when you can confim you've lost it

i'm sitting here on the couch, watching "outside the lines" detail why it's a good idea and a bad idea for the colts to try to go 16-0, and liebchen is trying to get out of the living room.

we have put up baby gates at all major entrances to the room, to keep trotter p from getting out (or in, depending on circumstances) and chewing on/peeing & pooping on/eating things in other rooms.

but we provide an escape route: french doors that lead to a sitting room of sorts off the main living room. they're cracked enough for a cat to fit through, even fat ones like ours.

so liebchen, aka "beastie" for her ferocious hiss, is trying to physically move a baby gate that weighs five pounds or so, with her little paw.

i find myself saying out loud "beastie ... there's a door right over there (gesturing toward the french doors) you could go out of. you do it every day, so why are you trying to go out that way?"

you know you've lost it when you start talking to your pets in english complicated enough to pass for real human conversation.