Beautiful scents.

Alas, I have to keep tonight's writing far shorter than I'd like: I seem to have developed some kind of elbow injury (a combination, I think, of an almost inevitable typing-related repetitive stress injury and the aftermath of my enormous enthusiasm for holding the baby earlier this week). All day, I have tried to force myself to type with only my right hand, especially while I'm icing my left elbow. But I'm going to break my own rule for a few minutes.

The dog is restless tonight. Because temperatures finally plummeted here, we've opened the windows, and in has flooded an incredible spiced scent. Just as the dog gets settled down on my bed, another wave of this scent rolls in. She stands up on the bed and looks at the dark hole that is my bedroom window at night. She climbs down from the bed and wanders over to check for a clearer read on just what's perfuming the air. She's getting very few minutes of this position, in which I captured her last night:


She has now moved to the hallway, perhaps seeking respite from those dastardly tempting scents. When she returns, she will stand near the foot of the bed and eye it regretfully, as if remembering all those years when she could dash up the stairs, race into my room, and catapult herself onto the bed, all in a blur of black fur and frenzy. And I will gesture to her to climb up, and she will wait for me to get up and give her a two-armed hoist back into her quilt nest, where she will cross her front paws and I will stroke her bone-sleek back as she sighs back into sleep.

When my parents and I returned from our lovely Italian dinner (replete with a delicious Renato Ratti Nebbiolo-Ochetti), I spent some time in the backyard, photographing my mother's flowers. For a moment, the dog didn't know who I was, crawling around near our patio. She let out with barking I could hear all the way through the glass patio door--first because she thought I was an intruder, and then because she didn't know why I was outisde without her.

Now she is snoring away at my side, settled for now at least.