Seasonal adjustments

The weather has been very fickle lately; warm, cold, rainy, sunny... often all for in the same day. Last night when I went to walk Hastur at about 7:30 it was 55°, by morning it was 22°. Tonight it's already in the mid-twenties which means long underwear for the morning walk. But, despite its inability to pick a state of being, I think the weather is finally forming a pattern. It's supposed to snow Wednesday, after which it will start to get a little bit warmer, but not much. I believe it is starting to move towards Winter around here, which could be a lot of fun, or not. I don't know yet just what kind of Winter it will be. If it continues to be more often sunny then not, as it has been, then I won't be overly thrilled. Freezing temperatures without snow are pretty pointless. Snow would be great, heaps of it even. Who am I kidding, I just want to skate on the school pond, play a little hockey.

Apart from the weather the other big change is the sudden animosity towards my dog. People up until recently have been really nice to Hastur. A woman even stopped me the other day to have a conversation about her, during which Hastur surprisingly just sat and waited prompting the woman to describe her as "very well behaved" which is, of course, a completely false. I don't know what got into her to cause her to act like a well trained dog, she must have not been feeling well. On that same day the woman complimented me on Hastur, another man came out of his house while we were walking past just to scold me ahead of time in case she should drop a load on his lawn. Hastur was not leaving anything on his lawn, nor has she ever, so there was no call for the attitude this guy was giving me. He was preemptively mad at a dog turd that didn't exist. I'll grant him that his lawn is one of the best maintained in town, most of the lawns here are left pretty unattended, the idea being, I assume, that the elements will take care of the mowing, but regardless he could have simply told me he didn't want her pooping there and I would have politely assured him it wouldn't happen. Instead I got a lecture about an incident that happened in his mind. And just because I know people don't quite get what happened, it's not that he was mad about some dog poop in his yard, he was lecturing me to make sure I understood that he never wanted any poop on his yard.

And then on Saturday the man who owns the antique store on the bottom floor, who was very nice to Hastur in the past, came out of his shop while she was peeing on the lawn to yell at me about letting her do so. I mean, c'mon, it's a dog peeing! It's not like it's rude, she's a dog! I mean, if she was peeing on some of the wares he displays in front of his store I'd understand, but we were a good fifteen feet away. In fact, we weren't even in front of his store, we were along the side, and it's not even his lawn to begin with, it's my landlord's.

If you've had too many incidents where some uncouth dog walker has left his dog's dirty little business on your lawn I can understand not wanting to risk the same with any other dog. In that case you ask nicely if the person walking past with their dog not allow it to poop there. Fine, I think most dog owners wouldn't begrudge a politely worded request. There is no need, however, to prejudge anyone like the guy did coming out of his house to actually yell at me. Further, who gives a flying fuck where a dog is peeing? You know why we let dogs take a piss in public when we ourselves do not? Cause they're dogs! We can't impose our social mores on them, otherwise they'd always be in pants and only mate under the covers behind doors they've somehow latched. And of course we'd expect them to wear a yarmulke and learn the torah. She's a dog, she's gonna pee on grass, that's what they do. Sorry if the thought of urine is uncomfortable to you, but it's not, nor will it ever be, to her. Just deal with it.