Young's Double Chocolate Stout and Snyder's of Hanover pretzel rods. I have some renta teevee to watch, but right now I am enjoying the sound of the rain outside and the relative quiet inside.
It has been a busy week. T arrived on Tuesday while I was at work, and he and the b.h. had dinner together at a fancy-ish place in town. I brought home a veggie burger and fries for myself, plopping on the couch on my arrival and announcing to T that he was going to have to do the talking while I inhaled my dinner.
He did, and it was amusing. T and I are the same age, and he has some issues, shall we say, with the ladies. It seems that he has a feast or famine kind of problem, and th past three years have been far more of the latter than the former. Until about two weeks ago, when multiple women came crashing into his life from various directions. The one he seems most inclined toward is fifteen years younger than us, which is all very amusing. So his story was plenty long enough for me to finish eating, and I think I was likely through my first beer and cigarette by the time he was through. (Though I am not a real smoker, I have a tendency to binge on occasion, those occasions usually occurring when I am either on vacation or hosting a smoker on theirs).
We stayed up until about four, and just as we were both starting to wind down, there was a short bark and Kilgore went crashing into the screen door, which he somehow managed to go through without breaking despite the fact that it has been latched. It was dark in the porch, and it happened so fast that I wasn't even sure he had gone out. I went over and felt at the door to see if he had gone through the screen, and when I saw that he hadn't, I stood up, puzzled, and called his name. I heard him in the yard, and when I unlatched the door he came flying back through it, all foaming at the mouth and rolling around rubbing his head on the floor. Just as we were trying to figure out what the hell had happened, the smell hit us.
I thought something was on fire. It smelled like burning plastic, and I flipped on the porch light and picked up the ashtray, looking all around the table for something melting. No dice. The dog was still foaming at the the mouth a bit, so I went in the house, an him upstairs, ordered him into the shower, and rinsed his head and mouth thoroughly with warm water. Then we all went to bed.
The next day, T and I were on our way into the house from the car when my neighbor John came up the drive.
"Just wanted to warn you in case you walk your dogs at night. There is a new family of skunks in the neighborhood."
"You don't say." I explained the incident from the previous night.
"Well, that explains the dead one I found in Wes and Linda's yard."
I guess it does. Last night T and I and the dogs were out on the porch again late into the night. At one point, unnoticed by either dog (Wyatt was snoring and KG was loudly chewing a rawhide bone on the other side of the room), something scratched at the screen door. I got up slowly, leapt over to it, and shut it as quickly as possible. There will be no skunk retribution on my watch.