Black Doggerel

Dear Spike,

I know it's important for you to perform the Mighty Pawing of the Ground ritual after taking your Mighty Shit of a morning, but for the love of Tuggy, don't forget to take that all-important step sideways first. I am not Mary fucking Magdalene and washing your feet afterwards should not have to be part of the ritual.

Much love,

Our Lady of the Mighty Throwing Arm

****

Dear Squish,

Saffron was not "looking at your bone in a funny way". Get over it and stop scaring the cats or I'll take all the damn bones away.

Kisses,

She Who Has Meatball

****

Dear Anonymous Dog Walker,

For fuck's sake get some decent food into your dog. That turd I picked up from the middle of the path this morning was studded with whole corn kernels, and the one that I stepped in yesterday had a uniquely unpleasant slippery glutinosity that caused me to land on my arse in the wet grass. It's very short-sighted of you; after all, who'll clean up after you if I break my neck or puke myself to death?

Hoping your poor unfortunate protein-starved dog eats you,

The Poo Fairy.

holy crap!

must get cat off kibble and canned. one cat turd is half again as big as one of Spike's.

she will eat the minced raw turkey and the rabbit. she looks happier about it if I mix it half and half with canned.

as soon as I get paid I'ma gonna buy her a few frozen mouses and day-old chicks.

also, spent most of the day in the bedroom with three relaxed black and white beasts, reading Lynne Reid Banks' Dark Quartet, a life of the Brontes. Mildly disturbed to recognise so much of myself in Branwell.

Spike was obnoxious a few times and has a scratched nose.

(am gradually answering all the "pimp my ego" entries. VERY gradually)

Some of you may not realise just how hard and unnatural it is for me to behave anything like a responsible adult sometimes. You don't know (because I've always been careful not to tell you) that I'm a person whose instinctive reaction to an electricity bill or a demand for council tax is to throw the brown envelope away without opening it - because if I don't let myself see the red final demand, it's obviously not real, and if I steadfastly refuse to acknowledge its existence it'll go away. And of course that'll stop them cutting off my electricity or taking me to court for non-payment, oh yes. Stands to reason, doesn't it? *rolleyes*

Now that I've admitted that, perhaps you'll understand how profoundly happy I am that right here, right now, all these things have been dealt with in a responsible adult fashion. The water bill I was ignoring has been paid, the council tax gets waived because I'm a single adult on benefits, the back rent's now being taken care of by direct debit and the last thing that was upsetting me - the electricity bill I couldn't pay - got dealt with today. Instead of throwing away the red bill or hiding it, I phoned them, and I asked them to come and fit a key meter (for Americans: this is a box on the wall into which I stick a magnetic key that gets pre-loaded with money. Pay-as-you-go electricity.) It means I'll never be blindsided by an electricity bill again, and that is a Very Good Thing.

Also, the man who came to fit it owns a working Springer Spaniel, so we had a good conversation about gundoggery and falconry and other fun things while he worked.

Elbow: the prescription-strength anti-inflammatory pills (Diclofenac, if you're curious) have helped enormously. Typing better than I have for weeks. I will probably switch the IM on tomorrow and see if I can cope.

Just came back from a walk to One Stop and back in the pissing rain, and the flat reeks of wet dog, which I rather like. Spike's invented a new trick - on the way to One Stop we pass by a garden surrounded by chain-link fence, and he's picked this as a regular crapping spot. He presses his backside against the chain-link so that the crap falls through onto the other side where I cannot possibly reach it to pick it up. Once would have been a meaningless coincidence, but he's done the same thing the last five or six times we've passed by this fence, so he's clearly doing it just to embarrass me. I'm very glad there's a bramble bush the other side of the fence, that's all.

Just finished Ashes of Victory, and oh oh oh such an ending! Beautiful work. It got off to a slower start than the others in the series, but by the end it had sucked me in so much more - possibly because I may be the only person reading this series who's less enamoured of massive space battles than the complex interactions of policy, expediency, ambition and personality.

Oh, and I yelled out loud with pleasure when Shannon Foraker... did that thing she did. Thank you topbit. Didn't half startle the dogs. (Oh, and: hms_fearless)

Apart from that, quiet lazy day today. Just come from taking the dogs for a last walk of the night up & down the length of Woodbury Avenue, and someone near the opposite end of the avenue apparently has an overfed, horse-sized dog with some weird digestive issues... massive great turds everywhere. The fact that I can't manage anything more than a mild, distasteful annoyance tells you just how fantastic a mood I'm really in. I'm not sure I could work up a rant right now if I trod in one.

Goooood morning LiveJournal!

Just come from the evil corner shop. I know, technically, that Asda are far more evil, but the corner shop (which in any case is also part of a big corporation) is a much greater evil influence in my life. The customers are all chavs, someone always turns up with another dog (usually a Staffie) while my lads are tied outside and I'm stuck in the queue for the cash till, and, worst of all, they not only sell no real food whatsoever, they also continually perpetrate buy-one-get-one-free offers on things I really don't need to be eating more of, like delicious evil fat-laden pastry slices, mini chocolate rolls and (today's special) Cadbury's Creme Eggs. I know I could buy just as much unhealthy fatty food at Asda, but at least they also stock alternatives and I can buy my dogfood there too.

The icing on the corner shop cake today? Some lackwit bottom feeding chavscum wankmonkey had left a pile of dog crap on the ground right outside the doorway. Some poor bastard had already trodden in it. I caught myself ranting about it to the poor lady behind the counter, the man with the Jack Russell that my dogs barked at (until I asked them to stop - YAYYY DOGS! We still haven't mastered not barking at strange dogs in the first place, but at least I can get them to stop) and a random lady who stopped to admire the boys. I ought to watch that. I'm already more than halfway to being the Mad Dog Lady - I'm not sure being Mad Ranting Dogshit Lady is going to win me friends and influence people.

Although if some of them start picking up after their dogs for fear of being unseamed from the nave to the chops when I catch them at it, perhaps it'd be worth it...

Enough, already. I was cheered up on the way home by a glorious aerial dogfight over my head - a carrion crow and two of the bigger gulls (I'm not sure what they are - I'm guessing either herring gulls or lesser black-backs) were trying to pirate a chicken bone from a black-headed gull. The bigger birds are faster and more intimidating, but black-headed gulls a. don't scare easily and b. are as agile as fuck. It reminded me of Spike stealing Squish's ball and Squish chasing him to get it back - Squish is much, much faster than Spike, but since Spike can go to full speed from a standing start, stop dead in his tracks at full speed and twist, dodge and change direction without noticeably slowing down, Squish can never, ever catch him. The black-headed gull pulled a Crazy Ivan on them and flew off with its bone while the other three birds were still wondering where the hell it had gone.

And I won't have to beg for car rides or put myself through gruelling bus journeys to buy dog food or put up with the Evil Corner Shop any more, because Sainsbury's is reopening today! Ding dong, the witch is dead! I am going to go down there tonight and lick the cash tills and dry-hump the store manager.

Or I might just buy some frozen chicken parts and something nice for my supper with an air of quiet jubilation. We'll see.

Squish is obsessively eating grass today. This probably means I'll be cleaning up puke before day's end. It's also very frustrating for Spike, having to stand still while his compatriot grazes like a dairy cow, but I alleviate that a little by letting him play tug-of-war with the leash. I probably shouldn't do that on principle, but I include some training in it by making him practise his off-switch - besides, it's fun.

There's a particularly ugly and grubby local child who's taken a liking to my lads after seeing Spike leap lightly to the top of a six-foot wall to check out a cat in someone's garden. He thinks Spike is like Superman. I can't blame him for that, but I wish he wouldn't ask so many incomprehensible questions. Yesterday I had to deploy the Glare of Death on him when he attempted to slap Spike for me after Spike accidentally caught my finger in the tug game. YOU DO NOT SLAP MY DOG, snotmonkey!

At least I've impressed some principles of responsible dog ownership on him. I think he was under the impression that I carried bags of dogshit around with me for amusement until I explained that only disgusting foul rude people didn't pick up after their dogs. Poo Police: The Next Generation!

In other news, my Dad sent me three hundred dollars via my aunt, who visited last week... I've been wondering what useful, permanent and not too frivolous thing I ought to do with it, and I think I'm going to spend it on the flat. It ought to cover the remainder of the black vinyl floor (I miscalculated the original amount slightly, so the hallway and bathroom are still floorless) and leave enough over for repainting. I am so very, very sick of the magnolia walls and Council pondslime coloured doors... Terok Nor, here we come!

It says something about how fortunate - or perhaps merely optimistic - I am when the only thing capable of moving me to vicious rantage is the arseholes who don't pick up after their dogs. It's especially annoying when they use the same dog walking routes as I do, because I know my dogs are far more attractive and memorable and conspicuous than theirs - meaning that unless I pick up after their stinking unfortunate malnourished curs myself, people are going to jump to the conclusion that I'm the disgusting bastard leaving a trail of shit everywhere I go.

I did have a vindicating moment last week when I witnessed a couple with a Shih-Tzu in flagrante delicto. I gave them my very best Winn Adami smile and asked them with excruciating politeness if they needed a plastic bag. I watched gleefully as the miserable worms discovered under my relentless burning gaze that, oh my, what a surprise, they did have one after all. I didn't shift my eyes or my smile until the pavement was clean. It was glorious.

Autumn is getting into its stride here, and since our street is lined with beautiful mature oak trees, we are inundated with grey squirrels. They sit on fences and chatter at us, they flaunt their tails from the tops of fences and they play chicken in front of us while poor Spike is reduced to a frothing predatory frenzy. He's getting much better at climbing trees, and since he can now get six or eight feet up a branchless trunk without much effort, I'm getting good at catching him in my arms on the way down. Every trip round the block to have a pee has become a mixture of obstacle course, suburban safari and rock star tour: "Hey, that's the amazing tree-climbing dog, isn't it? Wow! Can I have his autograph?"

I only let him climb the ones I know he can't get too far up, and those only if the ground underneath is springy turf - although part of me longs to see how well he'd manage a really climbable tree, the only way he knows to get down is falling out - and although he lands on his feet as well as any cat, I haven't forgotten that it's my job to stop him biting off more than he can chew. It still attracts a lot of attention.


In other news, the rest of my head space is entirely taken up with the collaboration - also known as The Fanfic That Ate My Brain. When captain_lila shows up I shall beg her for permission to show you her Klingon stories - read those, and read my Brinkmanship, and if you don't see why I'm all moist and breathless with this particular creative process I'll damn you for an anhedonic minion of soulless orthodoxy, so I will.

Getting back to it now...

Nicked from faith_of_borg
( Meme cut for width )

urgh...

Spike woke me at six o'clock barking his head off at nothing, so I watched two more B5 episodes (in which the poncy telepath blew himself up, yay!) and then went back to sleep, only to be woken again at nine by Spike barking again, this time while sitting on my head. That'll teach me not to take them out, I guess - though it was peeing with rain all day...

Then, when I let them out to pee he bounced up to the top of the fence to hang there by his armpits barking at something I couldn't see... it looked particularly bizarre, since he did this on the only fence panel left standing between our garden and next door's. Squish, meanwhile, took advantage of Spike's sturm und drang to sneak a crap at the bottom of next door's garden. Having to go out in my nightie to pick up dog turds is never a good way to wake up in the morning, but it had to be done - I figure if our garden looks like a minefield that's my problem, but I can't very well inflict it on next door...