No Joke!
No Joke!
Two friends and two anxious dogs huddled together during an office improvement project in a tiny home. Just outside the door stood a rotund pig named Louisa, demanding food.
This sounds like the beginning of a joke!
I grabbed one of Dane’s freshly bought oranges and pushed the door open, shoving Louisa back as I tossed it out for her. My plan was to move her away from the door so my friend Bonnie could get to her car and retrieve the shims we needed to brace a tall bookshelf and keep it from falling.
Bonnie was the mastermind of a complex project to create more space in which to lead my online exercise classes. She always thinks Louisa is trying to eat her.
But Louisa wasn’t trying to bite Bonnie. She only knew that Bonnie always brings her yummy leftovers, and she wanted them. But today Bonnie had forgotten them at home. Louisa didn’t know that, so she pursued her, huffing, puffing, and grunting while smashing her snout into the door.
The orange I tossed rolled off the deck and became lodged in a pile of leaves too far under the porch for me to reach or for Louisa to see. By now Louisa was frustrated and furious and seemed to want to eat me!
Meanwhile, Bonnie was taking her time getting out the door, while I squawked, “Get another orange, quick!”
With Louisa so worked up, I couldn’t get on my hands and knees to grab her treat without her mistaking me for a jumbo orange. So I resorted to trying to hide behind the crab apple tree. Bonnie seized this opportunity to gloat, “See, she’s trying to eat you—even you are afraid of her!”
She had a point—at that moment, I was afraid. Louisa had worked herself into a hot frenzy, her wiry black hair standing straight up.
Bonnie wound up and pitched an orange past Louisa, and while the pig chased it down, I got down on my hands, knees, and belly to snatch the first orange from under the deck. Bonnie dashed out and gaily rummaged in her car for the shims.
In the midst of this, Téte, my loving, neurotic hound dog, fearing that the home improvement commotion meant I was going away on a trip, never left my side. Ruben too, concerned that Bonnie was trying to hurt me, stuck to me like a burr.
This wasn’t the only chaos surrounding our two-day project. There was an awful lot of hollering, like when Bonnie was ready to install a gate that would keep my critters from sitting between the camera and me—or on me—during my Zoom classes.
“Where are the directions?”
“There weren’t any.”
“Jane, I saw the box yesterday; where is it?”
“In the basement—I think.”
“You think?”
“It might have gotten thrown out.”
“What?!”
“I figured you knew how to put it up!”
The rest of the day, I was Bonnie’s go-to gal: Get this, do that, over there. Her family’s nickname for her suits her well: Bossy Bonnie.
The following day Bonnie, ignoring my fear of ladders, claustrophobia, and a hurting hip, made me climb up and hold a curtain rod in place, my nose pointing into the closet. Ruben was beside himself (and me) with worry, ears at high alert, eyes wide with empathy.
As I trembled on the highest rung, trying to focus on my breathing, Bonnie stood strong, chest pressed against my back, arms held high, wielding a drill. Sawdust flew as the two petrified dogs hovered nearby. Bonnie was calm and composed as she smashed the loud drill head into my office door frame, creating a gaping hole.
As I climbed down the ladder, Bonnie admired her handiwork. “I had to ask my brother how to do this,” she said.
Finally the project is complete. I’m lying in recovery mode on the couch, Ruben on top of my leg, Téte on the floor as close as she can get. Bonnie asks if she can get me a cold cloth for my head. “Nope, I’m fine,” I say, while she proudly snaps a few pictures to show her brother. The curtain rod is up, but the drapes I ordered to hang on it are 21 inches too short because, as Bonnie reminds me, I didn’t listen to her.
Bonnie is like a kid after three tall glasses of sugary Kool-Aid. Instead of waning, her energy expands and radiates from her every pore. I’m exhausted, mostly from watching her.
“Maybe you need a nap,” she quips, knocking over a bucket of dirty water from washing the walls.
Maybe I do. But I wouldn’t have wanted to miss any part of these last two days.
True, I was excited about the home improvement changes, but more so about spending two full days with a friend. Bonnie can do anything she puts her mind to—no joke. May we all have a Bonnie in our lives, bossy or not.
