It’s been one of those days. First, the dogs awakened us at 6 a.m. (on this Sunday morning when we’d been planning to sleep in) to alert us to the approach of a thunderstorm. I myself love a good thunderstorm, and this was a great one, an all-day storm with all the trimmings: thunder, lightning, high winds, general darkness, and torrential rain.

Which was all great, until I had to run to the grocery store for something at about 3:00 this afternoon and discovered that I’d left both my front car windows down yesterday. Not only was the front seat pretty much sodden, but this meant I had to eat a good helping of crow because I’m the one who always brags that I NEVER forget to roll up my car windows.  Ahem . . .

Then there was some difficulty at the grocery store, because just as I swiped my ATM card, the storm knocked out power at the store, causing some small difficulty in paying for my purchases.

Then we discovered this in the family room:

Yes, indeed, that would be a vine climbing up the side of our house. The inside.

Finally (you know that where there is entropy there is bound to be a dog or two, right?), I took two perfect berry cobblers (one for home, one for me to take to my book group) out of a 400 degree oven and turned my back for a second. That turned out to be just long enough for Crispin to jump up, stick his nose into one and overturn it. I know this looks like a still from a Tarantino film, but believe me when I say that only an instant beforehand it was a blackberry/blueberry/raspberry/peach cobbler, and a very nice one, too:

Don’t worry, Crispin was mostly only shaken up, and he’s fine. Some ice water compresses took the burn away and a little bit of scrubbing took care of the berry stains (on him and the floor and the oven and the cupboards and my jeans). And maybe he’ll think twice next time about counter-surfing.

Nah.

Meanwhile, Dinah made it calmly through the whole day (in between thunder-claps) by nursing one of her babies. No, we didn’t forget to announce a litter of puppies, it’s just that lately she has taken to adopting various household objects, babying them, and keeping them very close to her. This week’s choice of lovey is a large can of stewed tomatoes.

She becomes very protective of these objects, and that might not be such a terrible idea. You never know When a piping hot cobbler is suddenly going to fall out of the sky.