Dancing

January 12, 2009

[at home]

Tessa was in a lovely mood tonight. As we walked by a bus stop, she put on a spectacular dance show for everyone to watch. It started with very graceful side flips in front of this one girl: as I try to put Tessa in a sit on my left side, she gets up on her two hind legs, then bends her upper body sideways until her hind legs follow; after a brief moment suspended with all four in the air, she lands facing the girl, and starts over again.

I let her have at it, and she performed the move about 15 times or so while our audience grew. When it was time to move on, Tessa walked away on two legs, every few steps taking a little skip followed by a little shake of her hips hula-hoop style, and that's when everyone at the bus stop including myself bent over laughing so hard. It was too funny. [I shall add that I don't encourage Tessa's dancing because a) it's not exactly proper leash manners and b) I can't imagine it is good for her hips.]

At home she danced some more, in front of the book shelves too, so rather than correcting her, which I should have, I took some photos. The whole experiment ended a few moments later with some of the books being knocked down along with the gargoyle bookend which broke off one of his wings. Off to fetch Dr. Bond we go.

Dr. Bond is great. He can fix everything in seconds. EVERYthing. This stuff is not thick, its very much like water, and as I squirted it onto the gargoyle's shoulder wound somehow a lot more got out and ended up on both of my hands, and just like the warning label says, it DOES bond to skin seconds. That is because it contains cyanoacrylate, so vicious an adhesive that the FDA refused to approve it for the longest time. It can actually cause burns, and I had a substantial spillage of it on both hands. I tried everything to get it off to no avail. In my vivid imagination I envisioned myself with skin peeling off my fingers acid-burn-style so I called the poison control center (I did!) They were really nice but didn't really understand how I was able to call them on the phone, thinking my hands were stuck together. Because that's what usually happens...people glued to their dogs...lips stuck together...eyes glued shut....lucky me, it was just forming this film over my fingers. In the end, soaking my hands in soapy water and vegetable oil for about an hour and then scraping the glue off with a dull knife and a nail file and on the concrete patio outside did the trick. Thank God neither I nor Tessa swallowed any of it. That is supposed to be very unpleasant.

Lesson learned: no more dancing near fragile objects.