Still Cold.

The pansies have that dark green beat-up look about them, but they're basically okay. Everything has that look, really. The neighborhood looks exposed, looks bare. The rhododendron leaves droop when it gets this cold, which I know is no real kind of cold, but for 27408 this counts, I think, for winter. Something small is coming through, some small change: there are high sheer clouds bowed out across the sky.

Yesterday I saw what might have been five thousand crows in a vacant lot on Battleground.

A stray ran up to us on the dogwalk, a little black dog with a white blaze on his chest. A woman from down the street came to get him, put him in her daughter's back yard, said she'd found him yesterday, put an ad in the paper. He had a chewed or broken rope around his neck. No tags.

There are lost cat signs all over the neighborhood. There are always lost signs all over this neighborhood. It's a tough spot for pets. I don't know why. Maybe there are lost signs on all the phone poles all over the city, but we seem to be especially unlucky over here. I keep looking in all the front yards, under all the shrubs, hoping to spot Sammy or Zeppo or whoever's up on all the 11x14s this week. Last seen. Answers to. Spot above one eye.

A quick head count here gives us the three we're supposed to have.

I can't help it: I keep imagining taking my child to Kinko's to make copies, to Lowe's to buy a staple gun. I want so badly now to see a LOST DOG sign with that little black dog on it. I know where he is. He's not entirely lost.