In Which My Husband Nearly Kills Me. On Purpose.

We stayed out late last night in Manhattan, later than we had intended. (Blame the mac & cheese!) I had parked on the Upper West side that afternoon in a parking garage. It took walking, a subway and a cab ride to get there. When we finally arrived at eleven, it appeared closed.

"No biggie." I thought, and went looking for the bell to ring. A lot of parking garages close their doors after a certain hour, and only open them after verifying through video monitors that you aren't a thug. Or something. Anyway. No bell. Rob called the number on the claim ticket I had been given, and we listened through the closed garage door as the phone rang and rang.

It is a rare and scary thing when Rob looks at me with murderous, raging eyes. "This is NOT 24 hour garage!"

I gulped. "Um. Sorry?"

He sighed.

We hopped in a cab back down to Grand Central Terminal where we missed the hourly train by five minutes.

We waited the near hour for the last train of the night.

Finally, we arrived home via cab, and had to break in (the parking garage had my house keys, too.) The dogs were hungry and lonely. To assuage my guilt, I called a "puppy pile", and we all slept together in our bed. Tino curled up in the crook of my arm, even though I tried to shove him to my feet. He wanted to be as close to my face as possible. I gave up and resigned myself to sleeping with his front paws wrapped around my chin. At one point I was nearly asleep, mouth-breathing because of my allergies, when something in my throat must have seemed suddenly very interesting. He sat up and stuck his cold, slimy nose and fuzzy, whiskered chin right into my mouth and licked the back of my throat. I bolted upright, gagging, and he startled, lost his footing, and tumbled backwards. When he finally uprighted himself, he glared at me, as if to say, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

We finally all fell asleep, and I went with Rob on his daily commute to Grand Central (three measly hours after getting into bed), then to our car, and headed home.

Lesson learned: don't sleep with dogs when you have allergies, and not all parking garages are open 24 hours.