Brooke here:

The Thanksgiving festivities have ended for another year.  I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty that for those families who play host, Thanksgiving is better known as That Time When You Clean Every Inch Of The House Twice in 48 Hours.  During the Holiday Of Cleaning, our friend Steve, who is an accomplished amateur photographer, came over to take a few pictures of the Japanese maples at the peak of their fall colors.

I love these maples.  Everyone does.  We had our concrete and construction guy come by to do an estimate when we first bought the house, and he looked at the trees and put a very heavy, very hard hand on my shoulder.  “Brooke,” he growled, “you will not touch these trees.”

I try not to argue with men who growl.

As for a Pupdate, Zu is now back on a schedule and has transformed back to his sweet self.  You don’t really appreciate how much puppies need sleep until they don’t have it, and then you’re fighting with a squalling, biting demon who can’t understand why you’re angry with him.  He is even sleeping through the nights… or he would be, if Rottweiler Prime hadn’t learned how to game the system.  Zu is too young to hold his pee for more than two hours during the day, and I take him out like clockwork.  Cutter John, on the other hand, is a urine-camel who’s good with four walks a day and only needs to go out at night during absolute emergencies.   I know the emergency bark; you can’t fake the emergency bark.  But ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s the yay!-let’s-go-run-around-at-night! bark.  This gets him a stern yelling, and he goes back to sleep, complaining bitterly.

If Zu has his last meal of the day at 7 and I drain his tank until 11, he’ll sleep like a log until 6 or so.  Six hours of uninterrupted sleep?  Yes please!  Cutter John, however, has learned that if the puppy wakes up in the middle of the night, the puppy needs to go out.  Which means that Cutter gets to go out.*  So Cutter will wait until three in the morning, then goes to Zu’s crate and barks at Zu until the puppy wakes up, crying.  Then I get to go out in the cold while two happy dogs frolic in the moonlight, my eyes barely working and all capacity for language reduced to mumbled lines from old Denis Leary bits (“Come on, Pongo, shit for daddy”).

Meanwhile, Brown dreams of a happy life as a bachelor with a cat.

* Sorry buddy, never again.  We’re breaking this chain.