Happy Shiny!

So, enough gloom and doom for the moment. Let's talk about pleasant things for the time being, shall we?

Like, for instance, PIPER!!

Who lately, to tell you the truth, has been just the slightest pain in my ass. I'm not sure what happened to the grungy, smelly and altogether miserable but quiet and meek pooch we picked up eight week ago from his temporary digs, but he's certainly, uh, blossomed in the time we've had him since.

Typical for a Westie, he pretty much thinks he rules the roost now, and this has manifested itself in bark-a-thons. Well, let's qualify that. Piper bark-a-thons, which are barely a whimper, guttaral growl and short, staccato couple of barks. I know, it's not much, but it's totally out-of-character for him, and I can only think that he's starting to get the notion he's Alpha-dog around here. So we've been diligent about restricting his many freedoms, and crating him when we go out (for all our hard work he rewarded us with a couple dog marbles on the bedroom carpet yesterday to show his disgust with that idea, thank you very much). Whoever said dogs aren't in the business of calculated revenge obviously never met a Westie with a mission.

As you can see by the sample photographs, we've been taking the dog everywhere with us, including the fabulous town boardwalk on the Sound, which everyone is quite proud of here, and for good reason. It's gorgeous, especially in late fall with the crystal-blue persuasion type skies and a cornflower blue sound to match. We took pictures, but it was such a bright, sunny and atypically warm day for Yankeeland that they turned out bleached and grainy. But I salvaged some of the Piper pictures, in which he is practicing his very best Look-Away-Right-Before-The-Shutter-Clicks (or whatever the shutter does now that cameras are all newfangled and digital) moves.

Here's one of us on a pier, which that day we never quite reached the end of, because there were some grizzled, smelly-looking men monopolizing said space, no doubt scratching themselves and hawking loogies into the Sound or something equally distasteful as they pretended to fish but we're probably really drinking hard liquor out of those tastefully concealing paperbags. Wanting to keep Piper away from such Bad Influences, we took these pictures at a Safe Distance From Riff-Raff. We're practicing for teaching our future children Stranger Danger and all that, you know.

We're still enjoying our new place to the hilt, too. I'm in awe of living in a place new enough that when I clean spaces they actually stay clean-looking for more than fifteen minutes. Not that I'm some big fanatical Dear Heloise-reading housekeeper, because I'm not, but neither do I like to live in absolute squalor. After so many years of living in subpar housing out of necessity/poverty, it's nice to be able to afford something clean, quiet, and in a decent, middle-class neighborhood.

I've finally adjusted to evening schedule, insofar as that is possible, and my circadian rhythms have adapted accordingly. I'm now able to tolerate staying up until 1 or 2a.m. in the morning and still get up at a decent hour. It's not that I don't feel like utter shit at work some days, but it's usually not because I'm tired. Work was hard this week, but I've detailed that ad naseum elsewhere.

It's also finally gotten cold here, after stalling blissfully in a sort of Yankee Version of Indian Summer. We had recent days when the temps were as high as the low seventies, and it was just lovely. I'm grateful for whatever reprieve from the cold winter months as I can get, because if I never believed there was such a thing as Seasonal Affective Disorder before, I certainly do now. Maybe living in a nicer place will be a panacea for all that sulky miserable cold (not to mention fucking endless) though. Any way, there's definetly a bracing chill in the air now, and I noticed frost on the cars this morning when I woke up (far too early at 5 a.m., may I add).

Oh shit. I just realized it's going to be Thanksgiving next Thursday. I'm not obliged to cook big fancy turkeys for anyone (thank God, because no matter how hard I try to be that good little engine that could, I just can't get into cooking on a regular basis) but I am required to work. Working isn't what the "oh shit" moment was about though. It's the dismay at the thought that pretty soon all the radio channels will be clogging the airwaves with noxious repeats of holiday Christmas classics. I mean, I'm no Grinch, and I still watch Peanuts Holiday Specials and all that, but there's only so many times you can listen to "It's Beginning to Look at a Lot Like Christmas" without wanting to strangle your neighbor instead of loving him/her.

Oo, it's the weekend! Time to luxuriate in happy thoughts, afternoon naps, sprawling hours of dreaming up new knitting projects and maybe even starting a new book. I recently finished The Known World by Edward P. Jones, but I couldn't quite get excited about it in the Pulitzer-prize way I was apparently supposed to. So shoot me.