Dogged Pursuit

I should begin this by saying I love my dog – Buddy the Wonder Pooch, despite calling out his many failings here on Frail Deeds. He was not my favorite entity over the past couple days though. He’s terrified of thunder storms which, as summer is required to do, have been passing by the last few days. Before you leap in with suggestions on dealing with this behavior – I’ve tried everything. The thunder shirt – once I was able to wrestle him into it had no effect. Another friend suggested a few drops of a canine sedative, this worked a little bit but resulted in explosive (on an epic level) diarrhea – so no go there. We covered his kennel, blanketed it with sound, and sat with him – nothing works and he’s caused literally thousands of dollars of damage during his storm berserker drills.

His newest technique at dealing with low pressure systems seems to involve peeing on the carpet on the approaches to the Man Cave. This has done nothing to endear him to me. He gets so nervous before storms that he over indulges at his water point and then succumbs to further nerves when the storm arrives. Yesterday, instead of completing work on my patio project I was foaming and machine scrubbing said deposit areas as he looked on guiltily from the top of the stairs. Later in the evening as I sat down to watch yet another interminable Red Sox game Buddy came over and laid his head in my lap in the way of apology. That helped, a lot.

Soxfather provided an update to the great Rhode Island Knee Crisis. Great Aunt is now “sometimes eschewing the walker -- absent-mindedly, she claims -- and walking around on her own, which is a) wonderful to see and b) counterproductive in the long term, if what the pre-op readings and lectures are to be believed. As Archie Bunker used to say: Help me, Lord.” It’s a family trait to think we know better than the doctors treating us, something I blame my mother for (amongst other things), but no one knows a body better than the person charged with operating it. I think Soxfather may be concerned she’ll recover too soon and he’ll have to redeem my promise of a night of dancing at Maxwell Silverman’s.

I did get out last night to see the latest Apes movie – War for the Planet of the Apes. This was certainly the best of this latest incarnation of the simian planet. Andy Serkis is a bona fide magician at bringing nuance to his CGI characters and Caesar may be his masterpiece. While the movie is unremittingly grim it’s impossible not to connect with the characters – both CGI and otherwise. There are some very subtle connections offered to the original (Charlton Heston) films of the genre as well. Caesar is trying to keep his ape community safe following the events of the last film but is pitted against a very focused Woody Harrelson as a SF colonel bent on their destruction. The human tactics in the final battle are laughably bad but this does nothing to detract from the theme of pitting two species against each with a lot of gray splashed across the usual black and white of this type film. For some reason and against all odds this movie resonates.

I’d hoped to provide more photos of either my son’s trip to California or the First Blog Reader but both of my children were pointedly ignoring me. My Favorite Son, in an effort not to be skewered here, finally produced some photos of the fun they had last week, These are of Napa Valley. It’s no surprise the dedicated wine connoisseur he’s married to chose that destination. I’m sure the ABFA has even more photos which I hope to show soon.