Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Another house, not my own.

Okay, remember when I was all excited about house- and dog-sitting for my brother? Well be careful what you wish for, because the gods like to have their little joke.
*This post is firmly tongue in cheek, by the way. I am not complaining full-on. It's just that there are... complications.

First off, the Dog. He is seventy, in human years. Seventy. He should be hobbling around with greying jowls, glad to be home after sedately walking a couple of blocks.
Not this dog. He is a mutt, of Border Collie and god-knows-what-else origins. Sterner stuff. Which means that he can run and walk for hours and be ready to go again after a quick nap. He will chase a ball until it's too dark too see it, and then he will find it by the distant thud as it hits the ground. He would live outside always, if he could. Four days and I am already a love slave to his Sad Puppy Eyes. And I am walking. Three times a day I am walking. And running. And rollerblading. Anything to keep up with his needs.

Which is actually great, because Hello, room full of chocolate bars! My brother and his wife are raising money for a charity called Team in Training by selling chocolate bars. (Don't get me started on the irony of raising money to run 21km by selling sweet, fatty desserts. There is something so intrinsically wrong about that, Team in Training. WRONG.) Let's just say that I need these walks badly, given the choco-temptations lying in their office.

Lastly, I forgot how far away my brother and his wife live. They live in Surrey. I make no apologies to any of my readers who may be from there: Surrey is Hell. No, I take that back; Surrey is not interesting enough to be Hell. Surrey is Skytrain and strip malls and big box stores and fast food and white trash and litter and bland condos and falling-down crackhouses and the Mirage Nightclub (which my brother calls the Sluttage, for obvious reasons). East Van has many of these eyesores also, but we do them with style, dammit! I miss my 'hood.

I would like to tie this all together with a snappy ending, but I am tired. So very tired. And it's been three hours since the last walk. Which means that it's almost time to do 'er again.
*I would like to reiterate that I am (mostly) joking. Except for the part about being tired. Which I am. I mean, I've gone from being pretty much a couch potato to being the auntie of a very active pooch. You'd be tired too. Oh, and what I said about Surrey. I meant everything I wrote about that.

No comments: