Town shot, just because. I actually took this a week ago Friday, when I was walking up to the coffee shop to meet my friend Lisa, but I don't think I ever posted the little series of photos from that walk. We have many of these restored advertising murals on buildings around town, and I love them.
Saturday morning, and I'm the only one up so far, having slept well last night. Drinking my coffee, enjoying the quiet . . . Today I'm going to walk with Dora (to Walsingham! to Walsingham! we won't get there today!), plant the raspberries I gave my husband for our anniversary, and wash my hair in preparation for our anniversary date night tonight in Blowing Rock. The nice thing about having your wedding anniversary fall on a Friday in Lent is that 1) you can celebrate the vigil on Thursday night with a nice dinner, 2) you can mark the actual anniversary on Friday night with a nice SALMON dinner, and 3) you can then go out and live it up on Saturday, because by dinnertime it's the vigil for Sunday, which is always the best time in Lent.
Anyway, it will be fun to go up the mountain, and I'm looking forward to it. I've missed our Thursday-night pub date nights, which were the chief thing we gave up for Lent. I like having something to dress up for just a little bit every week (other than Mass), even if it's just the pub where nobody is really dressed up. I always add just a little something in the way of a going-out tweak to whatever I'm wearing, and I have missed having a reason to do that. That's what Lent is FOR, so I shall shoulder that particular cross and get on with it. BUT tonight I'll set it down and have a good time.
Marinade for salmon, because it was so good:
*juice of one orange
*probably a half-tablespoon of curry powder
*probably a half-tablespoon of smoked paprika
*big squidge of ginger paste
*salt & pepper
Mix into fragrant paste in bowl, brush onto fish, let marinate for half an hour, bake 20 minutes (adjust time for filet size; ours were kind of medium-sized, and 20 minutes was perfect).
I also roasted some big halved brussels sprouts: sauteed in butter in iron pan first to coat them and start them browning, with smoked paprika (do you sense a theme here? I just bought some yesterday, so everything is going to taste like smoked paprika for a while), salt, pepper, and a dash of garlic powder. Then I put them, in the iron skillet, in the oven for about 45 minutes. They turned out delightfully crispy on the outside, perfectly done within.
Anyway, it was a nice anniversary dinner, though I say it myself. Thirty-three years . . . a very biblical number of years to have been married.
The sun's out, the sky's blue. I haven't checked temperatures yet, but it's supposed to be chillier this weekend than it had been earlier in the week. (Having now checked): today's high looks like almost 60F, not bad. Tomorrow will be much colder, with rain, so I had better get out and enjoy the sun and mildness while we have it.
Wearing for the day, at any rate, with walking and gardening on the roster:
Basically a repeat of Thursday's outfit, but with a navy merino-blend base-layer tee (Patagonia, thrifted), and old cotton socks I bought at Aldi some years ago, with my Birk boots. Still deciding what my walking routes will be today, as the greenway will be very crowded with walkers and, probably, dogs. We've been having a time of it with Dora's dog reactivity lately. It's just been impossible to walk anywhere without at least one dog barking at her, which means that her emotional baseline winds up being a lot closer to threshold than it would otherwise. Even late at night, we get a lot of barking as we pass houses --- everybody else seems to put their dogs outside at night.
I always have kibble with me, in my leash-belt pouch, so that I can scatter some in the grass across the street from a barking dog, and/or give her treats by hand as we walk by. But it's a struggle, our biggest training challenge currently. And the more whacked out she is by barking dogs, the more whacked out she is generally. I've had to carry a squirt bottle with some vinegar-water, because when she gets really whacked out, she starts jumping at me and biting, sometimes hard. She doesn't mean it aggressively --- it's a kind of too-wound-up play, like a toddler who's about to melt into a tantrum. But the experience is aggressive, not to mention unpleasant, and also has meant that I've had to mend some more tears in my favorite puffer jacket. Scattering kibble for her to sniff helps some, as does making her sit (she will still obey that command) and treating her for exercising that impulse control, but I've had to go to something a little aversive for the actual jumping and biting. Fortunately it works fast, and means that I and my clothing don't get bitten.
That is the thing about a young dog (Dora is not quite 3): what you're dealing with is basically a nonverbal toddler, with a toddler's level of impulse control, but also with far more physical power and coordination and sharper teeth. A toddler may throw a tantrum that leaves you still jangling three days later, but they don't have the capacity to hurt you physically in the way that a dog can, without ever meaning to. The whole deal with a dog and training is very like habit-acquisition for a child: your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify habits you want to change, and to replace them with new and better habits. This means consistent work over time, and it means one thing at a time. Dora has come a long way --- she's a lot better with new people than she used to be. But the dog business, as in other dogs, remains a problem. Part of the problem is that just about anywhere we might walk, we're going to run into at least one dog whose handler doesn't have it under particularly solid control. We're going to pass some other dog --- even though we give it as wide a berth as we possibly can --- that's going to lunge or bark at Dora, or at least make some kind of loud breathing noise that makes her come undone (as a person with misophonia, I can sympathize with this: that breathing would make me unhinged, too). And the more we pass them, the thinner her veneer of control.
I like, actually, walking through the semi-industrial neighborhood we have to pass through to get to the top of the greenway trail, even though there's no sidewalk. There's literally never anybody walking there but us. No dogs. Nothing. I also like walking down by the wooded ravine behind the gym at the end of our street, because on that side of the loop road, at any rate, again there's nobody but us. Of course, as soon as we round the far end of the loop, the little dog on the back deck behind the brick house goes nuts, and Dora's hair stands on end, and that's that: we're in thin-veneer territory. And this might be the trigger for her to start jumping at me, which is why the squirt bottle in my coat pocket. I don't like using a negative consequence, but I can't really replace the undesirable habit with something else until she decides that for her, too, the habit is undesirable. Dogs will do what works for them, and will not do what doesn't work for them. So I have to make jumping and biting at me seriously not work for Dora. Yes, I'd like to replace that with something that does work, but I've come to the conclusion that that habit has to result in something she really doesn't want, that she can't possibly mistake for part of the game, before we can move forward with something better.
(One source I read said to carry breath spray, because dogs hate the peppermint taste --- I meant to get some when I went to the store for dog food yesterday and forgot . . . so for now, squirt bottle of vinegar-water it is. Come to think of it, though, I could just use the Fresh Dental stuff I put in her drinking water, because she hates that, too).
All of this, incidentally, makes me ponder what's going on with dogs that attack and maul people. I think about that every time Dora starts jumping at me. She is not, generally speaking, an aggressive dog at all. If anything, she's too submissive, inclined to cower and roll over and pee on the floor. I've never heard her growl, except in play. She's not food-protective. Anybody she trusts can handle her all over. Lance used to bite us if we messed with his paws, but not Dora. She is meekness itself --- UNTIL we're outside on the leash, and something in her psyche goes sproing. I know that it's hyper-arousal, again like that wild toddler playing that so often precedes a total meltdown. It is the dog version of a toddler meltdown (usually happens after she's been in her crate for a while, too . . . not that I'm not going to crate her when I need to, but I know that being confined and then let out is part of it).
But anyway. I do think about these dog-mauling cases, because I wonder if that's how it starts. I especially wonder about the dynamic with multiple dogs --- virtually every bad dog-mauling case I've read about has involved at least two dogs, not one, which makes me wonder about their winding each other up and feeding on each other's out-of-control energy, which might be further fed by the human victim's response, which they might interpret as part of the game (slapping at them, pushing them away, even screaming). Obviously the bigger and more powerful the dogs are, the more dangerous the scenario. But this dynamic that I've observed in my own dog, which is disturbing enough, let me tell you --- she's not that big, and she's not normally aggressive, but I can't express how much I hate this particular game of hers --- seems like an explanation for why these family dogs suddenly snap and kill somebody.
Which is not, mind you, to propose any solution, or to say anything about particular breeds. It's just a possible explanation that I've been chewing on. It does highlight that importance of supervising dogs --- any dogs --- with children, especially, but really with any people the dog might not be familiar and comfortable with, or who might not know how to help the dog calm down. What the dog and the other person both think of as a game could go terribly awry, because the dog might not know how to reverse that emotional spiral it gets into, having been wound up to a fever pitch in exactly the same way that a toddler might be. And if there are two dogs, they're going to behave like two children, winding each other up and up. Just to know this about dogs, it seems to me, is powerful. It means that you're watching their mood and managing them, which is the substance of most dog training, really, as it is for early-years parenting. It's not about sit and stay. It's really primarily about how not to get into a particular mood to begin with, but also what to do to get out of that mood when it happens. AND it's about knowing that however good your dog might be, it's still a dog and will always have a dog's reactions, not a person's. You have to set your expectations to accord with reality.
(Also, yes, I generally put my dog away in her crate when new people are over, or else keep her tethered to my waist with the leash belt when she's not in the crate. She does get to know people and relax around them and act normal, but I'm very careful not even to begin to inflict her on somebody who doesn't love dogs . . . I also use medication to help take the edge off her emotions, though coming down from the meds is generally quite the experience, as she passes through a phase of hyperactivity, with even more of the behavior I've just been describing)
So, anyway, the squirt bottle. I'm waiting for my puffer jacket to come out of the dryer, having been first mended, then washed. I'll put the squirt bottle in one of my pockets, and off we'll go, on some course which I hope will not bring us face to face with too many dogs.
LATE MORNING:
I thought it would be more, but even with gardening, my pilgrimage walk (into which I've rolled pretty much everything I'm doing today that involves taking steps), I've gone only about a mile and a half.
BUT
*we have had a nice walk around the neighborhood, which included being rushed by an off-leash dog that came out of a house and wouldn't listen when its owner called (sigh). Dora, to her IMMENSE credit, just stood there while the other dog sniffed her, and didn't bristle at it or bark.
*I've planted my two raspberry bushes ("plant this season, harvest next season"), plus I've dug up some blackberries out of the bed by the drive, obviously children of other blackberries I had previously dug up from that bed and moved to the fenced garden, and planted them along my fenced-garden perimeter with the other blackberries. I think that brings the number of my blackberry canes to eight. Eight blackberry canes, two raspberries, five blueberries, plus three mulberry trees at various stages of growth --- and we'll see, eventually, whether any of the mulberries are female and will bear fruit. They're all volunteers, and have so far been immature, so I have no idea about their prospects as fruit trees.
MORE GARDEN PLANS:
*I want to plant more mints (in containers) for a more extensive tea garden. I have plenty of apple mint growing freely all around the property, and also lots of hoary mountain mint. But I'd like to add some other specialty varieties to make tea with: pineapple mint, for example, and spearmint, and orange mint, and . . . whatever else I can find.
*I definitely want to plant calendulas, to make calendula wine this year.
*I want to move my strawberry container (so heavy I can't budge it, so I'll need help) so that it sits parallel to the stepping stones, rather than perpendicular, and leaves me more room along the fence with the gate in it for planting something, probably pole beans that I can train up the fence.
*I plan to plant tomatoes in the ground this year, not in containers, along the long end of the fence with the gate in it, so that I can tie them up against the fence. I can plant basil and marigolds in a row in front of them.
LATER STILL:
Sitting in the sun with wet, crispy gel hair. I want to let it get mostly dry, then diffuse it the rest of the way before I scrunch the crispiness out. This is a reliable good-hair method, but it looks so stupid in medias res. It's especially lovely when you scrunch your aged forehead, too.
Or snarl.
Even Dora doesn't make this face.
I've been gradually acquiring frames for the arty daughter's offerings---this little green frame feels especially fun and springlike.
I'm enjoying filling up the walls more and more.
Not that I don't appreciate negative space, of which you always need some. But this house is a Cabinet of Curiosities, a Minimalism-Free Zone (also a Zone Where We Have Random Dog Leashes Attached To Furniture). And we like it that way.
PS: I think I've finally vanquished the sweaty-armpit smell in my blue merino cardigan. What finally did it was just dousing the armpits in straight vinegar, then hanging it outside in the sun and wind. It smells fine now. A little vinegary, maybe, but that's a massive improvement. Now I keep obsessively smelling all my clothes, just in case. So far, nothing else has any smell at all.
Date-night outfit:
Willow dress, very old thrifted silk/cashmere cardigan, navy Snag merino tights, Tari boots.
Improved hair:
I'm also no longer snarling, probably because I'm being taken out shortly for drinks and dinner.