Where I wonder just what is running through my dog’s mind

Tuesdays are crazy days for me. As with every morning, I start at 5 by walking Benji, then deal with a choreographed routine mixing in a workout alongside: getting the kids dressed, making coffee, preparing lunches for the family, and ensuring said family gets out of the door. Once those essentials are out of the way, I head to work…only to leave the office a little early in order to take my kids to karate, where we practice until I ensure they (the kids) are with a responsible adult as I head to band practice. From band practice, I head home & “call it a night.”

Yesterday, as is often the case, the schedule precluded me from stopping at home between karate & band practice, so my “dinner” was, essentially, beer as my band worked on our set (knowing this is a possibility, every Tuesday, I intentionally bring more than my normal amount of food for lunch, as I know some of you stalk look over the details of most everything I post online). Now, I should mention, here in central Pennsylvania, temperatures have been a bit hot lately. Yesterday, I left work & the thermometer in my truck read 97° (309 Kelvin or 1.337 shittonnes of hot). During karate, we’re working on our sparring, which means a lot of jumping around and kicking and punching and wearing sparring gear (pads on fists, shins, and feet, a chest protector, and a padded helmet).

Karate was, in a word, sweaty.

After kick-kick-kicking and punch-punch-punching, we (I, and the two kids) changed at the Karate school and I dropped them off before speeding off to practice. Band was, truly, fun. We have a gig coming up at the end of the month & we’re trying out some new stuff for said gig, and things are really working well for all of it. But, if any of you have seen me play, you’ll notice that I don’t, well, I don’t stand still when I play. It had been a long work day. Karate with the kids was fun, but left me drenched. And I continued to sweat through two hours of band practice.

I got home & had some work to do. I went upstairs, took off my pants, sat down on my bed, plugged in my laptop, and programmed away. As I programmed, Benji simply licked my legs . . . when I had enough of him, I’d try to close his mouth & he’d stop for a minute or two, and then he’d go right back to things. Dogs are weird.

Sometime between 11 and midnight, I decided that I had accomplished everything that I might accomplish before the end of the night, shut down my laptop, brushed my teeth, and put the covers over me.

Normally, this is Benji’s cue to abandon his post at the foot of the bed and come up for some hardcore puppy snuggles. Last night, however, I lied down & the silly dog hopped off of the bed, returning just a moment later. Into my hand, he placed something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I took this mystery item over to my bedside table, used my phone as a flashlight & found it to be a wrapped, fun-sized Snickers bar.

I’m thinking there are finite number of trains of thought from my dog:

1. I picked this up and then forgot why I had it and I love you so I gave it to you.
2. The kids like these things so I thought you might like one.
3. Will you please unwrap this? I really like the inside but I don’t like the outside.
4. My diagnostics from the thorough saliva tests I administered earlier concluded that you need to put on weight. Please eat this.