Who runs this house anyway?

This past weekend Mark and I took the daring domestic leap of deciding to reseed our backyard in attempts to turn our mudpit/dustbowl into something that resembles the lush green carpet on the fertilizer bag. After unsuccessfully attempting to kill our field of weeds, Mark rented an aerator and was dragged all over the yard by the machine with a mind of its own. He then spread the seed and fertilizer, and gave the whole thing a final coat of peat moss. Then we watered the hell out of it.

Besides having to constantly water, you'd think such a project wouldn't have much of an impact on our daily life. That's where you're wrong. See, we have our dog Winston who thinks the backyard is his domain. But we know he'll destroy all of our painstaking work if we let him out to patrol. So we tie him to a tree in the front when he needs to go outside. He doesn't get it. He goes outside, looks around, wants to come back in, and makes a beeline for the back door to show us what he really wants. He whines and whines, not understanding why he can't go out. Monday we were finally able to calm him down by taking a walk. He did pretty well after that.

Tuesday was a different story. Colorado is a pretty fickle weather state in spring, so those mountains decided to send us buckets and buckets of rain Tuesday. Great for the growing grass, not so great for the dog. Winston didn't want to go outside and pee in the front because it was raining and he hates to get wet. After finally forcing him outside because we were so sick of the whining, Mark and I made several attempts at putting Carter to sleep (more on that in another posting) and finally got him down.

We let Winston back in the house and were reminded just how wound up he gets when he's wet. He covered us with wet dog spray. Then he ran laps around the living room, setting off half of Carter's toys with lights and music, and created an all-out ruckus. Between the disaster of a backyard, Carter who has us wrapped around his adorable pudgy finger, and the crazed dog, Mark and I looked at each other and asked, "Who runs this house anyway?"