(There’s advertising at the end of the clip and I couldn’t find a way to disable it, sorry.)

After being accustomed to living with five dogs, a bird, and three roommates, the trailer seemed deafeningly silent. I only had one small table lamp, which I’d plugged in and set on the floor in a corner, and the stacked boxes that filled the room cast eerie shadows on the walls. The whole effect was rather creepy, and as I arranged the blankets on my makeshift bed, I thought to myself that I was probably not going to get much sleep that night.

Suddenly, the room erupted in chaos! There was an anguished, guttural squeal, followed by a loud crash as one of the big wooden speakers toppled over on its side, then thrashing and scuffling from behind the boxes. I just about jumped out of my skin, convinced some sort of siege was under way. Obviously, the calamity involved Lilly somehow (her trademark shriek had given that part away) and I peered warily around the boxes, convinced that either (a) some wild animal/monster/serial killer had gotten into the trailer and attacked her or (b) she was having her first ever epileptic seizure.

I crept closer… part of Lilly’s wildly spasming body came into view in the semidarkness, then crashed back out of sight. More boxes fell. I could hear gasps and shrill whiny moans of frustration and effort. What the bloody heck was going on back there?! I felt along the wall and finally found the switch for the overhead light and flipped it on, heart hammering, then I peeked around the stack of boxes…

– and came upon my idiot dog locked in mortal combat with the two-foot rubber rat I had inadvertently stood on top of the speaker earlier while unpacking. Lilly had a deep animosity towards Halloween decorations and any sort of rubber toys, which has been discussed previously on this blog, and this particular item had been at the top of her death list for some time, but prior to this point, had resided at the top of a bookshelf above her line of sight and had thus escaped massacre. I separated psycho dog and her nemesis and stuffed the surprisingly undamaged giant rat into a kitchen cabinet. My nerves were shot, and as I’d predicted, I didn’t get much sleep that night.

The two foot, reared up and snarling, red eyed, foam rubber rat went on to have an uneventful life, once again perched high atop a bookcase, until we moved to Arizona. Then it found itself on top of a stack of boxes in a shed in the backyard while we got settled. The box was apparently not quite out of Lilly’s reach, and one day we forgot to close the shed door. After letting Lilly, Lindsy, Mouse and Igor out for a pee, only the latter three returned to the house a short while later. I found Lilly at the rear of the yard, looking triumphant and surrounded by a veritable snowstorm of tiny chunks and shreds of black foam rubber. I wondered, not for the first time or the last, if perhaps my next pet should be a turtle.

Above: Lilly with her kitten Wednesday. I figured I should probably include this picture to show that Lilly really was a sweet dog, to most anything that didn’t fall into the rubber Halloween toy or large bug category. She was actually even terrified of a five pound declawed Persian cat named Ripley.

Today 8 PM – Friday 6 AM
Construction I-40/I-75 at Papermill Rd.
Expect lane closures.

A lot of info for those three lines they have room for. We have the when, the how long, the where, and what the impact is. So lets compare that to the sign that they finally put up after nearly a week of the construction mess Joy’s been dealing with:

stoped triffic ahead

I tried to snag a picture of it as I rolled by at 3 MPH to send to Fail Blog but it didn’t come out.

Sent home from work by Joy. Of course, by posting this I do realize I have now just revealed the fact that we have both been on the LOLcats site. Don’t judge us.