Late Night with Alice.

Obviously, I see a lot of Alice. But I've seen a lot more of her in the wee hours lately than I have in the past.

On Saturday night around 2:30A, I woke up, pretty sure I heard some kind of thuddy sound in the house. I'm a light sleeper and wake up a lot, but I was pretty sure this was something big. The Human Male was kind of awake, so I asked him if he heard something. He murfled something along the lines of "Maybe; what did it sound like?" It didn't sound like an insane psycho killer, so I got up and investigated.

It ended up being a mirror in the bathroom. We put up a full-length mirror on the back of the door with double-sided tape a few weeks ago, and the recent humidity made it unstick. It hit the toilet and wedged a little under the door. Mystery solved.

So I walk out of the bathroom and see The Human Male coming stumbling out of the bedroom, still mumbling about how he might've heard a sound. Alice is about six inches behind him, peeking out around his legs and looking ready to run in the opposite direction at a moment's notice.

Ladies and gentlemen, my watchdog.

Then last night, I woke up around 3A and heard Alice drinking in the kitchen. She regularly gets up between 3 and 4A to do a little snacking. But she seemed to be drinking a lot. I mean, like a lot. When I checked her bowl this morning, it was half gone. Once she finished slurping down her water, she came trotting back in to the bedroom and jumped on the bed. I laid still so that she'd go back to sleep, and she walked up to my face and rested her little wet chin on my cheek. It was so wet, it actually dripped down my face. Then she went over to The Human Male and did the same.

And then she sneezed on him.

And that sneeze was followed by another. And another. And several more. She sneezed for about fifteen seconds straight. And not little dainty ones. We're talking shake-the-bed-style rattlers. They were so loud, they woke up The Human Male, who would likely sleep through a bulldozer crashing through the apartment.

Apparently she drank so much, so fast, that she got water up her nose.

The perpetual sneezing scared Alice and she freaked out a little, so we tried to calm her down. But when she's upset about something, she gets that weird reverse-sneeze thing. Within seconds, she started the wheezing. And when she does that, she completely loses it. We think at some point Alice got in trouble for the reverse-sneezing (like she can help it), because she always gets this look on her face that clearly says "I'm a good girl! I'm a good girl!" and frantically tries everything she can to make sure we see her. It's so sad, we always work extra hard to reassure her that she is a good girl and rub her throat. But she was so worked up, she couldn't stop wheezing. It took her a good minute to stop. The worried look on her face was enough to melt a robot's heart.

Within seconds of her stopping and him asking what was going on, The Human Male was fast asleep again. Then this morning he asked me what was wrong with Alice. I explained to him about the water, the chinning, and sneezing. And that she sneezed on him.

You should've seen his face.

"She sneezed on me?" he asked, baffled.

"Yup. Right on you," I responded, trying to hold off the smile.

"And you let her do it?"

Um...