Cynosport Day One. A darkest day.

We spent election day driving across the desert. It was good. The desert is bleak, there's an ascetic beauty in it's dry, rocky mountains. We stopped and took pictures. Visited the memorial for the dead camel. Made sure nobody stepped in the pokey things. The desert is a hard place to live.

We took one step into our rental house in Scottsdale and Banksy had a terror attack of horror and panic, as bad as she's ever had. There was an evil monster in the sky and she thought she was dying, it was really bad. I guess she's never seen a ceiling fan. The house is filled with them and they were on and she flipped out as bad as I've ever seen her do, like she hasn't done since she was younger.

I got her back out to the car, parked in the heat, got back in and got them off. By the end of the night she could be in the kitchen or my bedroom or the bathroom. But they are up there and she knows they're evil, there's evil above her head and she's terrified to set foot in what should be just a home.

Never take home for granted.

I used to live in Phoenix, in 1991. It was raw. This is another planet now, the Phoenix I drove into. Like I never was here before, what I remembered is no longer.

Today's the first day of the dog show. Do we even have the dog show, or do we just go home? Usually you wake up the morning of a dog show, ready to go, squinting in a new day and hoping it's a good one. This day is covered in a dark shroud. Heavy, and dark, with terror in the air above and what feels like evil and everything wrong hovering just above.