Flashback to 2003. The children are 6, 4, and 1.

I’m trying to homeschool LC in kindergarten, and keep a preschooler and a toddler busy.

I am slowly going insane. Writing is just a hobby; a blog (or any other publishing platform), a pipe dream.

I won’t write with any consistency for another six years. But every once in awhile inspiration grabs me by the scruff of the neck and shakes me until I spit out an idea.

This time inspiration screams at me in the middle of the night. Afterward, this pours out of my fingers onto the computer.

And resides on my hard drive until today.

***

“I … WANT … MY … BAL … LOOOOOON!”

It’s two a.m. I’m sitting up in bed, hoping that I just dreamt that scream in the dark. No, here it comes again, in my daughter Hannah’s voice.

This is why we no longer have a baby monitor in the girls’ room. The two of them are loud enough two closed doors and a hallway away.

Slinging my leg over the side of the bed, I glance wistfully behind me at my husband, Charlie, who appears to be sleeping soundly. But is he really? I’m tempted to give him a good shake before leaving the room, just so he too can experience this latest adventure in parenting. I stumble out the bedroom door, followed closely by Bob the Dog.

Bob the Dog follows me everywhere. He is MY dog, probably because I’m the one who took him in two winters ago when he started sleeping in our carport. Every night for two weeks , I checked on him outside the kitchen door, contentedly stretched out on the beach towel I had carefully “forgotten” outside.

For two weeks, I pestered Charlie. I’d been wanting a second dog and figured this guy’s appearance was some kind of divine intervention. Charlie took one look at the flea-infested mongrel outside chewing on a towel (“WHO left a beach towel in the carport in February?!”) and thanked God that we were a one-dog family.

It’s amazing what you can still learn about your spouse after eight years of marriage.

Charlie wouldn’t let me feed the stray, but that didn’t keep him from finding plenty to eat across the road at our neighbor Pat’s free-feeding “dog food trough.” (Small wonder that Pat has something like 37 dogs.)

Every few days, I’d mention that we needed to come to a decision on this animal who wagged at me whenever I went in the carport.

“Are you SURE you only want one dog? …

“I think God brought him to us. …

“I REALLY want to feed him. …

“See how he barks at strangers? He already considers us his family …

“What are we going to do with him? …

“The temperature’s going to get into the teens tonight; what about… Bob?”

As simply as that, “the stray” had a name. Bob, as in the movie What About Bob?

It was clear to Charlie at this point that he had lost, so he surrendered. Multiple baths, vaccines and flea meds – and one minor surgical procedure – later (so there wouldn’t be any little Bobs running around the neighborhood), we had us a dog.

Or, more accurately, I had ME a dog. Bob’s lived with us for two years now. I bathe him and fill his water bowl and make sure my son feeds him. When he comes home muddy (at least once a day, regardless of the weather), I’m the one who wipes his paws and dries his coat. (He takes great pleasure in this; I think he believes I’m his mommy.)

When he comes home stinky after catching, gorging on, and rolling in his latest “prey” (we know for sure of turtles, rabbits, frogs,  some member of the otter family, and at least one snake),  I’m the one who convinces Charlie to let him keep living with us.

Moving down the hall in the middle of this night, I hear four-year-old Hannah continuing her fit. (No parenting class ever mentions that kids can have tantrums in their sleep. Or is it just MY kids?)

By now her toddler sister, Abby, has joined the chorus. Confused by what her big sister is screaming in the middle of the night, little Abby stands in her crib and cries, “Boon? BOOoon? Byewwwwwn!!” When I pick her up, she clings to me like a koala.

Hannah’s still screaming. I walk over, lay my hand on her shoulder, and try logic: “Sweetie, there’s no balloon. You were just dreaming.”

“No, there IS!!!! It slipped out of my hand!”

Logic and four-year-olds don’t go together. I should know this.

Hannah’s now searching her nightstand for the lost balloon. Luckily for me, she finds one of the decorative pillows she’d picked out for her room because it was so “gorgeous.” This one, shaped like a star, COULD be a balloon.

Hannah snatches it up. But momentarily puzzled by the lack of a string, she searches for a few seconds more. I reassure her that we’ll find the string in the morning. (I’m finally lucid enough to remember to humor her.) Hannah lays back down with a smile, clutching her pillow “balloon” so it doesn’t escape again. She’s asleep in ten seconds.

Dazed and more than a little confused, I gaze at my sleeping preschooler, then at the toddler still wrapped around my waist, and then down at Bob, leaning his 85-pound frame heavily against my knees. Abby goes back to bed without too much fuss, fingers in her mouth, blankie clutched in her fist, probably to dream of “byewns.”

Before leaving the now-peaceful scene in the girls’ room, I pause at the door. Bob sits on his haunches and leans against me. As I rub behind his ears, I relax. Chasing balloons in the middle of the night is easier with his company.