A Skirt With Some Cheese In It...

As I was readying the girls for bed tonight, I heard shrieks of laughter and saw them tear out of their room, reprimanding Dorian...."Dorian, no!! Dorian, drop it!! DORIAN!!..." I arrived on the scene just in time to see the dog drop Cleo's jeans skirt and skulk off to his cushion in our bedroom. I expressed amazement that Dorian was at all interested in Cleo's skirt. Clothes have never been his thing before. (It might be a good time to mention that quite a few other things are, in fact, Dorian's 'thing'. The list is lengthy. The following are a mere sample of the things I've seen him eat, or at least seen the *aftermath* of his eating: Barbies, crayons, pens, pencils, plastic horses, turtles, deer, rubber snakes, Polly Pockets, Polly Pocket accoutrements like cars, dresses and a patio set, doll house furniture, rocks, kleenex, plastic sandwich boxes, a wristwatch, etc etc. But never clothing. Except, now that I recall, a sock.) Cleo replied gaily to this, "Oh, he's probably hoping there's more cheese in it." Cheese. In a skirt....Sigh. I did not even attempt to gain an explanation for the concealment of cheese in her skirt. My head hurt even thinking about it.

The things that children don't even register. Or be able to produce a satisfactory explanation for. I recall about 3 or 4 years ago, when the girls were truly little barbarians, and never safe to leave alone. I obviously had a mental lapse, and did that very thing, because I one day noticed weird reddish stains on the ceiling in the kitchen. I put this to the girls and received the following reply: "We might have been throwing some ketchup...maybe..." Ah, yes. Throwing ketchup. A mandatory activity in all good kitchens.

Or the time I caught Cleo rifling the pocket of my very expensive velvet coat as it hung in my closet. I naturally questioned the miscreant, mid-act, and she stated indignantly that all she was doing was looking for her minotaur. So now you all know, if one's minotaur is found to be M.I.A., clearly the place to look is in the pockets of a little-worn, posh velvet coat which does not even belong to one.

So now I'm off to look for my mislaid bottle of pink champagne. It's sure to be either in the skirt, with the rest of the cheese....