The Pita.

Last night, my office held its Non-Denominational Inauguration Celebration. Yes, that's what we called it. What happened is that everyone was busy with year-end deliverables and no one got around to asking HR (which is out somewhere in Washington State, as far away from our office as possible) if we were getting funding for a holiday party this year until the first week of December or so, and we couldn't throw together a decent party that quickly amidst year-end havoc. So we convinced them to let us instead hold a non-denominational, apolitical celebration, in keeping with the DC tradition. The powers that be okayed a non-denominational Inauguation celebration, so we stuck with it.

We ordered from a place called Lebanese Taverna, which makes fabulous Middle-Eastern food. It's our go-to restaurant in the office-- we ordered from there for our holiday party last year, too, and anytime we have out-of-town coworkers visit, we take them there. It's great. Many people work from home on Friday, and we're coming up on a four-day weekend, so for game prizes, we gave out tupperware for everyone to take some home leftovers. When they delivered our food, they brought us apparently all of the pita bread in the world. I'm not kidding-- it was about 4.5lbs' worth, sliced into quarters. Figuring that, even if frozen, there's no way that our office could go through that much, the Human Male and I brought home 1.5lbs of it. It literally takes up a quarter of our freezer. As a result, we've decided to have it for every meal for the next month.

This morning I was having some hummus and pita bread for breakfast, and Alice ran up to me, putting her greedy little hands on my leg and giving me a look that said "Why haven't you given me any yet?" Since we have so much, I decided to give Alice a full slice. She immediately took it and ran away. After about 30 seconds, she came running back into the kitchen, mouth empty.

This is not uncommon. Alice loves to get big treats (plus it's funny to see her run around with them), but she doesn't always eat them. Typically she hides them-- next to our shoes, in front of the TV, the most obvious places you can think of. So I walked around the corner and saw it next to the table. She saw me looking at it and immediately picked it up-- as if one, I would steal her food, and two, we didn't have 300 more slices in the freezer. She spent a good part of the morning walking around with it in her mouth, disappearing, coming back without it, leaving again without notice, then magically reappearing, carrying it.

I saw it in a few places (next to the couch, in front of the bathroom door) before it disappeared. I thought she might've finally eaten it-- it was starting to get pretty ragged. I didn't give it a second thought and went about my day.

Around 1P, I decided to make the bed. One of Alice's favorite activities is "helping" to make it, which consists of standing whatever part of the blankets or sheets you're pulling up and licking your face. Today, she must've been tired from her pita-toting marathon, as she just laid down on the bed. I pushed her out of the way to put the pillows down and went back into the living room to do work. Maybe 20 minutes or so, I walk back into the bedroom to discover that she knocked over half the pillows. This, too, is part of her "helping" process.


So I walk over to straighten them out, and, lo and behold, I found the pita, tucked safely behind the pillow.


It's completely gross, but she's been so intent on hiding this stupid piece of pita, I didn't have the heart to take it out and throw it away (plus that would also make me the person who steals her treats, and her dirty looks would be justified). Plus it's on the Human Male's side of the bed. He might not even notice. Or maybe he'll think I did something nice for him.