By the fire

We got a little snow this morning--just a dusting, just enough to remind us that even though it's been sunny mornings and October-blue-sky afternoons and 45-degree swinging-your-arms-while-you-walk weather, it's really December and nasty winter can hit any time it damn well feels like.

My head cold lingers, settling in my chest and my sinuses; I am coughing like an old man in a dark alley and dizzy like a drunk. I came home from work today to find four big cartons on the back porch--four! Each one packed with peat briquettes from Bord na Mona. A little heap of peat is burning in our fireplace right now; it smells good. If I didn't have a dizzy sinus headache and a chest cold, it would make me want a Guinness.

But I know I'm still sick because alcohol does not sound good to me. Instead, I leashed the boys up and staggered around the neighborhood for their nightly stroll, as unsteady on my pins as Boscoe was on his.

The 2010 Three Dog Blog calendars are ready to go; my sister put them together and is selling them here. Three sizes this year. Notecards and coffee mugs (the nice comfy double-size) are still available here, at her other online shop. This is how she makes her living, so if you go to either site, poke around; maybe you'll see something you like more than a calendar filled with pictures of Riley and Boscoe, though that doesn't seem possible to me.

There was an Abigail sighting this morning: She lives! And she lives next door, still. Just very discreetly and quietly. I think maybe she doesn't like the cold; boxers are short-haired dogs, after all. Doug spotted her through the kitchen window at about 8:30. She was sitting on her back porch, facing the door, clearly waiting to be let back in. I don't think she had been out very long. Within seconds the door opened and she vanished back inside.