State of the Neko address: week 50

song+ Show Me How You Burlesque- Christina Aguilera- Burlesque Soundtrack
book+ Morrigan's Cross/ Dance of the Gods/ Valley of Silence
quest+ embarking on Version Two
upper+ my machine is set up and the manual's been read
downer+ my feet hurt (and the weather sucks)
attire+ jeans and a hoodie (cold weather dog-walking clothes)
drink+ water

i hate this weather. i don't like to be cold. extra layers are extra weight and that makes me feel panicky and trapped (because my claustrophobia is wonky, i realize it), so i tend to get by slightly under-dressed: cold and irritable instead of comfortably warm and twitchy and panicking.

in this particular part of town, it snowed (late Monday/early Tuesday) and then that froze. there's been nothing new, but it's melted and re-frozen meaning the ground EVERYWHERE in the complex is slick and dangerous. the only thing worse than walking a cold-weather dog in weather that you hate and she ADORES (thereby exciting herself to the point of jumping, running, skidding, and pulling) is trying to do it in flip-flops. i get by in flip-flops on icy surfaces just fine (in fact it's usually my most graceful time bizarrely enough), the dog pulling adds a certain reckless danger to it, so i've been wearing sneakers for two days and suffering. X.x that sounds like melodrama only because i'm telling things out of order again, hold on.

okay Sunday we hadn't done laundry yet, all my decent going-out-in-public clothes were in said laundry so i made do with a somewhat dressy business wear look that involved shoes i don't wear often and opaque tights that are a bit short and therefore put unpleasant pressure on my feet from the tugging required to get them to reach my hips properly. the combination of that and considerably more walking than i'd anticipated led to raw ugly twin-set blisters on the balls of my feet (very close to my big toes) that have yet to go away. they're actually thriving and monstrously inflamed and flip-flops + snow = actually kinda soothing, socks + sneakers = an amount of pressure that nearly brought me to tears just tying my shoes. factor in that wearing sneakers i HAVE to walk flat-footed adding direct pressure and can't get by on the sides of my feet like i have been barefoot, or almost exclusively by my heels as i can in flip-flops.

also bear in mind that the dog is stupid-big and bizarrely strong meaning she pulls me hard when the weather is sunny and safe and you can understand how unpleasant the dog-waling becomes in this kind of weather. fortunately we've had a training breakthrough! she now understands that when i yell "slow!" it means "if you knock me over, so help me i'll find a way to sit on you and make you carry me home" so she slows down and lets me gain my footing. i've yelled "slow!" a lot in the past few days.. i think that puts things back in an understandable frame of reference now.

this brings our tally of Commands the Dog Comprehends and (mostly) Obeys to: slow, sit, down (for when she's jumping on people), and kennel. four mostly-obeyed commands, which (sadly) averages to learning approximately one a year. not the best track record, but she's like a doggy savant. extraordinarily dumb, but capable of doing these amazing(ly frustrating) things. like chewing through metal (or really anything else) and managing to unlock doors and latches somehow.. she's a regular Houdogni. X.x to be entirely fair though, most of my training with her is non-verbal, so the list of commands in understandably small. she's done remarkably well with snap-and-point training, the snap gets her attention and i point at where she should go and 9 times out of ten she goes the right place and does the right thing. snap-and-point is next to ineffective outside through, especially when it's so cold it feels like snapping could make one of my fingers fall off. mostly there's too many distractions for the snapping to register. it's most likely to fail when we have somebody over too. the presence of unknown people makes her overly cautious, then rudely curious. it doesn't help that she forgets people after about a week.

anyhow, lately when not cramming my feet into torture devices to be dragged about by Harley, i've been worrying about Kyu (his kidney stones again, and a fever that didn't break for two days, though he's back at work now), trying to work in the office without having to leave my chair (mostly fiddling to correct the problems in the Annoying Dress pattern so i don't waste material working on Version Two), and soaking my feet in warm/hot water to loosen the skin around my blisters so there's less pain. it's kinda working- today my eyes only misted a little when i had to put on my sneakers.. having numbed my feet in REALLY hot water first made a difference. xD