Your Comforter Is Breathing

It can be essential for a pair of sedentary seniors to keep some form of lap blanket handy near their favorite chairs. That, or dress for outdoors, or worse, kick up the thermostat into the range of unpleasant bills each month for half the year, or more when one considers that three of those months where more heat is undesirable in Arizona are actually spent in Minnesota, in the home of a son who keeps the house there cool enough to be our winter heat setting. He's comfortable after all, and it's his AC bill.

Steve's preference is for a large blue comforter, by now a bit lumpy for use on his bed, but perfectly adequate for a lap robe. A little shifting and any bare spot can be moved to the side and a fuller, warmer spot slid into place.

My preference is for a very soft, fuzzy little blanket, the kind where the synthetic fibers are positively silky to the fingertips, and everything, since it's new-ish, is the same snuggly thickness and has the same insulating power in every square inch. It's the latest improvement in polar fleece. I haven't washed it yet because I fear that silkiness will be spoiled in the machines. But fear not, the white spots are still reasonably white, and much of the black shakes out and settles on the rug or along the baseboards in various rooms in little "bunnies." (Dog hair wasn't really dirt, right?)

Wonderful as they are, both comforter and blanket come with a bonus. Or maybe it's a liability, depending on circumstances. I refer to the family dog, who is always seeking heat with her short fur with no undercoat, part of what makes our little rescue-huahua perfect for southwest desert life. Since the house is geared to humans and our budgets, she is continually seeking heat. She will wait till we are settled into our respective chair, reaching for our respective blanket, and do her best to make her timing coincide with being there just before the blanket settles over both of us with her as the filling in the heat sandwich.

Most of the time that is absolutely lovely, with her giving as much heat as she receives, except when I'm wearing shorts and her nails find a spot of skin instead of fabric, or even despite Steve wearing sweatpants they land on an extra tender spot that girls don't exactly know about well enough to stop us being tempted into smothered laughter. Hey, I only said "tempted". Most of us aren't really that cruel. Honest.

She really does have her own super soft blanket inside her kennel. She actually likes it there, heading in when laps are busy with books or laptops, and finds her own blanket worthy of 5 minutes rearranging before she settles down. That lasts just long enough for her to figure out she buried her wee nose a bit too well and suddenly we can see it poking out between a couple layers of blanket about an inch into fresh air. None of this getting wild about fresh cold air enough to poke it out any further however. And while the inside of her kennel is mostly black, just like she is, and her blanket is mostly white, like more and more of her is, that little schnoz is the right blend of both to show at a glance. The entertainment in all that is watching her fight her way out of her own blanket by dragging it far enough over the rug that friction anchors it and she emerges fully. This means I get to push it back inside for her next time. The undisciplined way it goes back in is a big part of the extra entertainment of watching her lump and bump and fight with her blanket until it is just so the next time she snuggles inside it. I did fold it up neatly once, but she rewarded me by putting her own touch on how it sprawled and curled and folded inside the kennel. So I don't do that any more.

Seeing that nose is important. We need to know where she is before we start moving around. Certain person's joints are stiff, balance can be a bit off, and  there is always a need to avoid stepping on a small adorable critter who just may have chosen a different blanket than the last one she was seen in while, say, somebody was napping or distracted by the TV or laptop or whatever. Many times a certain blue comforter is over on the couch, but that's because I didn't wish to trip over it myself, much less have Steve doing it. The big lumps can be foot snaggers. Even worse if those big lumps are occupied by a heat-seeking pooch. But all too often the lumps of blanket or comforter are right where last set down.

There are occasional adjustments to those locations not caused by ourselves. This presents the real problem. So before becoming excessively mobile, we have learned to scour the room for the dog. She will be there. She doesn't abandon her people by more than a few feet, even though we don't necessarily afford her the same courtesy. So the hunt begins. Kennel? Nope. My blanket? Uh-uh. Couch? Easy elimination when it's just that white fabric. The logical alternative is Steve's comforter, a huge collection of lumps right under where his lift chair would bring his footrest down and squeeze shut. That is the other consideration here, that she could not only get stepped on or tripped over, but caught in the chair. 

This morning I had eliminated all the alternatives, but still saw no motion from the comforter. This needed studying. I can usually see a doggy lump moving, not a lot, just enough to offer proof of life. I waited, and waited some more. Steve had held off in bringing his footrest down, much as he'd needed to get out of his chair for any of the several usual reasons.  I kept looking, questions starting to form in my mind. Did I see motion?  If so it was almost imperceptible. Was my need to see influencing what I actually saw? She's getting old but not that old. Patience... patience... THERE! 

Now I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I informed Steve, "Your comforter is breathing". While we made the necessary adjustments  for getting moving, we decided that just might become our next new "in" phrase. We expect lots of opportunity for using it.