the underwear drawer

rear window

The dog does this at least two or three times a day. At least. Lord knows how many times she does this alone while we're at work.



First she stands by the window with her front paws on the radiator, so she's peering out the window standing upright on her back legs. From the back she looks like some creepy old stalker man, or like Jimmy Stewart in "Rear Window," minus the wheelchair in the leg cast. She'll stand in this position for a few seconds, looking out the window at lord knows what. Then, suddenly, she'll start breathing deeply and the hair along her spine will stand up. And then she'll start whining. And howling. She gets down from her perch whining and howling and running all over the room, and I'll go, "What? What? WHAT?" She'll then run back to her perch by the window, peering out intently, whining at something mysterious and menacing that apparently only she can see.

Let me be clear that there is never anything to see outside the window. Nothing. No birds. No other dogs. No kid trapped at the bottom of a well. And even if there was something interesting on the street--we live on the nineteenth floor. The dog cannot possibly see nineteen stories down to the streets below and focus on anything, let alone some pigeon or chihauhua or discarded food remnant on the pavement to set her off. Maybe if there was some gigantic fire truck or something, with flashing lights, she would be able to see that. But like I said, it's never anything big and obvious like that. So she'll be freaking out about something out the window, and we're just like, "Cooper! What? What? Shut up! God!"

Who knows, maybe she sees dead people. Really tall dead people.

So, it's Christmas Eve, and we never got around to getting a tree. We meant to. We even got new ornaments this year and everything. But getting a Christmas tree is a two-person task, and the likelihood that Joe and I were...

1.) Both off from work at the same time and

2.) Not passed out on the couch as while watching "King of the Hill"

...was extremely low these past few weeks. So now we have all these sad ornaments sitting in a box. Hey, but if we just wait a couple of days, we can have all the free Christmas trees that we want! (tm Calvin's dad) Or maybe we could just get pick a branch off a bigger tree and mount it on a piece of wood to make a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Then we could stand around it singing "Loo loo loo, loo loo loo loo loo" because Linus taught us the true meaning of Christmas. (Hint: it's Jesus.)

Tonight we're having dinner with my family and doing presents at my parent's house. We open presents on Christmas Eve. Because it allows us to sleep in on Christmas Day, see. I still have some last-minute wrapping to do, because I'm a slacker. Gotta go take care of that.

Currently reading: "Peepshow." Joe Matt drives me crazy. Every time he talks about how much he fetishizes "Oriental women" I just want to smack him. That fucker's lucky he lives in Canada.