Wow, I just couldn’t be bothered.
Life’s only now starting to calm down after the impromptu trip to Rockhampton (that I haven’t finished writing about, and probably won’t which I ended up writing about and backdated the posts for.)
On the Saturday after we got back, I went to Nambour for an OpenStreetMap thing. I wrote about that elsewhere, today, planning on spending an hour or so catching up on the things that had unfolded in my life without chronicle.
Instead I got called downstairs to hold the dog while mum clipped his toenails. And oh what a debacle.
She was trying to lop the things off with a pair of regular old scissors. The dog was screaming and lashing out, and bit both mum and myself. I started growling and lashing out, and mum got the shits and stormed off in a cloud of thunder and prickles.
After some ear lashings, Dad tried with the same approach. The poor dog was really distressed, and it was making me angry to see him like that, so both Dad and I decided it would be better to take him to the vet down the road and get a professional with professional tools to do it.
I checked the Internet and found a few independent dog grooming places instead that seemed a little more promising than the vet. After a little ringing around, we found one that was open (but shutting in an hour) across the road at Wavell Heights, so I jumped in the car and took him to the grooming salon for some grooming.
There was nowhere to park at the dog hut, and the parking at rear turned out to be the place where the garbage bins are stored. There were two small car parks, filled up with one large hummer, whose alarm went off as I tried to reverse out again.
I finally found a place to park (slightly too far off the kerb on a busy main road, but who’s keeping score?) and carried little Arlo dog in through wrong entrance to the doggy masseur. The back door, mind, I was kicked out and told to go in the right door.
The front door was painted the light blue colour of the building — glass and all — virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. I fumbled around a little before working up the nerve to open it (and see if I’d found the right entrance.) Thankfully a rather professional counter separated the little bespectacled dog man from myself.
He instructed me to put Arlo on the bench, and hold him down by his collar as he clipped his nails. I did this, and he zipped through each paw like it was made of nylon. One, two, three, four… Five. Six, seven, eight, nine… Ten.
It didn’t even take two minutes, and when it was finished he charged me $5.50. Arlo was happy, and sat up extra proud in the front seat as I drove him back home.
But that’s why I haven’t been writing much recently anyway. You can blame stupid distractions, disincentive, two-minute noodles, side projects, work projects, the lack of energy, caffeine withdrawals… All of these things have in some way contributed to my blogular silence over the last few weeks.
I promise I’ll try to keep up from now on.