It is 7F/-14C when Henry and I step outside for our morning walk. This is not interesting weather for Henry. This is paws-are-cold weather.
(did you know that my building is at the intersection of JQH Drive and Holiday Avenue? How did that latter name get attached to a street? And how did the street sign get bent? Questions without answers.)
It's one thing to run like crazy off leash. You forget about your paws then. And anyway, they barely touch the ground. Trotting slowly alongside your human is different. And not worth the pain. Do your stuff, go back inside -- is Henry's thinking.
* * *
I hear on the radio that the least liked Christmas song of them all is Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime. It's repetitive, the lyrics are dumb. This I cannot understand. There are plenty of songs that fit that description. Mommy kissing Santa Clause is dreadful by definition. I personally find Christmas Shoes deliberately manipulative and a little sick, and Bruce Springsteen's Santa Clause is Coming to Town jingles and rocks your nerves solidly after the fifth repetition of that one line. And still, I put on the Christmas music station on the car radio, listening to a mixture of the pleasant and annoying and somehow I don't mind any of it. Well, if my two or three loathsome ones come on, I switch stations.
* * *
Breakfast. My pup would like me to give up on the dental chews. He has that "anything but dental chews" look on him this morning. I'll think about it, Henry.
Me, I love the same old granola with fruit, yogurt and honey. And of course the sublime milky coffee...
* * *
We, the shoppers out there are easily fooled. If you sell packs of cookies at Clasen's German Bakery, rather than raising the price, you just take away a cookie. Next year you up the tab, and the year after you virtually double it because that's the way things work in America (and elsewhere too, I'm sure, but I speak for the country I live in). Labor costs, ingredient costs, tariffs. So what are you, the baker, going to do this year? Here's an idea: take those gigantic gingerbread man cookies, make them half the size, put them in a box with a pretty ribbon and charge a whopping $29 for each. I know bakers rarely make a fortune, but I do think $29 for a cookie is a bit high.
* * *
I sit on the couch with Henry, his paw is up, he wants a gentle rub.
I'm reading the article in the NYTimes about dogs in Japan. This one. Apparently people in that country are having fewer children and more dogs. Traditions that were once followed with the progression of a child's age (the "3 5 7" rituals) are now followed with you dog. You dress the pooch in a kimono and take him or her to a shrine for a special blessing at those key ages. The photo in the story is very cute, but I have to think that if I put Henry in a kimono it would just be funny!
* * *
The jigsaw puzzle advent calendar which I have been doing dutifully for seven days now (50 pieces of a new puzzle each day) has suddenly become too easy, because I have figured out that the cut is the same for each picture, so that the weird long piece is always on the lower right side. Even without looking at the picture, it's suddenly all very obvious. Should I keep on doing them just because they're there? Or should I admit that this was a really dumb purchase and give up on it today, so I can go back to doing the wonderful bigger more challenging puzzles I have stashed for the winter season?
I'll let you guess which route I take.
* * *
We've had a month of winter weather without it being winter yet. Maybe we should just skip the season and go straight to a snowy spring?
* * *
I sent out the last of my holiday cards today. One of them has to travel to an address at a distance of three blocks. It will take a whole week to get there because mechanization means that it will first have to go to Milwaukee before it returns to Middleton. Weird but true.
* * *
I finished the fifth and last book in the Thursday Murder Club series. I have a stack of more serious stuff to read, but this being December, I'm staying with the lighter novels. I picked up a holiday one and the writing and story line were so bland (despite great reviews) that I gave up and went back instead to Osman (who wrote the Thursday Murder Club). He's promised a 6th, but in the meantime, he has another duo battling crime -- an aging widower and his daughter-in-law. It's fine, but I miss being in the world of goofy old people.
* * *
Reluctantly, I began wrapping presents today. The worst part? Getting to the big gifts that consume way too much paper. (I put that off for another day.) But I have several close runners-up: trying to coordinate paper so that each person has her/his own design. Ugh. And of course the odd shaped present that defies any wrapping strategy that could result in something aesthetically presentable.
* * *
I pick up a tired (and therefore fragile) Sparrow and a tired (and hungry) Snowdrop. These late performance nights (they dont get home until after ten and there still are the evening routines to get through) are doing them no favor. All the grownups involved in their care can't wait for this insanity to be over. (Next Sunday evening is their last show. Can't come soon enough.)
Sparrow and I pause for a few minutes at his house before picking up his sister. And we come just as his mom received the DNA test results for their Goose. Their dog shares some breed genes with Henry (so in my opinion they could be very distant cousins!), but his dominant breed genes are that of an American Staffordshire Terrier and Labrador Retriever. Henry has zero retriever in him! My Rottie Dobbie Husky Pyrennean befuddles curious types when I tell them he is not in anyway a lab. Goose, on the other hand, looks and acts and is in part like a lab and an AST. Of course, we tend to peg them some, and then we exaggerate what we think we're seeing. Still, it's been great fun tracing these dogs' ancestries.
(Bundling up)
(Still in her mom's coat)
Snowdrop twists my arm and so we get Culvers fries for a snack. I mean, how can you argue with a girl who now throws around words such as dude, chill, and yo bro into the conversation on a regular basis.
* * *
At the Edge, they catch up with their advent calendars. Whereas Henry's and mine were less than perfect, the two kids do love theirs. Which is perhaps more important than whether a dog appreciates opening little doors to treats one day at a time.
* * *
Picking up your dog, whether from doggie daycare, or a boarding kennel is perhaps one of the most joyous experiences you can have as a pet person. Their love just throws itself at you. Reheating three day old brussel sprouts for supper for yourself is slightly less exhilarating. The day is always a balance of the sublime and the mundane.
with so much love...
