I recently created a new writing space for myself. It took me some time to claim it, but the north and eastern windowed wall of my eldest daughter’s room beckoned for months.
On her own now, she visits home from time to time, nestling back into the nest as though she never left…and I love those times. So, it was with a somewhat reluctant heart that I moved two pieces of her bedroom set in order to clear a space for me. But the reluctance paid off. I now sit at my computer, facing lovely lake and a fresh palette of inspiration. 
I settle into a day of writing.
Springtime has brought the regular cleaning and sprucing up of the home. A corner of the kitchen is undergoing repair for some of winter’s water damage. The process is near complete…the re-shingling of the outside has now given way to paint. 
The contractor is very pleasant and very thorough and generally quiet as his eastern European knowledge of English is limited.
Enter: one small dog.
I am sitting at my new, tranquil place when my Jack Russell wanders into the room and plops down at my feet. The window is open to the sprig day and the faint odor of paint wafts into the room. I glace at the dog. The dog glances at me, seemingly halo-ed in a grey fog upon the carpet.
Dust, I wonder? No, it looks like wet concrete….his belly and paws are covered. I shriek, he spins. I scoop up the goods and proceed toward the laundry-room sink.
It’s easy to find–just follow the trail down the stairs!
There is a dog-door in the laundry room so the dog may come and go as he pleases…and he has come and gone and come, again: through the roller tray of paint placed upon the ground outside the dog door, 
into the house, down the hall, a confused trail of prints from one side of the house to other, through the dining room, into the kitchen; a pause-and-cirlcle in front of the treat-holding cupboard, then on to the living room where a single paw is placed upon the green couch before, I’m sure, the memory of being told that loose-hair dogs belong NOT upon fine furniture.
The prints turn, and turn again, as though calling for divine direction. Back down the hall and up the stairs to where the chaos seemed to begin with that first shriek of intervention.
The dog is bathed, the contractor, urged to move the roller tray, and heaven is asked to “please make it all go away.”
“No p-r-r-roblem,” says the contractor. “Is water-based.”
I settle into a day of cleaning.