Things Like This Don't Happen to Normal People: Part 1

My life is out of control again. Big shock, huh? Let me begin at the beginning as I delineate this tale of terror and woe. As backstory you must understand that my addictive personality evil twin has resurfaced and her drug of choice is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes. Buffy. Hours and hours and hours of Buffy. I have drawn my helpless innocent son M into this addiction and he too is a slave to Buffy. Every weekend we watch episode after episode, hour after hour. Roughly 14 hours this weekend, in fact. So we are very attuned to the special properties of living on the Hellmouth. We are honorary citizens of Sunnydale.

And that's probably why we weren't all that surprised when hell opened in the kitchen. After all, we've had the hell hound in our lives for seven long weeks now. Seven weeks in which nothing is safe, seven weeks with the trash can attractively placed on top of the dining room table, seven weeks with ever increasing barriers of dog gates and doors and chairs and tables piled in a heap in a desperate attempt to keep the dog out of some small area of the house. Seven long weeks when anything left on any surface lower than 7 feet high is considered fair game, seven weeks of a dog who will snarl at you over, yes, a bag of celery. I never knew dogs even liked celery. And seven weeks of wading through our house, ankle deep in shredded plastic, dog bed, foam, stuffed animals, cardboard, clothing - you name it, it's shredded and on our floor.