not feeling so well tonight; a huge cold/stuffy nose thing came down upon me. my daughter has covid and, since i gave her a ride or two, i'm hanging around wondering if it will turn into full-blown covid. hers has. she claims to have no sense of taste. i still feel like i have mostly a very bad cold. no fever, but it takes me a half hour to get up the stairs.

meanwhile the dogs are going at full blast. there are four of them and two don't get along with each other. well, one doesn't get along with that other one. the other one, the larger one, takes it in stride but i think it bothers him. he spends a lot of time outside. the little chihuahua aggressor is trying to drive all the competition out. maybe it's instinctive. or maybe he's feeling a little desperation at getting older and knowing his boy is hundreds of miles away. the boy will return at thanksgiving. maybe that will change his disposition. but unfortunately the boy, in his heart, has moved on. he couldn't keep this dog, and had to cut ties emotionally. now he can barely love him.

one of the dogs is an old lab, the only girl, loves the water, loves the cold, but is getting somewhat blind. when i take her for a walk she mostly balks and refuses to go anywhere. sometimes i just bring her back. you say you want a walk, but we get out there and you tug at me. i suspect i have put her harness on poorly or done something that she just doesn't like. but in fact i have no clue what i've done wrong. and sometimes, she'll go around the block with me. it's a very slow tug. she likes to smell things and once she gets started she doesn't want to be distracted.

my little white puppy meanwhile has become a little obnoxious. he always was a yapper, with a high-pitched, hard-to-ignore, screechy yap, but now he's found that if he gets on the couch and looks over at the street that is on the other side of the next-door house, he'll find such things as people walking dogs, loose dogs, people, things to bark at. and now that he knows it's out there, he's determined to bark at it. we tell him not to - we don't care who uses that street - but to no avail. i don't want to start hitting him. i also dislike barking back at him, just yelling until he backs off. with two of us yelling is that any better? no.

watching game two of the world serious tonight. i have taken houston's side and will stick with them though i like both teams. it's fun watching teams that are so good, even though we're on the cusp of november, and have no business trying to get out of a season as we go past saints' day and souls' day. i have strong feelings which i've expressed on my blog.

which reminds me, blogs are getting a little upgrade, just slightly better templates, better be-squares, that kind of thing. now that i've started it's hard to stop. it might be the time of year. if anyone looks at blogs, ever, i want them to enjoy the different links. time to weed the garden, so that the perennials have more space.