How'd he do that?
It's been a while since Uncle Dom had a mental break and ritualistically brought up random objects from the basement and deposited them in the living room. But the house is reaching new proportions of messiness, and the basement, especially, has become the dumping ground for Doodle's toys, puzzles, cars, and things which cars can drive upon.

This is definitely my fault, because the past two, maybe three months at work have been so relentlessly busy that I am typically a zombie by the time I get home. The weekends are spent gearing up for another crazy week. That is starting to dissipate now, but not by much. I'm working five day weeks rather than six day weeks. So I've got that going for me.

Anyway, the cleanliness of the house has definitely suffered. It's to a point now where I can barely deal with it myself. It makes me crazy to even look at it, and the thought of diving in to straighten things out is overwhelming.

It's taken its toll on my large black and white beast, as well.

So it began with a reindeer stuffed animal, a basement dweller, that was inexplicably in the living room one day this week. It wasn't there the night before, and to my knowledge Doodle was in his crib all night. Therefore, the next logical suspect is a four-legged creature with a past reputation for such things.

The reindeer was one thing.

But then he outdid himself.

Doodle and his dad had been playing with balloons, and there were two in the basement: a green one and a blue one. They were just regular rubber balloons (or latex or whatever), that my husband blew up and then they tossed them around one snowy weekend morning.

My husband found the green one in the living room one morning this week, but it had suffered a casualty and was deflated. He didn't think anything of it at the time, and threw the balloon carcass away.

However, yesterday morning, the blue balloon, fully inflated, made an appearance in the living room. Doodle threw it down the basement stairs, and last night, right before I went to bed, I noticed it again, back in the living room. Still inflated.

How on earth did he manage a feat like that? I am impressed. Maybe it's because I just trimmed his claws on Tuesday.