There is a mulberry tree on my street that is badly tended by its owners. It grows wildly out over the sidewalk, and will in fact wait for you to pass by, and throw mulberries at you. (It particularly likes to do this if you’re wearing light-colored clothing and are running late for work.) Anyway, the tree does not really please the residents of Ford Street, but my dog Finn just loves the tree. He will pretend to stop and look around for a place to pee, when he’s really just stuffing mulberries into his snout. Sometimes he will actually lift his leg and pretend to pee, just to give him more time to eat mulberries! He is nothing but a four-legged mulberry-eating con artist.
So I’m a little under the weather today. OK, I hate to admit it, but I’m completely snowed in today. Sneezing my head off, I have a fever, coughing my lungs up, etc. I am one of those people who won’t admit to being sick till I pass out. But I do recall, from my younger days (when I got sick more often) the joys of Nyquil. It is nasty, foul-tasting stuff, but the thing that makes it worthwhile is the certain knowledge that within 30 minutes, I will no longer be coughing or sneezing, my head will stop pounding, and I will be sleeping just as soundly as if someone had hit me with a large blunt object. Twice.
Tonight I took some Nyquil, for the first time in a couple of years, and then went to walk the dogs. I was down at the end of the block, yes, right near the aforementioned tree, when it suddenly hit me that I’d been standing as if in a daze for about ten minutes. (The Nyquil, starting to kick in.) I looked down at the dogs. Clancy, sitting, waiting patiently. Finn, sneaky, con-artist leg in the air, pretending to pee, inhaling mulberries so fast his breathing was getting irregular. I howled in protest and started to walk home. Finn had the utter gall to stop three feet later and urinate like a racehorse. Still chewing, juice all over his face.
I am going to bed, with the taste of Nyquil in my mouth. Finn has a better taste in his mouth, I’m sure.
