Well, David has gone down to Baltimore to be with his family, so I’m stepping in for a moment. I’ve never blogged before, here or anywhere. In fact, I’ve never managed to keep a diary going, although I have several journals with the first three or four pages filled in.

Let’s hope this goes a bit better.

Goblin and I went to the park this morning, in search of squirrels. There are leaves covering the ground in Central Park, brilliant yellows and reds. It was cold, although clear with the kind of bright sun that makes you squint.

I don’t think Goblin can see the squirrels as well with all the leaves on the ground – my hunch is that she sees them best when they are a gray blur against a darker background. Now, she knows they are there, and does her “freeze and stare intently” thing … but can’t pinpoint them well enough to actually chase them.

The squirrels don’t seem to care. New York squirrels have seen it all. Don’t tell Goblin.

“And for my first substitute blog, I wrote about the weather, and the dog.” Cripes.

I stayed in David’s apartment last night. I’m never able to sleep that well when he’s gone, so I was DVD-ing myself into a stupor. Around three a.m., I heard rustling and banging outside David’s window. David’s apartment is conveniently located on the ground floor, with this row of wooden cabinets with hinged lids that hide the trash cans right outside his window. We often hear rustling and banging, as people take their garbage out (at SIX FREAKIN’ O’CLOCK) and let the cabinet lids slam down. But last night, the rustling and banging seemed to go on and on; I looked out, and there was a homeless man rooting through the garbage, sorting things into piles, taking what he liked and throwing the rest aside.

I wasn’t sure what to do. There was a guy who used to do that at my building – the only thing that bothered me was that when I would come down in the morning, anything I had thrown away the night before would be spread out all over the sidewalk – check stubs, papers, whatever. I would clean it up, and hope that the guy wasn’t a master hacker who would steal my identity, break into my bank account and drain it of the always-under-minimum-balance funds.

Last night, my first instinct was to say something stupid and ineffectual like “Hey! Stop that!” And a heartbeat later, I thought, well here I am, cozy in my boyfriend’s bed, with the dog snuggled next to me, watching “Sex and the City.” Just pipe down and let this guy do what he needs to do. It’s just so easy to resort to the hard-New-Yorker-get-the-hell-away-from-me-don’t-touch-my-garbage mask.

I missed David a lot right then.

The man was very efficient, and was gone in about twenty minutes. Goblin slept through the whole thing (at about one a.m, she paws at the covers, crawls under, and in effect says, “Stay up if you want to, but I’m done.”) About four o’clock, I snuggled up with her and finally got to sleep.

Early this morning the slamming and banging went on as usual. A couple of people remarked on the pile of rejected things by the garbage. “Look at that!” “Geez, wouldja look at that. Slam.” “Hrrmph. Look at that. Bang.”

By the time I took Goblin out to tour the squirrelfields, somebody had Looked At That, and popped the stuff back in one of the trash barrels. And probably closed the cabinet lid gently. Bless them.