The saddest thing in the whole world is when my mom leaves to go somewhere and Molly the Satanic Dog is SOOOOO excited and prancing all around behind her because they're gonna go in the car, and then my mom goes "No Molly, you have to stay behind with sister [she really does say that...no respect I tell ya -- ed.] and take a nap." And poor Molly, you can just see the happiness fade out of her big dumb dog eyes when she realizes that not only is my mom leaving, but she's going for a RIDE, in the CAR, without her. I'm telling you, if I didn't have a heart three sizes too small it would bring a tear to my eye.
Of course, that is only about 1/10 as sad as when my dad leaves, because then Molly not only sits by the door in total disbelief that he would leave without her, but after about five minutes she will heave this HUGE sigh, hunker down on the mat in front of the door, put her head on her paws, and just stare up at the doorknob with big baleful dog eyes, just hoping that any minute the doorknob will turn and it will be Daddy Spatula who all of the sudden remembered that he forgot his most important girl and came back to rescue her from an entire day of taking naps and patroling the entire interior perimeter of the house every half hour to ascertain whether there are any new crumbs that could be snarfed up. I swear, watching her do this walk around the house over and over is like watching a whale siphon plankton or something...none of us can actually see these microscopic crumbs, but Molly constantly has her nose glued to the floor and I'm convinced she is sucking up minute cookie crumbs (we eat a lot of cookies around here) and altogether, over the course of the day, she's actually eating like 15.3 pounds of cookies or something. It's bizarre.
