pictures of my niece

[dragonlady7]

So I took more than 250 photos this weekend.
Most of them were pictures of a certain small dog.

I've taken the best 49 of those and put them online:

She is the cutest ever. Really.

It was lovely to be home for the weekend. I don't sleep very well there (though last night and the night before I had Roon with me and he is a lovely bed companion except for the vomiting on the floor at 2 am), I can't get clean in that shower, and I half-freeze to death, and so on and so forth, but there's something about home that can't be beat. Mostly, it's elsewhere than here, so it makes me happy while I'm away, and makes me glad to come back here. But, of course, the family, and the incomparable scenery, are also decidedly uplifting factors.

I wish i had a cat or a dog, but Scout is so high-maintenance I understand why that's really not what I actually want. My parents haven't been out to dinner the entire month because they can't leave her home alone that long (not if they're gone all day too...).
Today was the first time Scout had actually asked to be taken out when she needed to pee. She doesn't think to ask. She didn't ask very coherently, but sat somewhat near the door, looked confusedly around, and made a funny whimpery-growly noise indicating discontent and confusion. It was just a lucky guess on my part that led me to put her on the leash and take her out.

Otherwise she is quite clever-- able to puzzle out where people are, able to remember things even after she has been distracted from them, and of course able to manipulate the hell out of my dear mother, ever the sucker.

So. I got back after having been gone nearly four days, and the fish hadn't peed on the carpet, hadn't starved to death, hadn't chewed the furniture, hadn't broken anything, hadn't gotten into the laundry, hadn't gotten into any food lying around, hadn't died of cold, and actually seemed to have missed me a little bit. So, ideal pets, at least at the moment.

I do miss the dog. She was always around and interested, and almost always affectionate. Often the affection was shown in the enthusiastic chewing of the hands of the closest person (and feet, if hands were denied), but at least it was affection, and she's so darn cute.

I also, while home, read The Nutmeg of Consolation, a book in the Patrick O'Brien series rather later than any of the others I'd read (Master & Commander is the first one). It was a lovely book, full of wonderful details (Martin, the surgeon of the Surprise, worries about waking a sleeping child; Aubrey laughs and shrewdly guesses he's never been a parent-- "When they're asleep and drooling like that, you can fair tie 'em in knots without waking them," he says, lifting the child over the side of the boat), excellent storytelling (there's a lovely plot about the British Army in New South Wales and an ongoing bit about Martin and Maturin's quest to see a Platypus), keenly-observed characters (fabulous bits about the crew's affection and tolerance of the very young, one-armed midshipman Reade, and their deeper affection and toleration of the persistently unseamanlike Maturin ["Where am I supposed to look?" Maturin asked, somewhat at a loss. "Everywhere!" Jack exclaimed. "We have changed it all entirely!"] ), pithy quotations (when asked why he was sharply demoted when young, Jack tells a dinner party full of Dutch ladies "I was overly fond of the sex"), lively action (Maturin takes precisely two seconds to severely wound a British Army officer in a duel, after the man grossly insults him and all Irishmen), and of course some of our favorite characters ("Fuck you, Richardson," said Killick). All in all, an excellent read, and a lovely way to spend a cold early-winter day. (Did we skip autumn?)

It is precisely 300 miles to Melrose from here, and it took us just over 5 hours each way including a stop to eat each direction and a separate stop for fuel each direction. (It's just about a whole tank to do the entire trip, and we started with one mostly empty.) Much better than the 7.5 hours and 400 miles it used to be from Westchester to Buffalo, but worse than the 2.5 hours and 150 miles it used to be from Westchester to Melrose. Oh well. We've made one trip longer, but Dave's mom's house is walking distance now.

There was also hiking this weekend, and a trip to Schuylerville for fresh apples-- the apples this season are exceptionally good, because an early hailstorm destroyed many of the blossoms, so fewer ripened, but those that did ripened beautifully. Sadly, our local orchard, Borden's, lost their entire crop in that hailstorm, and has had to buy apples to sell for the first time in 30 years. But, hopefully they'll survive the season, and we can go to them next year again. (They have the best cider.)

Well. That's all for now. I'm going to post this and then burn the rest of the photos to a CD to mail to Katy, so she can have it when she gets her dog back once she's back from Ft. Polk.