A Christmas story

I can't believe I forgot to tell you this yesterday! You are gonna love this one. Here goes.

Nick and I definitely deck the halls for Christmas. Indoors and out, we are festive and fun, flirting with but never crossing the line into tacky. My personal favorite decoration is the garland we wrap around the banister up the staircase. I especially like the lights.

Izzy especially does not. She never had a problem before this year, and we've had this garland since her first Christmas. But she has developed dendroselaphobia.** She totally freaks out when the lights turn on and off. You see, Nick set up the little automatic timer thingies on the outlets, so they all click on at 5pm and off at 10pm. So for the last few weeks without fail, Izzy starts acting bizarre around a quarter til. You could set your watch by her. Then she does her wigging out thing for a while and is seemingly fine until the next changing of the lights.

What does she do, you ask? Well, sometimes she shakes all over. Other times she's just really clingy and underfoot. Often she hides behind the big chair in front of the window, tangling herself in the curtains and knocking the lamp off the side table. But the best is the night she (halfway) climbed in bed with us.

The dogs aren't allowed on the furniture or in the bed, and as previously discussed, Izzy is an ardent rule-follower. But I awoke one night to her cold nose on my face. This sometimes happens if I let my face wander too close to the edge of the bed, causing the doggies to think I want their cold, wet nasal attention. But I woke up a bit and realized I was in fact in the middle of the bed, and Izzy was (mostly) in bed with me. I guess she'd reached the point of desperation and needed me to wake up and comfort her. The problem with her plan was that our bed is too tall for her to just climb into, so her back legs were dangling off the edge. I woke Nick up with all my clambering to get her back on the ground, and he didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did. And Izzy didn't think it was funny at all. But she is back to herself now with the lights safely stored away in the basement. Crazy dog.

**the fear of both trees and lights