El Burro Volador

Rebekah stopped by yesterday morning.  Secretly, I think she enjoys the rockstar status accorded her when she returns after an overnight absence.  Clem and I follow her around like little puppies the whole time she is home.  Well, usually.  Yesterday she had Z’nah with her, of course, so Clem was a little preoccupied.  She has no fear of Z’nah, despite the fact that Z, a German Shepherd, has a size advantage, a reach advantage, is every bit as clever (I don’t say that about many dogs, mind you – Clem is an evil genius) and has a better fighting pedigree – can you think of an army that would use Boston Terriers as guard dogs?  Besides France?

Anyhow, little Clem usually does not fare too well in her tussles with Z’nah, especially when she attempts aerial maneuvers.  See, the difference in mass is such that Clem more or less bounces off of Z, sometimes in dramatic wipeout fashion.  Secretly, I think she enjoys the challenge.

Z’nah, for her part, apparently thinks Clem is a wind-up toy.  ‘Bekah noticed yesterday that whenever Clem, momentarily spent from her Sisyphean efforts to budge her larger playmate, would lay panting in the shade for a spell, Z’nah would catch her breath, then go over and touch Clemen, just once, with her forepaw, triggering another onslaught from the diminutive dynamo.  Z’nah did this again and again throughout the day.  Secretly, I think she enjoys the chance to abandon her dignity and frisk around a little bit.

In other news, it is spring, the season of misery and despair.  Well, dread at least.  Despair won’t set in until late June/early July.  Y’see, I am cursed every year to watch my lawn stay dormant and brown longer than anyone else in the neighborhood.  When it eventually does green up, typically after a grudging increase in effort on my part, things begin to go wrong.  Invariably, the sprinkler system is involved – I don’t think I remember a single year when it hasn’t stopped working at some point.  Eventually, my lawn begins to die while all the other lawns are healthy and green.  Secretly, I think it enjoys dying.  Secretly, I would be happy to watch it die.

Not that I have anything against a nice green lawn – it’s just that this particular patch of wretched sod has earned my thorough-going enmity.  Also, I think all residents of a thirsty state like mine should xeriscape – let’s save our water for things like nourishing crops or putting out our annual wild fires.  Unfortunately, my father is a lawn-nazi, and I have inherited a certain tendency to draw parallels between an individual’s ability to maintain a lawn and their competence/general worth as a citizen.

Even assuming that I could shake this off now that I am, after all, a grown-up, our thrice-damned Homeowners’ Association imposes fines for lawns that aren’t “up to code”.  Or at least they did last year, the pack of filthy crotch-pheasants.  It might be different this year, though.  As our little neighborhood of starter homes has withered under the economic downturn, young families have been replaced by renters, and a lot fewer of them are big enough busybodies to care what anyone else’s home looks like.