January 22, 2010. Friday.
Situation: I wake up early today and learn from Moi that Mway threw up last night in her bedroom. While Moi and I are both down in the kitchen, Mway throws up again. Moi yells at me because I am slow at grabbing paper towels. Right now I hear Mway outside on her morning walk with Moi. She is barking up a storm. It’s a busy day today before I go to work around 4 – phone interview with the Sun-Gazette, report into CALL-TRACK, my automated probation officer. Moi talks to Barb Dennehy on the phone, tells her the Boy is on his way to Colorado for a gig with ESPN’s coverage of extreme sports; they plan to get together at 11:30 pm to watch the last tonight show hosted by Conan O’Brien. I pay a bill, work in the music room for about 15 minutes while Moi goes into town. I go up to rest and read before Moi does. But about 2:30 I go into the kitchen before Moi and Mway wake up, reheat some coffee. Out the kitchen windows, see a whole bunch of cardinals, a bluejay, some other birds I can’t identify, a squirrel up on the roof of the summer house. I go upstairs to put on my walking clothes, then back downstairs to put on boots and snowsuit. Mway sneeks downstairs into the kitchen.
State of the Path: Outside she starts sniffing at the edge of the lawn, then under the abandoned rabbit hutch attached to the old outbuilding. Moi’s garden pond, which has been filled with ice, is now full of green scum, presided over by a cupid statue. I don’t see the dead field mouse on the path. Mway takes a dump. We take the usual circuit, down to the creek and back. I don’t see any birds.
State of the Creek: The brown scum of cow piss foam has dispersed across the width of the creek, forming bands along the far bank and ripples across the water toward a partially submerged ice shelf hanging onto the nearby bank.
The Fetch: Mway catches the stick on a bounce on the second throw. But that’s it, she tells me with a glance of her eyes as she runs past me. Two fetches, that’s all we do nowadays.
