A Day Almost Entirely without Incident

 

. . . except for Hurricane Aethelstan throwing himself around out there tonight, stomping and shouting, him and his chums, all of whom have loud voices and big feet.*  You know there was actual SUNLIGHT in Hampshire earlier today?  Sunlight.  Thrilling.  Random people on the street smile at you under such extraordinary conditions.**  It couldn’t last, of course.  Aethelstanian rain bangs against the door so hard it’s driven in over the sill, and the next morning your draught excluder will be soaking wet.

But earlier today I celebrated.  I hung laundry.  I went to the bank.  I bought dental floss.***  I did a lot of hellcritter hurtling.   Pav is, of course, still on heat, which means the hellpack are not doing much milling around together indoors, not because of the risk of literal puppies—it’s not like I EVER leave them alone EVER EEEEEEEEVER†—but because it makes the hellhounds anxious.  They’re pretty sure they should be doing something but they don’t know what it is.  Fortunately.  Chaos, who is chiefly absorbed in the thoughts [sic], feelings and immediate comfort of Chaos, is pretty willing to let whatever it is get on with whatever it is.  He’s also the one who has quite a lot of time for a manic hellterror under ordinary circumstances and he’s a little befuddled by current events but . . . hey.  Darkness, however, is disconcerted and disoriented—and very interested in the hellterror, for whom he has no use during the rest of their lives together under the same roof, interested in a shiny alert way I don’t like at all:  it reminds me of a stallion pulling his top line together to show off to a mare.  Darkness is the thinker of my little hellpack.  He may not know what sex is, but he’d figure it out, if I gave him the opportunity.  I am not giving him the opportunity.††

Still.  Barring the major rolling-eyed moan from Darkness every morning when he wakes up and she’s still there and she’s still giving off all those PHEROMONES I don’t really think either of the boys is all that bothered.††† The poor hellterror herself, however, doesn’t like whatever this is MAKE IT GO AWAAAAAAAAAAY.  She is, for her, subdued.  She is spending more time in her crate but ordinarily if I’ve, you know, lost track of time a little, there will be reminders that there is a crated critter nearby who feels that she has been crated long enough.  I am taking both hellcritter shifts out for longer and/or more frequent hurtles—WHICH IS INTERESTING IN THIS WEATHER‡—while I’m necessarily keeping them mostly separate and she’s not hucklebutting and she checks back to make sure I’m still on the other end of the lead far oftener than usual.  And she does not like that Swollen Thing attached to her back end.‡‡  I’m hoping this is adolescence.  If she’s miserable every time she’s in season I’ll have to make up my mind about that litter sooner rather than later, because I will have her spayed.

* * *

* Maybe they’re responsible for the knee-deep craters in the drive out by the gate into the parkland around the Big Pink Blot and its mews.  I assume that after the first person dents his or her Jag or Mercedes wheel rim on one of these extreme potholes something will be done.

** And at least you can see the random dogs coming from farther away in good light.

*** I had a cruise through the newsagent’s for new knitting magazines.  No new knitting magazines.  Sob.

† If I need thirty seconds to have a pee, I take Pav with me.  It’s okay, she’s easily amused.

†† Mind you, she’d have to stand on the sofa.  I suspect the ‘no dogs on the sofa unless invited by a human’ rule would slip their minds.

††† There are sex-machine sighthounds, but I think they’re rare.  Certainly the ones I’ve had anything to do with have been, at most, gentlemanly, and sheer indifference is not unknown.  Sighthounds are just not creatures of the flesh:  food.  Meh.  Sex.  Meh.  And there are many sighthound bitches notorious for coming into season invisibly—and out again stealthily, leaving the owner hoping for puppies at a loss [sic] again.  Who, me, boss?  Not me.  You’re thinking of some other bitch.  That nice spaniel, maybe.  She looks pretty hot.

‡ We had another epic downpour last night and the bridge over the ford at the Soggy Bottom end of town—the bridge that not long ago had enough water running over it that it came over the tops of the rubber edges of your All Stars—is now ANKLE DEEP.  No lie.  And blasting downhill like an Olympic slalom team.  Don’t go there.

‡‡ I do know that bitch pants exist.^  If she keeps her lady bits we’ll probably eventually go there.  I admit I don’t much fancy convincing her to wear them—this is the hellterror I can’t leave in her harness unsupervised for twenty seconds because she will eat it—but there’s also the fact that since she’s already oppressed by biology I don’t want to make it worse.

^ You can even get cute ones.  http://www.nappypantsfordogs.com/bitch-in-season-pants-8-c.asp

And speaking of the gruesome realities of critters, this+ made me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh . . . but WARNING TO ANYONE OF A SENSITIVE [critter-free] NATURE:  YOU PROBABLY DON’T WANT TO READ THIS.  YOU SHOULD GET ON WITH YOUR KNITTING OR HAVE A NICE CUP OF TEA OR SOMETHING.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/dog_paradox

+ Thank you southdowner and b_twin