Even Restoring Sanity Can Be Insane

I know my blog is supposed to be about my experiences with the pups at the shelter, but today (10-30-10) was a crazy day and I needed more characters than Facebook gives. And there were several pups. I wanted a photo of the one carrying the sign that said “I’m scared of the vacuum. Why aren’t you?”

Charlie and I decided to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Now we’ve never attended a rally before and we’ve never gone to D.C. for a big event. We drove up to one of the burbs Friday night and took the Metro in and so did everyone else. So we started out about a half hour later than we wanted to and at the hour we were planning on arriving at the Mall we were standing in line at the Metro to buy a ticket.

Like lemmings we followed the crowd, got crushed and very cozy with the folks on the Metro, and once we got to the National Mall worked our way towards the stage. But we never made it. We didn’t even make it to the back row of the Jumbotron before we felt like there were just too many people and we’d have no chance of using our lawn chairs. We retreated back to where the crowd was thinner. I set up camp at the edge of the walkway in order to stay out of the way.

But the people just kept coming and eventually we were hemmed in on all sides (crowd size was estimated at 150,000 to 200,000). The little garden behind us must have gotten completely trampled. And that last row of loud speakers just wasn’t doing it all the time. We spent a couple of hours looking at a stream of butts and listening to people make snide remarks about us and our chairs.

My chair did have a purpose, though. It protected an adorable little eight week old puppy, Simba, while he took a nap. His mom was doing a good job of keeping him corralled away from all the feet, but he finally conked out under my chair. Isn’t he a cutie?

We had fun … I guess. We discovered that we are too old for such things. Next time we’ll take Tippi on a trip like she wanted us to. Although I am pleased to say that she and Spice had a great time with Erin the pet sitter (http://www.hoofandpawspetcare.com/) ; Spice even let Erin hold him when she visited … now that’s incredible!

Update: To see just where we were and how insane it was, follow this link (http://www.flickr.com/photos/74104660@N00/5129298817/in/photostream/) mouse over the left side of the photo 'til you find 7th Street then move your mouse to the right edge of the Mall 'til you find Suze at 40.