When you do the rising growl that’s part of the chorus to Bodies and all three dogs in the room wake up, open one eye, and look about, maybe you were overdoing it with your post-dinner sing-along.

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It’s amazing how expressive every action by a dog can be.

The little bowing down with both front paws splayed out in front of her, with her head cocked to the side, signifies that our youngest dog wants to play.

When she walks up and lays her head on my leg, I know she loves and trusts me.

When she looks up at me with those big brown eyes, I know she’s saying “I see you have a toasted cranberry bagel sandwich made with a fried egg, spicy breakfast sausage, and swiss cheese. I also like a toasted cranberry bagel sandwich made with a fried egg, spicy breakfast sausage, and swiss cheese. I also want you to forget that I already had breakfast and some cheese when you were giving my sisters their medicine. You see, father, I am starving, and shall surely perish if not given the remainder of your sandwich.”

Truly, man’s greatest companion.

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Sometimes I buy flowers, other times, jewelry.

This month, my love language is buying a split quarter of a cow and filling the freezer for the winter.

Diamonds may be forever, but hamburger is $4 a pound and rising, and compressed carbon crystals don’t make good tacos.

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In an attempt to warm up a bit and get rid of the scratchiness in my throat, I made up a pot of the ‘Czar Nicholas II” Russian tea I got a few weeks ago.

Chort vosmi, but that’s terrible.

Imagine, if you will, an overpowered Earl Grey, but instead of bergomot, they used Chanel #5.

Yeah, not going to be drinking that anymore. It will, however, make for a pretty good potpourri.

Back to coffee I go.

Little bit of backstory – my introduction to ‘Russian Tea’ was when my mother would buy one container each of full-sugar Tang orange powder, Country Time Lemonade, and NesTea powdered ice tea mix, combine them all together, and mix two to three heaping tablespoons of the resulting concoction with a mug of hot tap water.

Yeah, I didn’t have much sophistication in my palate until my early to mid 20’s.

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How did your morning go, Tom?

Well, while trying to shuffle the dogs around for breakfast and outside time, the elder hound decided that the youngest dog was just a little too close for comfort.

No actual violence, but a big dog roaring, not barking, roaring and snapping, followed by the puppy running away crying loudly at 6:15 AM is not how I wanted Friday to start.

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Winter has officially arrived at our house. Irish Woman has begun her yearly ritual of randomly changing things in the house due to a case of November cabin fever. Today, it was new handles on the kitchen cabinets and drawers, along with testing two new colors for the kitchen walls. Apparently my choices will be “Seattle Seahawks Teal” and “Crest Toothpaste”.

She casually mentioned that the easiest way to update our kitchen was to replace all the cabinet doors and fronts of the drawers.

I shudder at where this might all go.

Hey, at least she’s not peeling up vinyl flooring and opining about how much nicer tiles hand made by Slovenian women drinking Moldovan champagne while dancing the chacha would look.

I really can’t wait until she’s truly cooped up in the house due to crappy weather and little sunlight. I may start encouraging vitamin D supplements now and avoid the Christmas rush.