Yesterday was Donna’s birthday, and I am once again the junior partner in our relationship (she has half a year on me). We celebrated with matching Covid boosters and a lovely dinner prepared and curated by celebrity chef Crouton deMenthe (moi), pasta carbonara and a Caesar salad (all but the pasta from scratch, including authentic anchovy/raw egg Caesar dressing and the croutons). With our dinner, a movie: Hitchcock’s Rear Window (streaming on Amazon), which unaccountably neither of us had ever seen before.
Even more momentous: the wheelchair ramp in my Amazon cart.
No, it’s not for us … whew! It’s for Mister B, our elderly dachshund, who’s having trouble getting through the pet flap in the kitchen door. The dogs use it to access the back yard and patio, and since there’s three of them we hear it flapping often. A few weeks ago I heard a flap that sounded different, followed by a quiet whine. I got up to see what was going on and there was Mister B halfway through the flap, his head and front paws in the kitchen, his hindquarters still on the patio, high-centered like a Jeep hung up on a boulder. I grabbed his collar and gently pulled him the rest of the way inside.
It seemed like a one-time thing … that is until yesterday, when he got hung up again. Now that I look, I see the problem. From the kitchen side, the bottom sill of the pet flap is only three inches above the floor. From the patio side, though, it’s eight inches up from the deck. That’s a big ask for a short-legged fella our age in dog years, with arthritic hips to boot. I’m thinking a ramp on the patio side of the door, one with a five-inch lift, will make going in and out manageable for him. Now to convince Donna we need it.
He sleeps in bed with us (as do the other two, Fritzi & Lulu). He usually starts stirring just before dawn, needing to pee, waking me and the other two dogs. I let them out through the bedroom patio door, then go back to bed. They use the pet flap, which is at the other end of the house, to get back inside and return to bed, Fritzi always first, then Lulu, then, trailing by a few minutes, Mister B. I may be back under the covers, but I’m awake and listening, counting to be sure all three are safely back. Now I worry the old guy’ll get stuck in the pet flap again and I won’t hear him crying from the kitchen, and maybe I’d better get out of bed, put on a bathrobe, and go check … but so far he’s making it back inside on his own. Perhaps he’s more spry in the morning than later in the day.
I’m slowly putting together another banned book news roundup, perhaps my last one. Not that I’m losing interest … it’s more that I don’t feel I’m contributing anything to the debate. Book banning is getting more media coverage than ever. Do we really need yet another podunk blogger culling links to news stories and editorials, most of which everyone’s already seen and all of which are essentially the same? What’s happening in Alabama is the same shit happening in Idaho. What’s happening today is exactly the same shit that happened during the Reagan years, and before that during the McCarthy years. Book banners may be more organized than ever, but they’re the same racist puritanical theocratic creeps they’ve always been. And, more importantly, kids and adults who want to read forbidden books have an easier time than ever accessing them, thanks to the internet. So … don’t look for much more from me on this topic.
I had been dipping into Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books in a disorganized way but am now reading them in order, having belatedly realized the importance of doing so in terms of understanding Bosch’s character development. Early Bosch or late Bosch, though, the books alone or accompanied by the excellent streaming TV series on Amazon, he’s always a great read.
That’s it for now. More soon.