{"id":889,"date":"2014-01-02T16:04:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-03T00:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/?p=889"},"modified":"2014-01-02T16:08:48","modified_gmt":"2014-01-03T00:08:48","slug":"out-in-the-yard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/fiction\/out-in-the-yard\/","title":{"rendered":"Out in the Yard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p lang=\"en-US\">You know what it&#8217;s like when you look at the face of someone you love, and she&#8217;s justifiably angry because of something you did, and the rage is coming, and it is wrong for you to do anything but take it? You know that it might be a miserable few days, but you will still be able to see that beautiful face wearing its beautiful anger every time you feel up to enduring a little extra dose of misery&#8230;.The sky was like that.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">I guess it&#8217;s up to your particular religious views whether the sky was like that because of anything <i>I<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0did. It&#8217;s not outside the bounds of my imagination, but my ego is not so large that I think the sky loves me enough that thoughtless action or neglect on my part could make her angry. As much as I love her, the sky is just not that into me.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">The dog looked up at me as if it <i>was<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0my fault, like I&#8217;d done something to make the sky angry, and clearly conveyed that making him endure the sky&#8217;s anger to piss was beyond the pale. But until and unless he learns to use the commode, this is the solution I prefer.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">Well, I call him a dog. It&#8217;s close enough for my purposes.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">I feed him, groom him and keep him clean, give him a comfy place to sleep and some exercise and whatever training he can master. He curls up nearby whenever I do whatever else I do that doesn&#8217;t concern him. I love him the way people love dogs that they consider to be part of the family, regardless of messes or damage to my property or whatever way he&#8217;s chosen today to shock the neighbors. I require nothing of him. Training is almost entirely carrot, almost no stick.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">So let&#8217;s just call him a dog and move on.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">The sky was all loud grumbling and clouded expression and wrinkles of impending fury and the dog was (finally) pissing on his favorite pine and I was standing out in it as well, as a gesture of solidarity and of also being certain there were clean towels and dry clothes stowed in various closets and everything was beautiful and everything seemed right with the world.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">Also when the sky is angry I don&#8217;t worry as much that neighbors might be outside trying to look at us through the slats in the fence. So that was good too.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en-US\">[*]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know what it&#8217;s like when you look at the face of someone you love, and she&#8217;s justifiably angry because of something you did, and the rage is coming, and it is wrong for you to do anything but take it? You know that it might be a miserable few days, but you will still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rL5j-el","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":891,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889\/revisions\/891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}