12/24/17
It is cold enough that my hands gloved in gore-Tex are numb after 10 minutes. I push the looped handle of Mabel’s leash up to my wrist and shove my hands in my pockets. After 20 minutes she is still keen to nuzzle the ground searching I guess, for traces of excrement and I know for discarded fast food wrappers. I wonder if I should have made her wear boots and a coat but she is unfazed by the weather. Coats and boots for dogs are like seat belts and car-seats for toddlers, unheard of when I was a boy but now one runs the risk of reproach. Probably not but I reproach myself anyway.

The houses here are mostly small sturdy bungalows bearing improvised improvements like vinyl fencing and cast paving stones piled up without masonry to make planters and borders around trees. I hate the phoniness and uniformity of these non-bricks, non-stones. I prefer the less common random boulders that are not purchased from a corporate home improvement store but hauled in on a borrowed pickup truck from some bucolic exurb or boutique nursery.

We’re approaching the used car lot at Fullerton & Menard and the traffic noise intrudes on the NPR newscast in my headphones. She actually sits and waits for the light to change. The snow has started but sidewalks remain bare except for a random brown sack that skitters by, impelled by the wind. It’s Sunday but also Christmas Eve; for now the neighborhood feels static, resting and anticipating.

The aliens were assholes but they were good at solving problems. One of the first things they did was to improve the timing of traffic lights so the flow of cars was smoother and drivers spent less time at red lights. They claimed that the system was based on detailed census data and records hacked from the dmv. In fact it was a complex mind control device using pheromones and sound waves. Does it matter that they lied? Everyone got to work on time.