Food, Fire, and Beer.

A perfect recipe for Sunday. The b.h. is in the kitchen making Welsh rarebit, and I have built the fire and cued up a DVD. I will be enjoying a Victory Storm King Stout with my meal, courtesy of my co-worker M, who bought me the sixpack to thank me for giving him a pair of jeans and an old Carhart jacket just in time for our weather to dip into the thirties.
I slept in yesterday after a very long week. It felt great. Woke up around ten-thirty and had coffee and read while the b.h. made some breakfast. We walked the dogs before I had to go to work and he to Birmingham to play a show.
Work was busy but mostly uneventful, and though I was working with my least favorite co-worker, she is just back from a three week holiday so was much less moody and more pleasant to be around than usual.
Afterward we sat around and had a beer and then I came home and finished up a giant piece of veggie lasagna that I had leftover (Depalmas - Lauren is really the shit), drank another beer and answered an e-mail from my sister.
Today I slept in again, this time even longer (I know, but I worked eight shifts this week so I feel entitled to some serious loafing), put some cardamom in my coffee, and took the dogs to Ben Burt0n Park. Kilgore spent the bulk of his time in the river, despite the presence of five or six other dogs that would have been happy to play with him. He loves to swim, and will chase sticks for hours if I let him, but he never actually brings them back to me so the game usually ends when the stick supply runs out. Wyatt spent his time sniffing around the other dogs and waiting by the water's edge for his brother to emerge so he could attack him.
We spent some time hiking in the woods, then I packed them back in the car and took them to the pet store to bathe them.
I usually bathe them at home, but we don't have a bathtub, only a shower stall, and with Wyatt being as low as he is the the ground, it is difficult to get him fully clean. My crazy co-worker from the ISA told me that a pet store in town has an actual dog washing station, so I decided to give it a try.
Since they were both wet and filthy, I went in without the boys first, to see what the deal was.
The deal was that it would cost me thirteen bucks for both of them, but they were closing the dogwash in half an hour.
"Is that going to be enough time?" the cashier asked me.
"God I hope so. If it takes me longer than that, then I'm obviously doing something wrong."

I paid up and went back to fetch the boys from the car. The room with the dogwashing station has two large sinks, each of which has a ramp you put in front of them so your dog can walk up. Then, in theory, they walk through a sort of chute and into the sink, you close the chute behind them, and commence to bathing. The sink, however, has a grate on the bottom, which some dogs don't particularly like the feel of. Even Kilgore, who is normally quite well behaved and doesn't mind a bath at all, gave me a hard time. I had to leave his collar on and hold him in the sink while I turned on the faucets and adjusted the water temperature. Even when I got the water warm and started to hose him down, he wiggled and squirmed and tried to jump over the side, so I had to wash him with one hand while I held his collar with the other. I also had to body block him the whole time, so water was running all over me and the floor. In the meantime, Wyatt was still on the floor, alternately sniffing around the dirty towel bin and scratching at the door to get out.
I finished up with KG and let hime down, and he ran circles around the tiny room on the wet floor, whining loudly while I hoisted Wyatt's wide ass up into the sink. (I had tried to get him to go up the ramp on his own, but after witnessing what his brother went through he was having none of it. Funny thing is, the whole point in taking them to the pet store to bathe them was that bathing them at home hurts my back.)
Since he is much shorter, I had less trouble keeping Wyatt in the sink, but because the grate scared him and he was shaking the whole time, I got even wetter from his bath while trying in vain to comfort him. When he was done I put him back on the floor and proceeded to chase both of them around the room with a shop vac on reverse that served as a blow dryer. They were having none of it. Kilgore likes to be towelled off, so I was able to get him at least partly dry, but Wyatt was by this time freaking out and clawing at the door.
Did I mention that this room, which is probably about ten by ten feet, also has a large window that opens out into the store? Yep, that's right. So my sweating, cursing, and sliding all over the floor chasing the boys with towels and a dryer was witnessed by all of the other shoppers. It was fantastic. When I was finally able to leash them both again, they pranced happily through the store, clean and fluffy and happy to be done, while I followed, bedraggled and freezing, out into the fifty degree afternoon. Fortunately, I was wearing a black shirt. I seriously doubt that I will be repeating that adventure.