No Coffee!?!

My coffee maker has died.  I have mourned her death daily for the last, but never more than I did this morning.

There were some pretty noisy storms that swept through the area last night, loud rumbling thunder rattling my windows and vivid lightning darting across the sky.  My children slept through this symphony.  One of my dogs slept, too.  And the other?

Oh heck-to-the-NO.  My chubby Tess was uncharacteristically spooked by the storms, barking repeatedly from downstairs as she pawed at the baby gate at the bottom of the steps.  She barks, then pauses for five seconds to listen for someone (me) to rouse upstairs, then barks again -- just one bark every five seconds like an alarm clock.  She did this last night at midnight.  Two A.M.  Two-thirty A.M. and at 3 A.M.

Up until last night, we had been sleeping comfortably dog-less upstairs because the dogs are typically restless sleepers, panting, groaning, snoring, actively dreaming, and, most offensively, farting all night long.  When we moved in November, they were both hesitant to climb the uncarpeted stairs, afraid of sliding all the way down if they slipped.  I was really OK with this.  In December, Mocha had decided she was tired of living downstairs and came up during the kids' bath.  But overnight, she didn't bother coming upstairs because we'd closed all of the bedroom doors.  Or at least, I never noticed her coming upstairs.  She's sooo refined, as long as you exclude her frozen poop addiction.

This spring, Tess decided to overcome her fear of the stairs and has joined us upstairs at odd times, normally startling us because we don't expect her to lug her generous weight up the steps.  So we put up a baby gate at the bottom of the steps because she is not nearly as polite as Mocha -- she will whine and paw and bark to get into a room with a closed door.  This was what she did last night -- rammed into my door like a freight train, startling the snot out of me, jolting me wide awake at 3 A.M.  Hey, 130 pounds of Lab makes a LOUD noise.


Frustrated and exhausted, I did what every parent who is tired of comforting a non-sleeping child does -- let her into the room.  And begged her to sleep quietly and not fart, oh please, oh please, oh please...

Sleep training an old dog new tricks sucks.  And it sucks even more when you don't have any coffee...