The perfect daybed, snubbed

Well it sure has been busy down here. The perfect daybed did in fact arrive, and I spent much of the weekend reconfiguring the office/guest room, making it ready for my sister's visit and also just more pleasant and functional as an office. I'm getting curtains altered for an impossibly small sum of money at one of the many Asian-run tailor shops nearby, and then the space will be pretty well done.

We gave the old loveseat - seen in so many pictures of the dogs, e.g. below - to friends for their kids' playroom. The kids were very excited to have their "own" couch, and fell upon it with love as if it were a new member of the family.

I knew the dogs would miss it, because it is soft and very low to the ground and has been their little nest for many years. I figured the new one would be a fair trade, because while it's not quite so soft, and it's a little higher off the ground, it's bigger. It offers more room to spread out, and it's still not as high as a real bed. Toby has embraced this perspective, after he and Enrico gave it a vigorous field test during a long nap on Saturday.


Nelly, on the other hand, is having none of it. We've coaxed her up there a few times, and she just circles, pawing gingerly with her feet, like the Princess searching for any signs of a Pea. And then - finding a pea, or perhaps many of them, she hops right off. Last night Enrico and I both curled up there to read, with Toby, thinking perhaps we might encourage her up. Like when you encourage a recalcitrant child to eat by trying the strained yams yourself, saying "Mmmm, yummy!" But Nelly wouldn't even come in the room. She sat out in the darkened hallway, silently watching our warmly lit tableau from afar, her eyes glowing accusingly like some specter from an Edgar Allen Poe story.

Crazy damn dog.