstairs to the mini two-person table we have up there. we bought it when we lived in a small apartment, and it's a perfect addition to the upstairs suite. i carried it out of the office, and placed it just at the bottom of the stairs. i was going into my bedroom first, which is down the hall from the stairs. between the office and the stairs is also our front door/foyer, which has a wooden floor. at random intervals that we cant make sense of, our dummies decide that they are afraid of this floor. it offers no traction as the carpet does, so if they are running (pepper never walks!), they slip. but if they would just walk, they would be fine. but at times, they panic and either refuse to go on the floor at all, or make a run for it, and you can hear their claws scratching against the floor as they run. they are so stupid! just walk and you wont slip! dummies! the sound of the scratching across the floor is hilarious though. so im not sure what happened exactly.. i left the office, then john, and so the dummies would naturally follow. i would venture a guess that pepper decided to run to keep up with john.. and deputy, panicing, and being forced across the floor since he was still bungeed to pepper, starting to make the familiar sound of claws hitting wood floor. it made me laugh.. so i stopped and turned around to look. this is what i saw. two stupid faced, smiling dogs, running side by side, suddenly split away from each other to go around the kitchen chair that was in the way. but, they were attached by a 1-2 foot bungee cord. picture this, with NO space in between to spare. dogchairdog. the bungee cord was now stretched across the back of the chair, this also was quite amusing to me. i will never, ever understand why the chair didnt fall backwards against the cord, or forwards as the dogs were running. instead, it was gliding across the carpet as if on wheels! it all happened SO FAST, yet in your head when something is coming at you, it comes as if in slow motion. john, seeing dogchairdog come after him, instinctively jumped out of the way, leaving this disaster coming straight at his pregnant wife. (lol, that's why he now calls this "the night i tried to kill my wife").

somehow, at 25 and 1/2 weeks pregnant, i was uncharacteristically graceful about the hit i was about to take. my hands and arms went straight for my belly, and i turned to the side so that the chair just came kareening into my knee, finally falling over on its side as it hit me. john, switching from "save myself!" mode to "save my wife and unborn daughter!" mode, with characteristic grace, unhooked the still moving dogs from the bungee, hereby releasing them from the dogchairdog apparatus, and they scattered away into the safety of the living room. somehow, i didnt fall. and somehow, the chair never even grazed my stomach.

again.. this all happened so fast even though i have a perfect picture of the whole event, but i was still laughing at the dummies on the wood floor when the whole thing slammed against me. but holy heavens, that chair against my knee really, really hurt, and the entire event scared the daylight out of me, so i started crying too. hahah. we've all had moments where we've laughed and cried at the same time. but i have never, never done so like this. i was really, really laughing because they just looked so funny, but i was so afraid for the baby and the physical pain was awful. i had real crocodile tears! smeared eye make-up and all! i was crying with relief too. i could have fallen and broken a wrist or an ankle, or worse, i could have landed on the side or back of the chair with my stomach and really hurt my growing baby, if she even survived the blow. how frightening!! i am SO thankful that this wasnt a freak accident! the bruise to my knee is pretty deep though.. its not even pretty colors yet.. i assume those are coming to the surface later. now, i cant cross my right leg over my left.. my left knee is too sore. but i can still laugh about it. and im sure we will still continue to torture the dogs to make ourselves laugh.. all the while, being sure to protect our daughter each time from their runaway clumsiness :)