Night of the Dogsicle

Maybe to understand the events of last night, you should know that I, never much of a TV watcher, am on a binge of old-series-DVD watching. Yesterday, I sat through a large part of Season 3 of Northern Exposure, ending with the episode where Maurice and Holling take their old, dead trapping buddy to bury him in the wilderness. (blatantly ripped-off from 1991's White Fang, corpse sliding down a hill into a frozen river and all, though with definitely new elements added so that it could almost be a parody.)

I've always considered Northern Exposure the only series that really captured the spirit of the American north. I mean, true, if you walked into your local convenience store and started ranting about existentialism, the clerk would actually give you a glazed expression and maybe a "Have a nice day" with just that hint of "...somewhere else" tacked on to the end, instead of coming back with quotes from Neitsche. But the variety of people, the background--it all felt so real. Until the last season, where it goes pure California, just like every other TV show.

But I digress wildly. Wisconsin had a bit of a blizzard on Thursday, and is now being buffeted by icy winds. There are traffic warnings--according to what I've heard second-hand, the cold is so bad it's killing cars on the highway. One moment your car is running, the next, the cold has sapped the life from it and you roll to a stop. Both my parents called me repeatedly to make sure I wasn't going anywhere. (I suppose I'll miss that some day!)

Last night I went to sleep under two old sleeping bags, but it was still too cold to sleep very soundly. At 2:30 am, I looked over at the dog and couldn't see her breathing. As you know from my previous blog entry, I've been a bit anxious about her old age. Anyway, I got out of bed and called her name, and she didn't move. So I knelt down beside her shaking her (she felt kind of cold and stiff) and shouting her name like a lunatic.

Finally she looked up at me with a "What the heck?" exprssion on her face. Chances are that she was just in a deep, old-dog sleep, and I merely took a little well-deserved revenge for all the times she's dragged me out of bed. But I got the panicked idea that she was dying of hypothermia. I heated her up a can of chicken boullion in the microwave, cranked up the oven and opened the door, and put on the teakettle. Then I used the hair dryer like a space heater to try to warm up the bedroom. Finally, I wrapped the hot teakettle in a blanket and put it on the bedroom floor for the pooch to lie next to.

Except she wouldn't. My dog had no complaints about the midnight soup break, but was wary of the scent of the hair dryer, which was obviously just a miniature cousin of the evil vacuum cleaner, and suspicious of the blanket on the floor. She opted for the ice-cold linoleum in the hallway, until I pestered her long enough to get her in the bedroom, though she shunned the blanket and the bed.

Well, however warm it had seemed while I was up and moving, icy drafts were pouring off the windows. So I decided to leave my bed entirely and sleep on the couch in the living room, where my old apartment's radiators are located. It was the final confirmatiion to my dog that I had lost it. She refused to enter the living room no matter how I called her. Finally I tempted her with her favorite treat...I blew my nose in a kleenex, and she came running to beg for the tissue. (Dogs are just sick...)

So, anyhow, the pooch and I survived the night. I, at least, am looking forward to Spring.