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Amanda and I have been busy little bees these last few days. So has Miles, actually. Observe.

Amanda’s mom was in town over the weekend, so we spent a bit of time hanging out with her. However, Saturday morning/afternoon was deemed mother-daughter time, so I was stuck at home by myself. Struck by a bit of boredom-inspired productivity, I decided to clean and organize the back porch. The porch has been my impromptu storage room ever since I moved in to the house nearly a year ago. There have been boxes stacked everywhere, furniture shoved uselessly against the back wall, and random stuff my parents left strewn about. As of Saturday evening, though, it was clean and usable as, well, a back porch. Featuring seating for 8, even.

Miles was also productive during that afternoon. He used his spare time while I was occupied to learn how to jump over the back fence. He escaped the backyard four times in total. The fourth time, I had to drive around the neighborhood to find him, then wrestle him to the ground in a stranger’s yard to get a leash on him. And then I rearranged the stuff in the yard slightly to make it tougher for him to get out.

Sunday was friend Juan’s birthday, so we celebrated with a brunch at Hannah and Juan’s place. It was a delicious time – we had authentic Costa Rican breakfast cuisine, Bloody Marys, and coffee cake. Miles was kenneled, so he was generally good.

After work on Monday, Amanda and I decided to drive out to West Des Moines to go to Lowe’s and Petsmart. We picked up some sample tiles at Lowe’s to try out in the kitchen, as we’re planning on redoing the kitchen floor in the next couple of weeks. I also bought some grass seed and mulch so that I could try again for some grass in the backyard. We stocked up on pet food at Petsmart, and also got new a new toy, tag, and box of treats for Miles. I guess we were feeling generous. When we got home, we discovered that he’d gone Number Two in his kennel (which is in our bedroom) while we were gone. It was pretty nasty to clean up, as it required climbing headfirst into the kennel. I was feeling significantly less generous after that.

On Tuesday, we decided to let Miles back into the backyard in the afternoon while we were at work, since the drizzling rain was supposed to have moved off. Of course, it poured that afternoon, suggesting we’d have a soaked puppy when we got home. However, Miles was pretty dry when we got back after work, which meant he was smart for once and stayed on the porch during the rain. He must’ve gotten a little bored, though, because he chewed the arm off the wicker loveseat I had just gotten cleaned up and arranged the Saturday prior. I was fairly annoyed with him as I grabbed his water bowl and headed inside. He didn’t seem to notice, though, because he happily jumped up on me as I came in the door, sending the water bowl crashing to the floor, sending ceramic shards everywhere. My annoyance went up a notch or ten, and then a bit more when I sliced my thumb picking up the pieces. I spent the rest of the evening seeding the back yard, trying not to use my thumb. Miles spent a good portion of his evening in his kennel.

Our dog, Miles Davis Standish Wurzinger Glazebrook, tore a chunk of his own hair out early last week in an effort to get to some sort of itchy, bumpy rash-looking thing on his back. This earned me a $100 vet bill, and him a shaved area on his back, an anti-itching spray, a pill twice daily, and an Elizabethan collar. Due to futuristic look of the collar, Amanda and I took to calling him Space Dog! (do do-do!) whenever he was looking glum (which was often). He enjoyed the attention the name got him, so it cheered him up a bit. In fact, by the end of last week he was feeling so cheery that he managed to chew the arm off of Amanda’s futon despite the logistical challenge the collar presented. Amanda was understandably less impressed than Miles.

Miles’ futonic tendencies, however, did lead to an interesting discovery: if you take one cat and one large strip of duct tape, and then abruptly combine the two, the result is several minutes of quality entertainment. I was putting strips of duct tape on the futon, sticky side up, to try and teach Miles not to jump up on it. Smaug seemed pretty interested in this process, and kept sneaking up and pawing at the strips as I tried to lay them down. Struck by what I have to assume was divine inspiration, I grabbed a long stripe of tape and stuck it on his back. He immediately freaked out like I’ve never seen him before and took off running. But he couldn’t get away from the tape, which freaked him out even more, causing him to run even faster. He also kept turning around mid-sprint to try and attack the tape, which made him run into walls. It was, pardon my French, le awesome.

And how is the official duct tape experiment going, you ask? Well, twice now we’ve had to tear duct tape off the dog’s rear end. The second time, the tape was pretty well wrapped around his hind leg, and a moderate amount of hair came off with the tape, which he didn’t seem to enjoy. That’s encouraging, even if it does suggest he’s something of a slow learner. Of course, three times now I’ve walked into the living room to discover it strewn with little pieces of slobbery, chewed-up duct tape. I don’t know if he’s tearing it off himself and chewing it up, or just eliminating the booby-traps before he gets on the futon, but the resultant mess is the same. As with most of our dog-related experiments, I think he’s winning so far.

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