a sea black with ink

A few days ago, I came home one afternoon to find that my puppy had eaten the tv's remote control. (Of course, in the real world I would call this device a "channel selector", just as I would use said-channel selector while laying on a "chesterfield" in my "family room", but since I've been told multiple times in the past that the Bank family's domestic vocabulary is totally archaic and British, I have decided to censor myself here in blog world.) So. The remote control had been reduced to tiny grey plastic shards scattered across the floor. My panic (that my dog had eaten the entire thing, batteries and all, and was heading to swift death) was soon replaced with sheer anger (upon finding the chewed remains of the rest of the remote hidden under the couch).

In the end, I didn't kill the dog. In the end, I resolved to start watching tv like an attention deficit 8 year old might: sitting cross-legged on the ground, head tilted up to screen, flinching every ten seconds or so to change the channel. Thank god we only have basic cable. I don't think my patience could handle any longer a range.

There's been at least one good side effect of my dog's demonic behaviour. Today was the first day in a number of days straight that saw me actually sit down to pleasure-read, quietly and without fidgeting, for more than an hour. Ever since I moved home from school for this four-month-long transition period between schools and degrees, I have avoided picking up any fiction. I couldn't tell you why. I don't even know why. Maybe the previous school year-- all those ridiculous lit classes I took, all those pointless lecture hours and badly-written chapters I can't take back-- scarred me more than I realized. I don't know. Don't even know. But now I'm here, with a stack of books I'd love to read teetering on my desk, and public library late fines looming, and librarians bitching at me for not paying my existing late fines, and a two-seater porch swing taken from my previous front steps in London and transplanted into my back garden here in Mississauga, and all the time in the world (ninety days, give or take).

I've got a two-seater, but there's only me. I guess I'll just have to live with that.