Domesticated Life
Image by daniel zimmel. Some rights reserved.
When Gerty read this, she gave me a hug and murmured low and affectionately, "Dork!"
Tim Dowling in the The Guardian:
[M]y wife is . . . watching The Dog Whisperer. It's her favourite show. She doesn't care that every episode is exactly the same: the Dog Whisperer teaches owners to control their unruly pets using calming energy, an authoritative posture and a choke chain. He also has a unique disciplinary move: a quick, two-fingered jab, combined with a sharply punctuated hiss - tssst! - that is meant to recreate the nip an alpha dog might give to a disorderly member of the pack.
The episode concerns a couple who some years ago bought two boxers, Daisy and Duke.
"Sadly, Duke was run over," I say.
"How do you know?" my wife says.
"Because this show is so mind-numbingly predictable," I say. Actually, it's because I've seen it before.
"Sadly, Daisy was run over," says the voiceover. The background music switches to a minor key.
"Wrong," says my wife.
. . . I'm trying to cook as my wife hovers over me with a damp cloth.
"Cleaning up as we go," says my wife in her sarcastic singsong. "That's the way we do it." She's on the verge of clearing away things before I have finished with them. I know that if I turn around, the chopping board I am using will be in the sink.
"There's no point," I say. "I'll clean up when I'm finished."
"No you won't," she sings, "you never do." I'm finding it hard to chop and guard my wine glass at the same time. She picks up the compost bucket and puts it next to me. "Look," she says, "now we can just pop everything in here. So much easier." She starts reaching around me to gather up garlic skins. I put the knife down and jab her in the shoulder with two stiff fingers.
" Tssst! " I say. "You're in my space."
"How dare you," she says. She pokes me in the chest. " Tssst! "
" Tssst!"A brief standoff follows. I don't dare jab her as hard as she's just jabbed me, but I'm still holding up two pairs of stiff fingers in order to keep her at bay. Her hand twitches as she eyes the large knife I've left on the worktop. The moment is, in its own way, also very cinematic, even though I think she probably just wants to put it in the dishwasher.
