Window into my world

(I just posted the following little essay on Facebook, but I thought I'd share it more broadly, too. -- Nate)

Would you like to take a peek into our world? Of course you would.

Most mornings, including this one, I make a smoothie for Kris's and my breakfast. (It's very tasty and highly nutritious, but that's another post altogether.) Preparing the smoothies is a bit of a labor of love, but I can roll through the assembly process pretty easily at this point.

Anyway, every day, despite the well-established mundanity of the endeavor, there comes a critical moment when *shit goes down.* I speak, of course, of the moment when I open the freezer to retrieve the frozen fruit, which is also the moment, my friends, when Willow simply cannot abide the smoothie-making any longer.

Once she sees (or hears) that freezer door open, you would think a Micro Machines Monster Truck rally was being held in my living room, what with all the grumbling and the rooing and the sudden, sharp echoes of high-fidelity NOISE she throws in my face. So what do I do--every day--in response to this? Well, friends, I have long since abandoned any hope of soothing her or otherwise normalizing the admittedly noisy blending process for her, so I do the only thing that seems reasonable for all parties involved: I put her in the guest bathroom, turn on the vent fan, and close the damn door. Yes, you have concluded correctly: I do, in fact, feel obliged to put my grumbly little corgi friend in a sensory deprivation chamber so that we can all make it through the morning with a little less ringing in our ears and cortisol in our brains.

Once the blending is complete, I retrieve her from her chamber, of course. Invariably, I open the door and find her sitting serenely in the middle of the floor like a latter-day corgi sphinx; she gives me a self-satisfied look and trots out to meet the next grumbly little adventure.