Fog and stuff

It is a dark and stormy night....

And foggy, too. On evenings like this, I feel autumn coming. Just a foretaste. By tomorrow, we’ll be hot and humid again, but tonight...it’s oddly autumn-ish.

And did I mention fog? It’s like pea soup out there. I had a couple of late errands to run and as I was rounding a corner a few blocks away, a young lad on his bicycle rounded the same corner on my side of the road. Coming toward me, that is. We came very close to meeting, up close and personal. That always makes my heart race a bit. Truly, I wish kids would ride their bikes on the correct side of the road and that parents would teach their children to ride their bikes on the correct side of the road. Going in the same direction as traffic. I understand that some people feel they are safer if they ride facing traffic, but I’ve now had enough close encounters with kids riding on the wrong side of the road to suggest it is NOT safer. God forbid, but one of these days one of these kids is going to run smack into me. And he was riding in the dusk, in the thick fog, wearing dark clothes, without a light on his bike or person. Accident just waiting to happen. I am just very, very fortunate that I saw him in the nick of time. It was pretty close.

Anyway. My final errand of the evening was a stop at McDonald’s to pick up two plain cheeseburgers for Terry [the greyhound]. I am on a ‘make Terry fat’ campaign. I personally don’t think it’s possible to make Terry fat, but looking a little less like a refugee would be a good thing. She has always been skinny. And her metabolism is crazy. She goes through periods where she drops weight and looks really scary skinny. In all the years that she’s lived here, we have never discovered a reason why she drops weight suddenly and then gains it back, but it’s a repeating cycle. She’s had every medical test known to dogdom and she is healthy. (Well, aside from the occasional intestinal inflammation that requires a week of prednisone. Terry is a fragile girl.) The vet suggested that on top of her regular rations, plus a little, a couple of plain cheeseburgers would be just the ticket a couple or three times a week. And believe me, she loves them. They do make a difference. I still don’t think I could ever make that dog fat, but we could do without the refugee look. We’re gaining on it and she’s filling out a bit this week. She certainly is a happy pup right now with her full tummy.