We Are Not in Kansas Anymore

Dogs are a really nice ice breaker.

So long as you have food they will follow you anywhere and make great conversation pieces as they scramble around in an attempt to get the last morsel from your fingertips.

I am not what I would describe as a Dog Person, but I will play along for the morning. Playing with the dogs takes my mind off of my “what was I thinking” obsessive compulsive need to explain that I don’t regularly “do this.”

“This” being something I am not sure how to define.

Scott, bless his heart, likes a hot breakfast. Sausage. Toast. Canadian bacon. And the piece de resistance, scrapple! Everything but the squeal, somehow congealed together and packed into a 3 dimensional trapezoidal shape. You love it or hate it. And if you love it, you fry it to death in little crispy slices. If you hate it, you nearly have to leave the dwelling to avoid the smell.

How nice. Scott and I are in the Loves Scrapple category. It should be on the questionnaire on singles online dating sites. For most people it is a deal breaker.

And the pups are scrapple lovers too. Scott and I drink coffee and cook scrapple and chat about nothing in particular and flirt for a bit while the dogs circle around us. They really are adorable – each with its own personality. Neurotic and scratching Charlie. Sad eyed, patient, sweet Snoopy. Attention seeking and loyal Buddy, who I can't stop calling Ernie. I have no idea what breeds they are. Is there a Cuteness breed? As I flip little pieces of scrapple on the hot griddle, and they in turn sizzle and pop and explode like shrapnel, the dogs cling to me like tweeners to Justin Bieber. It's sort of endearing.

And when the scrapple is cooked to sizzling, crispy, perfection and is laid out on paper towels to have the grease soaked from it, and Scott and I finally pop the first delectable crunchies into our mouths, the dogs go ape.

Of course we are not going to eat the whole pound! Scott lets me share a few pieces myself with the dogs as a good will gesture, and suddenly I am queen of his castle. I am not sure I haven’t been all along.

The girls wake up and stagger sleepily into the kitchen. I am feeling the love so much from the pups that I don’t recognize the moment of truth for what it is.

We all say hello. Polite smiles all around. Scott launches, not at all nervously or self-consciously by the way, into a run down of breakfast possibilities. He evidently has already established that the girls are not eating scrapple. (Must have gotten their mother’s scrapple genes)

They don’t act like I am any big deal, don’t make a production, don’t show off, don’t become insolent little territorialists. It’s as though I was always there. Or am not there.

I am not at all sure what to do or what to think. Maybe they see sleepover dates all the time. Maybe I am just one more number in the cell phone. Don’t worry about remembering my name. You won’t need to recall it after tomorrow…And OMG I am in my pajamas and am rocking Thriller Video hair and makeup.

But Scott is being absolutely darling. And he is not wigging at all. Couldn't be sweeter, or more attentive. I take my lead from him. Go with the flow. Fill up our coffee cups again and turn on the weather channel.

I have an 80 mile trek home. And the weather is epic.