"Happiness is a warm puppy." ~ Charles M. Schulz

My puppy follows me around the house, room to room. As he watches me complete my chores, read the online newspapers, bake cookies, return emails, he sits quietly, staring at me longingly, "Please play with me. Throw me a bone. Give me SOMETHING to do!" And oddly enough it's driving me crazy!

You see, my puppy doesn't have a wet nose. His tongue doesn't hang out of his mouth to one side as he pants. He isn't a round ball of fur. No, not exactly. In fact, my puppy doesn't look like a puppy at all, but instead he is in the form of a grown adult male who is beside himself because he hasn't worked all week long and won't work again until after the first of the year. He has wrapped and shipped all the gifts. Every stitch of laundry is done except for what we are wearing today, and those will be washed and dried tomorrow (he has it on his schedule). The car is lubed, oiled and gassed and the tires have been checked and rechecked. The bikes are loaded and chained in the boat. The errands have been run...and run... and run again. Every new movie released in the last two weeks has been viewed and critiqued.

So every single day when he finished everything he could think of to keep himself busy, which is about mid-day, he would follow me around the house, room to room, looking at me longingly for something else to keep him busy; keep him from climbing the walls and going crazy. Apparently, climbing the walls and going crazy is okay if it's me.

We weren't supposed to leave for Christmas until next Wednesday. By last Tuesday, he thought we should move the date earlier, so we are now leaving on Monday. We are not driving all the way to Savannah the first day. We'll stop half way in Pell City, Alabama to spend the night and finish the trip to Savannah on Tuesday. I changed our reservations and added two days in Savannah and reserved our hotel in Alabama, which actually worked out better because our hotel in Savannah is now cheaper with the additional two nights than it was with only three nights by $130. So I'm not going to complain.

Then, this morning at the breakfast table, he had another epiphany.

TOM: "Everything is done. If we didn't go to the Christmas lunch with my parents tomorrow, we could leave today."
ME: "Are you serious?"
TOM: "Half way."
ME: "No. Whole way. And no, we are not leaving today."

Dejected, he went back to silently eating his oatmeal. I know what he's feeling. He's got a little, nagging anxious fluttering in his stomach because his day isn't PLANNED! I know what he's thinking. "What am I going to do all day today and all day tomorrow???"

Maybe it's because he doesn't have a tail to chase.