Ted and Gloves

Well, for the next week or so, as a homage to what appears to be the end of winter (or at least the weather's taunting us appropriately), I figure I'll alternate blogs that I'd intended to appear automatically while I was in Russia (so much for Blogger's scheduling feature) with those about the Russia trip (You can blame my photographer :-), Jaime, for delays because I only have a few Russia photos.  Of course, if I'd bother to take any on my own ...)

Today's homage: Ted's glove fetish.

Yes, one of the things Ted's loved about living in cold-weather climes has been the number of small, soft objects he can obsess about and try to steal (I won't even discuss his laser-like attention to the fur trim on strangers' hoods, coats, gloves, scarves, etc.  It makes tram travel exciting sometimes.).  One pattern to our days is his stealing a pair of slippers and shaking it as soon as I take his harness off when we get home; I'm trapped taking off my boots and the place to store shoes is right by the door. 

Well, in this case, I'd made the mistake of washing the black polarfleece gloves I use to take him for his walks.  I'd just gotten back from collecting the dried laundry and put it in my chair while I went back to take my boots off.  Yes, in the whole 30 seconds it had taken me to take off my boots Ted had found the gloves in the pile of laundry!

Of course, when I called him on it, I got the innocent, Alfred N Newman expression.  The only problem is that innocence is ruined when the gloves are lying across your legs!

Once I got the gloves back, poor Ted's fun was ruined, so the only thing he could do was take a nap.  In this case, he put himself on the couch and used as a pillow the chair that I use to balance my laptop on when it's working as my TV.  I can imagine him thinking, "Hey, I wasn't hurting the things--just shaking them."

Yes, my dog suffers so.