Fifty Shades of Black Read Online Free PDF

BlackBerrys even as the waiter is handing out menus; where parents text their offspring on the bus because it saves time—in our world, Canicross is the very essence of multi-tasking. It enables you to take care of two chores at once: your dog gets exercise and you get a serious cardiovascular workout.
    How perfect is that? I’ve got a dog and I’ve got a gym membership. But there are not enough hours in my day to walk my dog AND toddle downtown to the gym. With Canicross, I don’t have to.
    I ordered the starter kit. It includes the human harness (they call it a hands-free belt)—for fifty-two dollars—and a pooch harness (they call it a Shorty Ripstop Sport Harness)—for thirty-four dollars. I donned the belt, attached a long leash to it and clipped the other end of the leash to my dog, Homer.
    â€œGo!” I said.
    I don’t speak fluent canine and Homer is a critter of few barks, but I’m quite certain his response was the dog equivalent of “Huh?” Homer cocked his head, looked at me sideways, wagged his tail and sat down.
    Homer (he is named after the doughnut-driven Homer of Springfield, not the Greek) is a bearded collie. He has never been a ball of fire, nor is he the Einstein of his breed—but he knows bedrock Stupid when he sees it. For the next hour we stumbled around the neighbourhood together, Homer sniffing, peeing, pausing briefly to scratch and then onward to sniff and pee and scratch some more.
    Homer, I mean. I merely followed behind, a flunky biped, tethered to my dog by eighty-six bucks’ worth of clearly superfluous yuppie gear.
    Garrison Keillor famously said, “Dogs come when you call; cats take a message and get back to you.” Mr. K. never met Homer, who is unmoved by the command “Come!” Nor does he respond to “Mush!”
    Anybody want to buy a barely used Canicross starter kit?

 
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    Double Your Pleasure
    I wouldn’t tell just anybody this, but I suffer from Peanuts Envy.
    â€œPeanuts,” I hasten to add, was the sobriquet my Old Man bestowed upon my younger brother after he came home from the hospital wrapped in a blanket, red-faced, squally and looking very much like, well, an angry peanut.
    I was twelve years old at the time, and unabashedly enthusiastic about having a younger bro. I looked forward to hours of road hockey and bike riding; of climbing trees and chasing pop flies. I anticipated the advantage of having an in-house fall guy to blame for my ­misdemeanours. I even imagined we might become a neighbourhood Force to Be Reckoned With.
    â€œUh-oh—here come the Black brothers.” That had a nice ring to it.
    Alas, a dozen years is a wide gap for kids to bond across. By the time he was in kindergarten, I was seventeen and discovering girls. When his voice went from falsetto to bass, I was hitchhiking around Europe.
    We grew up apart but, oddly, came together in our adult lives. He met and married a West Coast island girl; I also made my way across the plains and over the Rockies to settle on the same island. The same street, in fact. We live a five-minute drive apart.
    But it is a small island and my brother and I, despite the twelve years, look very much alike. Some have called us dead ringers. We get mistaken for each other. A lot. “Hi, Jim,” a stranger calls out to me at the checkout counter. “How’s it goin’, Jim?” I’ll hear from a passing motorist. I seldom correct them. It takes too long—and frankly, I’m flattered. Being mistaken for a twelve-years-younger version of yourself is a bit of an ego boost. But it’s better than that. In addition to having inherited my outstanding good looks, ineffable charm and magnetic personality, my brother is an incorrigible flirt. He buys armfuls of roses on Valentine’s Day and hands them out to every woman he meets. He hugs anyone who gives off a whiff of estrogen and treats her like a