Morning mayhem gets the day jumping

"It is better to understand a little, than to misunderstand a lot."

- Anatole France

It is between 5 and 6 a.m. and the household is humming. Out of the corner of my eye I'm watching the dog.

Something is up with the furtive little furball. He's acting sneaky in that terrier sort of way. He's just come back in the house after doing his doggie duties and I can tell he's hiding something.

I'm supposed to be grilling the middle schooler on vocabulary words at the breakfast table.

Did I mention I'm doing this while sorting and folding laundry? Multitasking, they call it. My son is multitasking, too, trying to shovel in Raisin Bran Crunch at just the right moment to buy time when he doesn't know the word.

Mom, the multitaskmaster, swirls through the room and begins making lunches. She corrects his definitions on "groundless," "sheepish" and "stamina." She corrects my sheet-folding techniques - I do them long; she likes them square - then asks about the dog.

I realize he has slipped away, and I point out the little fellow is often "sheepish" when she's in her morning Get-Ready Mode and perhaps lacks the "stamina" to keep up with her demands.

"I blame you," she says, lifting one eyebrow.

"Groundless," I reply, avoiding eye contact. But I am curious about the dog.

Usually he acts this way when he's found a bug outside, trapping it in his mouth, then bringing it inside to play.

I grab a stack of towels and head upstairs. That's where I find him. He is staring at something on the hall carpet, his mouth open.

He is looking at a frog, not just a baby frog, but one about the size of a computer mouse.

It is not moving, and I use a clean towel to scoop it up and return downstairs where my son is trying to chew and pronounce "incomprehensible" at the same time.

"Dog swallowed a frog,'" I say walking briskly to the door. "He threw it up. I'll throw it out."

My son not only quits chewing, he slowly pushes his bowl aside with the look of a child whose appetite has headed elsewhere. His mother goes off to look for the dog. My son gets dressed, and I step out on the deck and hurl the frog into the darkness.

When I return, the son is dressed, Mom is checking out the dog for "frog poisoning," and I remind both that the school bus will hit the corner in 4 minutes and 25 seconds.

Ten minutes later, it's quiet.

The bus has left with its vocabulary-challenged charges. Mom has gone after deciding to put frog-tainted towels back in the washing machine for further sterilization. And me and the dog are sitting together on the couch in a room suddenly quiet. It is not yet 6:30 a.m.

The workday awaits - downhill the rest of the way.

Reach Bill Kirby at (706) 823-3344 or bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com.