Yesterday when I took a shower when I got home, Blake pouted until I caught on. I filled up his spray bottle and gave him a thorough shower. He was begging for it even when I just tested to see if this was what he really wanted (by casting a sopping hand's worth of droplets toward him). Because showers involve me in the altogether as well as the buddy, you get to see only the intense post-shower preen.
Here we are on the couch in the sunlight. (See how much better the rug looks in sunlight? Not ochre!)
Observe the damp feathers on his neck, all spikey.
I was trying to get him to look up at me because his preening face is so adorable (much like most of his faces). All the feathers that usually warm his lower mandible instead angle back; we call this his muttonchop look and he looks nineteenth century.
He was having none of my interruptions though. When I gave up and poked him in the breast to force him to look up, he did so with his bitey face on, crest lowered, scowling. Not so cute.
He finishes up an all-over preen with a good head scratching. See the little foot? Sometimes when his toe gets into the right angle of his jaw he gives himself the yawns.
After enough preening, he was ready to prance. He loves the space between the couch and the wall. It's ceiled by the couch arm. The webcam is a great way to keep an eye on him, to ensure he doesn't suddenly get interested in the power cords. He hasn't been yet. He can't resist thin round cables, like the lower end of a Macintosh power cable or a FireWire or headphones, but electric cords don't intrigue him.
Yet.
He's not Howie the Dog. I know. But he's still adorable in his own way.
This bit should go with a photograph above but I'm padding. On the table behind him you can see Culture of Fear and--very appropriately--Blake's chief fear, a promotional toy RDC picked up at a conference. It is not big, it is not blue, but it is a squeezey, stress-ball, golf ball-patterned thing, and he hates it. We keep it in easy reach for when we want to chase him out from under the dining table or keep him away from our sexy feet.
Is is okay that I bought this book directly before seeing "Stagecoach," a "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" western?
The stories and storytelling are remarkable. I wasn't sure of each narrator or what his relationship to everyone else might be but I felt strongly that that didn't matter. Years ago when I was having trouble getting in One Hundred Years of Solitude, someone told me not to try to keep track of the names but just absorb the beauty of the story. That's what I finally could do with this.