Fall

I love fall. Always have, probably always will. It's the time of year when some relief comes from the dog days of summer, when the air turns cool and a man can go for a walk without drowning in his own sweat. The grass is still green, but the leaves have burst into orange and yellow and red, and the sky tends to cloud up and you get breezes, breezes you don't get during the rest of the year. There is nothing better than a stiff breeze under a cloudy sky, when the air is charged with the potential of great change. You can go outside and stand on the edge of the world, close your eyes, and breathe deep.

The dog, naturally, doesn't share my appreciation of the edge, and would much rather hide indoors any time a bit of wind comes along. My son gets it, though, and wants to spend his time in the evenings outside, toddling around with a broom three times his size and making me catch him when he goes marching off the side of the deck. It's nice, when he's not testing gravity, to sit in a chair and "take it all in" with him.

And thank God for those quiet moments, because the rest of the world seems to be somewhere over the edge, about a hundred feet down and picking up speed. Everywhere you look there's some new form of madness taking root. I understand the need to keep informed, but I'm finding it harder and harder to cope with the deluge of fear and horror coming out of the news these days. 30 years of war, police brutality, innocent people imprisoned and men guilty as sin allowed to walk out of court free and wealthy... to quote Hunter S. Thompson, "How long, oh Lord, how long?"

I could go on, but it's late and I need sleep more than I need to ramble on about the state of the world. Suffice to say we're standing on the edge, all of us; and it's best we take our bearings before we step over. But before that, go jump in the leaves, give your family a hug, and take the time to breathe deep.

Down With The Sickness

Ladies and gentlemen: I hate being sick.

I hate feeling like my body is betraying me. I hate feeling like I'm falling apart into my component molecules. I hate coughing and sneezing and sweating and wondering if I'm feverish.

I hate not being able to sleep. I hate taking NyQuil and feeling like I can't wake up. I hate taking DayQuil and waiting for it to kick in. I would not touch ZzzQuil with a twenty foot pole on a dare.

I revile sitting in a darkened room alone, either because the light hurts my eyes or because I don't have the strength to make it to the switch. I hate having the blinds open because the light from outside is too painful. I hate having the blinds closed because I can't see anything. I hate opening the blinds because all I see outside is fog and rain and drizzle and vehicles driving desultorily through the cul-de-sac outside.

I detest it when the dog, as loving and sympathetic as she is, insists that her bladder can't hold anything more and makes me take her outside, because if I don't she'll forget what she's out there for and start barking at the neighbors.

I am filled with loathing when, at 5:30 a.m. little Lina hears someone or something outside and launches a thermonuclear barking salvo at the intruder, which for all I know was nothing more harmful than a squirrel scratching at the back door.

I suffer when, having gone out into my backyard in my boxer shorts clutching a hammer, I discover that the back gate is indeed open, and spend long minutes circling the porch with my hammer raised while the dog relieves herself.

I swell with regret when I report this to my wife, and have to hold her while we wait for our morning alarms to go off.

I am utterly miserable when I have to call into my office and let my boss know I won't be in today, and might not be tomorrow; and that I'm going to need more time off on Thursday than I thought. I hate looking at the amount of leave I have left and seeing it drop down, down, down.

I flush with embarrassment when I realize how far off course this blog post has gotten.

Ladies and gentlemen: I. Hate. Being. Sick.

So. How are you?

Please Stop Trying To Kill My Dog

Just back from a walk with Lina. She's devouring food and water and is in a Corgi happiness state - in other words, just fine. She is lucky.

Five minutes into the walk (in the middle of the night) I catch her chomping on something. Tell me, is there a thing where people eat fried chicken in the middle of a grassy park area and then just leave the bones there for neighbor dogs to find? Because it sure as hell happens a lot around here.

So Lina's eating a chicken bone, which is bad news because they break apart easily under the power of mighty canine jaws and turn into pointy shards that can tear up Corgi insides.

This is a beef bone. That's different. And she was supervised.

I get the potentially-fatal bone away from Lina (no small feat - thanks dog), take three steps, and hear the tinkle of breaking glass under my feet.

Broken glass! A whole bottle's worth of pointy shards! My dog does not wear shoes!

Artist's rendition of a dog who got carried home tonight.

One explanation is that my neighbors are just slobs. That's the simple explanation, but I can't believe it. I have to assume my neighbors are actively trying to kill my dog, probably in retaliation for some Cosa Nostra shit she got up to when she was a puppy that I'll never know about.

Lina practicing Omerta.

It is clearly time to move, preferably somewhere where black-suited thugs are not waiting in bushes to grab my dog and take her into the back room with the rubber hoses.

Badass Adventures in Real Estate

Today Sarah and I went hunting for a new house. First of all, let me give a shout out to our agent, Georgia, who was friendly and extremely helpful and made the whole thing a blast, even when we were viewing the lousy houses. And oh, Lord, there were some lousy houses.

House Number One: This house came with a bad first impression, in the form of a shared driveway that was narrow and had little room to park in. I'm still not sure how one house gets two cars parked without causing a turf war. But the rest of the house: gorgeous. A beautiful kitchen, tons of space in the bedrooms, a large living space downstairs, and a big old yard that Lina could run around like a maniac in (once we fenced it in). Sadly, this house was the highlight of our day.

House Number Two: Corgi house! Whoever lived here looked like they were actively stalking Lina: just a ton of Corgi portraits, statues and other furnishings. Unfortunately the actual Corgi wasn't present, just a cat I never saw because it bolted immediately. Also a deck that looked like it was going to fall apart, a driveway that mandates a parking brake, a door that leads to empty air, and half a fence. I admire whoever lives there (excellent taste in dogs and reading material), but I'm not going to.

House Number Three: A horticulturist's dream! I'm not kidding about that: there were plants growing in every room in the house, and the backyard looked like an enchanted fairy forest. Great if you like gardening, but I want a yard where Lina can run around like a psychopath, not something I have to pay someone to keep trimmed. To its credit, the house did have good bathrooms and a spacious (if not modern) kitchen.

House Number Four: This is where we really started running into trouble. And tenants. Someone had called the girl living at this house and told her our walkthrough was cancelled, and she ended up spending five minutes throwing things in one of her bedrooms before she left for her job at the local barbecue hut. The house was decorated in Rue Morgue Red carpeting and featured all the amenities you'd expect to find in a college dorm. The outside included a messy backyard, house-killing trees, and a spider the size of God.

I think he was the landlord.

House Number Five: This one started off well with a covered driveway with ample space. The rest of the exterior was a bit overgrown and crumbly, but that didn't seem like a big deal once we got inside. A beautiful kitchen and living room, with a furnace and a cast-iron stove/fireplace. I also liked seeing ceiling fans that weren't threatening to crack my skull open. Aside from the yard and some slightly undersized bedrooms, it was a fine house, and a nice palate cleanser for House Number Four. Which was good, because next was...

House Number Six: Or as Sarah keeps calling it, the meth lab. Have you ever seen a house where the sidewalk looked decrepit? Because that was our first sign of danger. The second sign was the lack of a For Sale sign. The third was the fact that the door was ajar, and Georgia had to yell inside for the tenant to put his shirt back on. There was a door with what looked like knife scratches in. There was a shattered ping-pong table that didn't come with the house, and a massive hole in the ceiling right above it. And the asking price was the same as what House Number One was asking. Georgia shooed us out of there before we saw the second story.

That was supposed to be our last house for the day, but Georgia had seen a listing for a house that had been on the market for a long time, and she was curious as to why. So we drove out to...

The Bonus Mystery House: Which is called that because we never saw the inside of it. Georgia recognized it as soon as she saw it and advised us not to go inside. We understood why as soon as we saw the fence in the back. Still, morbid curiosity prodded us to carry on; but the driveway was narrow, hilly, and positioned right off a main road, and we didn't have the heart to make Georgia drive down it (and possibly get us all killed in a T-bone accident). She ended up showing us the local Adam's Ribs restaurant instead, which was probably for the best.

So! No real luck today, although House Number One is going to stay on the list for now. But we'll keep looking, and we've got every confidence that Georgia will have us sorted out; if not by Christmas, then shortly after. We're not in any rush, after all. Neither is Lina.

Hell, she'll wait forever if we let her stay in that corner.

From My Phone

Continuing with the Android theme, I'm writing this blog post from my phone. It's two-thumb typing with the slideout keypad, fairly quick but no PC keyboard. I sense that this will not be a regular occurrence.

Anyway, for indulging this little experiment and because I ought to test out the image feature, here's a picture of my Corgi Lina in a bee costume. You're welcome.

Power Outage

Some people would use that as a metaphor for missing a blog post. Not me, I really had one tonight. It's sleeting outside, which is a great way to screw up power lines and morning commutes; something to look forward to in the morning as I skid my way down a 30 degree incline onto the road out of our neighborhood...

But I digress. The lights went out about half an hour before Sarah went to bed. In that period we hunted for light sources (successfully; Yankee Candle is Sarah's new best friend, and my Kindle reading light is surprisingly useful as a deployable turret), listened to the neighbors chop firewood and yell a bit, and comforted the dog, who took to stuffing herself into corners and trembling like a very scared thing.

I haz The Fear.

Luckily our power company managed to restore service in about an hour and a half, so I'm able to pry Lina off my leg and blog a bit before going to bed at my usual time: Too Damn Late.

I did end up seeing Black Swan this Saturday, and I'll say right now that Natalie Portman earned the Golden Globe for Best Actress, and as far as I'm concerned she's earned herself an Oscar as well. Her performance was inspired and terrifying, in a movie that was also inspired and terrifying. If you're at all engaged in a creative endeavor, go see Black Swan.

Corgi Conundrum

I'm mad for even writing this so late in the evening, but I set myself a goal of three posts a week and I'm going to meet it for at least one week. Sleep? I need not sleep.

Let's talk about Corgis. Specifically my Corgi, Lina.

Are you talking about me?

Lina is an awesome dog. She's always happy to meet new people, and tends to behave very well in strange houses. In fact, odds are that she'll be much more calm and collected in a stranger's house than she ever would be in my house.

Go ahead. Sit down. Let me step on your shoulder blades...

So I thought for Christmas this year I'd bring her along to my aunt's house so she could meet the family. There's just one problem with this, and his name is Charlie. He is a beagle.

(I don't actually have a beagle photo.)

Lina does not get a chance to be around other dogs very often, and introducing her to new dogs is always a total crapshoot. It's not that Lina's particularly unfriendly, but she gets... possessive. Of me and my wife. Specifically, she won't stand for any other dog getting affection from us if she's not involved. She won't be happy if another dog has a toy, either. Treats? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Now the thing is, I know about this because Lina doesn't get along with my in-laws's dog, Melfi. And to be fair, Melfi charged Lina like a crazed bull when they first met. And Melfi's a female, so she's fair game for Lina to try and assert herself as "alpha dog". Charlie is a male, and everything I've read points to female Corgis being well-behaved around male dogs.

But I don't know, dammit. And it's important to know these things, because if my wife and I ever decide to get a second dog, we don't want two fuzzy little terrors running around trying to start World War III in our living room.

I am the Destroyer of Worlds.

My wife and I will be discussing this further, but I'm really not sure what's going to happen. We might take the risk, or we might bring Lina down next Thanksgiving when Charlie won't be around. The two dogs might fall in love, or I might spend my Christmas standing outside with a dog who's trying to "defend" me from my aunt's dog while my family eats fried oysters in a warm house.

In which case, I would have no choice but to use the Bee Costume of Shame. And nobody wants that.

Especially not Lina.

Happy Halloween!

Well, Halloween is here again, and we've decided to indulge in a bit of animal cruelty here at the Earle household. That's my wife, Sarah, and Lina in her lovely bee costume. You can't see it, except for a faint gleam in her eyes, but she is full of hate.

Most times when we put, say, a bandanna on the dog, she'll bite and tear at it until she manages to rip it off, and then it becomes her newest chew toy. We managed to avoid this with the bee costume by taking her for a walk - letting her break it in, so to speak. She still fought us on the antennae, but they stayed on long enough.

Lots of trick-or-treaters this year, although not enough to overcome the amount of candy we bought in preparation. (My coworkers are going to have a good day tomorrow, followed by cavities.) Plenty of generic scary costumes, plus two Iron Men, a Spider-man, a Batgirl, a Wonder Woman (in fur coat), and a chihuahua in a bee costume, which Lina accepted with good grace. Also my half-assed Black Lantern costume, which consisted of a T-shirt and a ring. I'll do better next year, I promise!

Now the children have all retired to get ready for school, and there's nothing left for it but to watch Sweeney Todd and The Walking Dead (10pm on AMC - should be good), and get ready for NaNoWriMo tomorrow. Luckily (or not, depending on how you look at it), I've got an appointment with my dentist in the early afternoon tomorrow, so I'll be home early to try and pump up my word count.

It's going to be a busy November!