Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.

I am not dog-sitting a dog named Chicken. I am taking care Lucifer in the guise of a shitting machine.

Little "Chicken" digs in his heels anytime I need him to do something, like, say, get the fuck off my roommate's bed. Or, say, walk on his leash without magically escaping out of his own collar. (Don't look at me with that cute little underbite, you rat-eared, crazy-faced mutt.)

Then again, he does play with plastic pot-scrubbers. That's cute. And I did wake up in the middle of the night to find him under my bed. Again, cute.

But waking up this morning to the stench of his turds on my bathroom floor—not cute. Then again, I am heartened by the fact that MotN told me he awoke to the smell of turds in his bathroom as well. His guest-cat had shit in his bathtub.

"At least your dog has manners," he told me.

"Manners?" I asked. "Because he shit on my bathroom floor instead of the tub?"

All I can say is that I looked up just now and saw him dragging his tiny, squat ass across my living room rug. Thanksgiving. Yeah.

It is Thanksgiving. Yes. I worked tonight. We ate cold, greasy eggplant parmigiana and baked ziti from the only place that would deliver. A tossed salad was brown and the accompanying bread was stale. Tomatoes so hard and white I have never seen. I felt sadness like never before on a holiday (because of a holiday) and wondered how my life had become so narrow I would work then return home alone to a dog who is frightened of me. I walked around my office and felt my feet drag on the floor. Really drag, in spite of being aware of this.

But we hit deadline early and I made my way down to my sister's house by the Hudson River. I walked 10 minutes in a sopping night, wet jeans, cap pulled low.

My sister opened the door and kept talking to her friends as I removed my wet boots and jacket and lay down my umbrella. I said hello three times before she turned to face me. Yet as I skulked into her house, I remembered how the light in there is always warm and sweet, and that the food is always ambrosial. This is where her kind heart opens up: in the welcoming, no matter how quiet or seemingly dismissive. She has still welcomed me in her way, and always will, I hope.

Brussels sprouts sautéed in balsamic vinegar and stuffing with chestnuts and pears. Too many other dishes with so many fresh and colorful ingredients. Reisling, then homemade pecan and pumpkin pies and limoncello straight from her honeymoon last week in Naples.

Her new Danish husband is agreeably drunk off a thimble of wine and her friends and I discuss the merits of creating such a thing as a "Fish Whisperer." I eat seconds and then dessert immediately on their heels, because, as everyone tells me, "It's Thanksgiving. This is what we do."

I go home to face Lucificken. And would you believe it? Here I am and suddenly he has come to me and allowed me to scratch his tummy and has climbed into my lap. He just licked up into my nose, and I can still smell his tongue.

"Adagio for Strings" but Samuel Barber has just been played by the New York Philharmonic on WQXR. My night went from drenched and sad to warmly calm, more the sound of rain than the soak of it.

Happy Thanksgiving.