Toni Louise and the Mystery

 I overslept. I am usually up at 7:30 and opening the door to the dog yard. I slept until 8:30. The boy dogs waited patiently, but Toni Louise was having none of that waiting. She did use the designated pee pad for her morning ritual. I saw it as I stumbled down the hall towards the door, coffee uppermost in my mind.

Toni had done all of her business, and I grabbed a plastic bag with Walmart emblazoned on the side. I use them instead of purchasing tiny plastic bags made just for poop pick up. As I leaned down to grab the offending pile I was stopped by the odd appearance of Toni's leavings.

It looked like her poop was adorned with sprinkles, like on donuts. Multicolored sprinkles. I debated with myself about awakening the man who slept in bed. I weighed the pros and cons in my head. I would be able to turn the mystery over to someone else ...... That someone else would interrogate me about it and I can assure everyone that I did not put the sprinkles on her poop. If I let him sleep, I could still have a peaceful cup of coffee and just tell him when he gets up. Then he can annoy me with questions.

I chose the latter. Toni seemed like she always does. Oblivious to her surroundings as she entertained herself with a little tail chasing, then retiring to lay behind the toilet. Our toilet sits at an angle in the bathroom, and she fits neatly behind it. She is old and goofy, and she sleeps a lot.

As I went about my day after a thorough interrogation form Toni's favorite person who was worried she may have "gotten into something", I pondered the mystery. 

During the long winter, I am always looking for things to keep busy. I like to do a little painting and puzzles and such things. I discovered diamond painting. I am sure you have seen the kits. It is not diamonds, but tiny little beads, flat on the bottom and cut on the top, like a diamond would be. I found some interesting kits on the cheap with dachshunds in various poses. The beads are bagged separately, and color coded to match the codes on the "picture" that is sticky and waiting to receive the beads.

I did quite a few of these, along with some coasters and other things. They always include more than enough of the beads. Some of the colors are very similar and more than once I suffered the agony of spilling the container with separate compartments and mixing them all together. This involved me having to sort them. It was exceedingly tense for the man and the dogs who hid from me as I did so.

Being cheap or thrifty, as I prefer to be called, I saved all the tiny beads by just dumping them into a container. telling myself I would find a use for them. Using an old ice tray, I spent many hours in front of the TV sorting them into like colors. I had made great headway and was patting myself on the back for my accomplishment. This act of self-congratulations is almost always followed by a disaster. I was putting my robe on and anticipating coffee when I bumped the tray and tiny beads flew everywhere. 

I said a few chosen and not nice words and then used the broom to sweep up the mess while the coffee brewed. I had found a use for them and now I was faced with having to sort them again. Not up for the challenge, I left the pile on the floor and drank my coffee. Drew arose form is slumber and saw what had happened. He sympathized and offered solutions to getting them up and back into a container. I went to my garden, leaving them on the floor.

When I came back inside most of that pile was still on the floor and I assumed that my sweet husband had picked up most of it for me. All of this was running around in my head after the poop incident. On a whim I looked into the dish that was holding the unsorted beads and realized it was no fuller than it was before the icetray flipped into the air and distributed those beads hither and thither.

The mystery solved; I went out to hunt down the man who loves his dog to tell him that I was pretty sure that Toni ate the pile of beads. What goes in, must come out. The only mystery now? What did she find so appealing about tiny plastic beads?