A Dog Sandwich

You know how dull your life is when the highlight of your day is the arrival of a new Sentsy warmer.

 My friend and former co-worker, Judie Pryor, recently became a representative for Sentsy, which adds scent to your room.  You use a low level light bulb in a container like that above, melt a scented wax cube in the little container on the top and voila!  Your room smells wonderul.

Judie started selling Sentsy some time after we had the Pergo put in.   I had been so thrilled to be rid of the dog smell in the living room that I had been experimenting with various kinds of room deodorizers but was never happy with any of them since they had a phony scent to them, so I decided to try a Sentsy, mostly to support Judie's new business, but I fell in love with it.  I had bought a couple floral smells and they seemed to last forever and I never had to think about it because the warmer was just always on.

I was so happy with it that I bought a small wall mounted unit for the bathrom and later one for the laundry room, which had developed an odd smell I didn't like.  That was going to be it.  However, when I had guests for lunch recently, I moved the Sentsy from the living room into the family room to give that the nice homey scent (by then I had purchased an apple pie scent--the first thing my guest said upon entering the house was "my something smells good!") and I loved having the family room smell good too, so I looked through the catalog, found the above model on sale and decided to order that for the family room.  Who knew that the little holes in the side for the light inside the warmer were heart shaped?  A bonus.

So that was the high point of the day, though we finally moved boxes from upstairs and the garage into the family room and I have started unpacking dishes and putting them back into the various cupboards that we emptied when we removed the furniture to get the room ready for the Pergo.  

I made what turned out to be a fabulous pork tenderloin roast, thanks to a recipe by Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, and we settled in to watch Dancing with the Stars (even Walt has become a fan) and to have a strawberry shortcake to finish off the strawberries I bought at the berry stand this weekend.

But by 10 p.m., I wasn't feeling right and decided to go lie down.   I didn't think I was down for the night (but as it turned out I was) and thought I would be getting up in an hour to write this entry.  The advantage of going to the couch while Walt was still awake was that I could finally get him to take a picture of my nightly "dog sandwich," as I call it.  I'm the meat in the middle, Lizzie and Sheila are the bread, and Polly is the pickle.

At night, the dogs are so antsy until Ifinally go to bed.   They pace back and forth for hours, Polly whines, Sheila runs in and out of the house to see if I'm ready yet.  When I finally lie down they immediately assume the position.  Polly hops up on my back, Lizzie jumps up on the table behind the couch, and Sheila lies down next to me, after standing by my side so I can pet her for a few minutes.

I just love this little "sandwich" that we have developed over the last couple of years.  Sheila would much rather sleep outside, but as long as I am in the living room, she sleeps with me.  I have gotten so used to Polly sleeping on my back like this that when I go on vacation, or sleep on my mother's couch, I miss her.  And Lizzie is Lizzie.  Lovable, goofball Lizzie.  She sometimes sleeps all night on the table, or she might hop down and move to a chair in the living room, but she has to be in the same room too.

I used to sleep in the recliner most of the night, but over the months, the dogs have weaned me of that and now I spend most of the night, at least the first part of it, lying down like a real person.  I think because of the dogs I am getting more sleep now.  It's a win-win situation.