Annie is on a playdate today with her friend Lisa. Riley and I got up this morning and took her to the dog park, where we met Lisa, walked through the woods, visited with dog friends (Grace, Marley, and Dusty) and then Annie went away in the car with Lisa and Riley and I came home.

Oh, Thank God, Cheryl, Riley sighed in the back seat. I mean, I like her and everything, but I could use some REST.

Right now he is outside, searching for just the right patch of sun. As an occupation it’s a lot more fun when there’s not a small black dog charging out the back door and leaping on you all of the time.

Meanwhile among the humans the discussion of a dog jacket has once again raised its ugly head. Annie has mild skin allergies which are nearly but not altogether under control. She only digs occasionally and most of her skin is intact. It is covered, however, by a shortage of hair. When Annie goes out and sits in Nancy’s truck, waiting for Nancy to bring the rest of her stuff and eventually turn on the heater, she’s apt to shiver.

We worry about what she’s going to do in cold weather.

However, we recently bought new phones which actually access the Internet (I haven’t had a non-Internet conversation with Nancy since) and Nancy discovered that not only are dog coats in great abundance out there in the ether, most pattern companies sell multiple patterns for dogwear. Not just coats: jogging suits, leggings, raincoats… I’m surprised there are no pajamas. (Annie sleeps with us, which gives the cat a break because he is nocturnal and he despises dogs. All dogs. The big blond thing in his house just lives here, but the small black one that’s always bouncing in his face needs to go. However, we tend to throw open a window and then burrow down into the covers, while she sleeps on top of the covers. Very, very, very close to one, if not both of us. Like, if she had a star on her nose, we’d find her burrowing down through the mattress. Fortunately she is not a mole-nosed dog because we have a waterbed.)

During her day with Lisa Annie will play with Cash and Reggie, who are neighbor dogs, and possibly Wendy, who is a puppy, they will lube Lisa’s car, watch a little TV and eventually sometime this afternoon we will receive a call to find out where to meet up and pick her up. She will be tired tonight, which is a plus for Riley AND Cheryl.

What does Lisa get out of this? She appears to really enjoy having Annie. She has several dogs of her own, but they are smaller and older and less inclined to play at the dog park. Her family has a long history with staffies. It may be the same thing I get out of having Annie: a more interactive and social dog.

And occasionally we go out to eat.

I’m hoping it’s all good. 

We are sitting in the foot well under Cheryl’s desk with our chin resting heavily on her knee. She is eating something. We would like to eat this thing too. We don’t really care what it is: whatever Cheryl eats, we eat. Last night we sat in her lap and ate Cutie slices. 

This has been our pattern this morning: we dash outside and bark madly at nothing until Cheryl comes out and shakes that accursed can at us, then we run into the house, tear  up the trash, taunt the cat, run a circle around the house and dash out the back door to bark madly at nothing.

Cheryl seems a little short-tempered today.

We accidentally got into the trash when Cheryl was sitting in her chair and she swung her hand at us and we panicked because we knew she was going to beat us and she said, “Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay” and held us gently. We don’t know what to make of that. Can we eat trash now?

Riley’s no fun. We chewed on him for about an hour this morning and then he said, “I’m tired, go away now.” 

We’re not tired.

We miss Lisa. Lisa takes us to meet Cash and Reggie (Cheryl doesn’t even KNOW Cash and Reggie) and lets us play in the back yard and then we watch TV together. Lisa is a wonderful human being and we love her. Cheryl says she has a bad back and needs to get better before we can play again.

Cheryl used to take us to the dog park and let us play when we were happy like this, but now she says we don’t ‘play well with others’ and we’re going to get her ‘sued’. And then Cheryl and Nancy sit at the kitchen table and they say to each other while they rub our ears, “She’ll be a good dog.”

It’s so hard to know what being a ‘good dog’means. We warn them of every danger we see, we take out the trash, we exercise the cat, we pre-eat everything they eat…what more can they want from us? 

Someone should have told her: the bulldog is back. Across the street. Looking at us. She needs to know. 

 

 

‘Tis the season for warmer socks.

It has come as an unpleasant surprise to me that I am advancing far enough in age that my feet now get cold. I am the person who could walk out to the mailbox barefoot in two inches of snow and hop back to the house without really doing any harm to myself. Years ago I was sitting at my computer one evening and this light kept swirling across the ceiling and, priding myself on my observational skills, I went to the window to find three fire trucks, an ambulance, four cops and a raging house fire one lot beyond mine. Curious, I trotted out to my front yard to take a closer look (how did I miss all of these sirens? Where are the people who live in this house?) and over time I perceived a steadily-increasing unpleasant sensation which appeared to have its source in the grass at my feet.

It was frost.

I was standing barefoot on the frosty ground in late October. I thought to grab a jacket for my arms, but forgot my shoes.

Last year I took Riley to the dog park and perceived an unpleasant sensation all over my body. Other people stood around stamping their feet and uttering a foreign word.

Cold.

I had not been cold since some time in my early forties. In fact, I went through several years where I all but ran outside naked and rolled in the snow. By accident and foolish habit I wore a winter coat one year while shopping with my younger sister and eventually had to peel it off and store it on a shopping cart while she pondered one of two pairs of slacks (neither one of which she bought, nor did I ever  believe she would. It’s the decision that has to be made: actual purchases are for the self-indulgent.)

I was cold last winter. As you recall, it was about the mildest winter Michigan has had in recorded history. Temperatures fell as low as the twenties (barely qualifies as snowball-making weather, in the North) and I wore two pairs of socks, stretch pants under my jeans and a fall jacket under my winter coat.

I zipped my coat last year! I haven’t zipped my coat since the last time I got away from my mother.

And this year is apparently going to be worse. The temperatures dipped down to 32 degrees and I have to put on clogs  and a jacket to escort the dogs outside! 

All of this is leading up to a nasty observation about trends.

My socks are thinning. (They do that after about 5-7 years.) Nancy’s polar fleece socks have holes where her heel hits the cold ground. I would have assume polar fleece was indestructible, but apparently I was wrong.

So I went to the store to replenish our polar fleece socks.

There is not a pair of polar fleece socks in the 5 stores I’ve been to.

Not ONE.

The world’s most perfect sock, and they’re gone.

Well, actually, the world’s most perfect sock was a slouch sock, socks knitted out of large bore cotton yarn with giant tops designed to not fold over nor stand upright, but to slide down, giving the outward appearance of leg-warmers wadded up just above the ankle. Because they were good, of course, those went out of style…pretty much slightly before I laid in my emergency supply of polar fleece socks.

Now all I can find to keep my feet warm are fuzzy froth-knit socks in improbable colors that look ridiculous on someone my age.

My Grandmother wore clothing of same the vintage from the day I met her (she was about 60 then) to the day she died (95) and you could not walk into a store and buy anything she wore in any of that time. 

So somewhere there has to be a vintage 1960s hippy headshop where I can find my beloved slouch socks and perhaps a peasant blouse or two  made of that wrinkly you-couldn’t-iron-this-shit-flat-if-you-tried stuff that was popular when I was in high school. Jeans with giant upholstery patches across the ass and knees. Dr. Schoals (Scholes? Shoales?) wooden sandals.

When your feet are cold, trendy is over-rated.   

‘ 

It is phenomenally quiet here right now. Annie is with Lisa on a play-date, Riley went to work to protect Nancy, Susan, who is visiting for the holiday, has gone to see her sister, writer’s group is over and here I am.

Home.

Alone.

No recuperating partner, no barking dogs: nothing but an abnormally skinny old cat and the blinking cursor.

I should be writing the Great American Novel.

I read a segment of the G.A.M. to my writers group today. As I was reading it it occurred to me that very likely unless my co-writers also live inside my head, they probably had no idea what that particular segment was about. They didn’t. I have the sense the entire book has that effect but they’re too polite to tell me. I have read  7 chapters to them so far, and by the end of chapter 7 they told me they get lost because two of the main characters have similar names.

So I changed one character’s name.

Which will, gradually, change his personality. I’m okay with that–in terms of the plot to the story he was barely more than a surrogate reader, the one who says, “Hey, wait–what the hell are all of you talking about?” But every name has a personality that comes with it, and a simple change of that one word can alter the course of the entire story.

But because I changed his name, and because there were only 4 of us at group today so it was a more intimate setting and each of us had a longer interaction time, we ended up in the inevitable discussion, “Now…who is Xxxx again?” 

Try changing your younger brother’s name and then explaining how the people in your family are related to someone who has never met your family.

One of the problems with a writers group is volume. You only have so much time you can devote to each member before everyone else gets restless. So we read about 5 pages a week. If they sat down and read what I have of the manuscript beginning to drop-off, about half would lay it down, another quarter would be hopelessly lost and the remaining readers would have a steady incoming stream of information that would  plug holes left by the remaining 6 days and 23-1/2 of every week. And we read our stuff out loud. I write novels for the reader’s eye. I have written stuff for the ear–it’s a different style. Different word choices, different sentence lengths. No short-breathed asthmatic writes stories to be read aloud in the style of Faulkner: they would eventually just turn purple and tumble off the stage.

This particular segment of the story has the main characters referring to a character who is not physically there. In fact, neither of them have seen him in a long time (nor have they seen each other in that same time  period.) It strikes the listener as a shot out of the dark. Why?

Because they haven’t seen each other in that same period of time, and he was instrumental in creating that distance between them. Because when they were together, he was the third member of the Musketeers. For the same reason they referred to him six pages back and eleven pages back and 15 pages back… He was a part of their joint lives, which they are trying to either re-create or dispose of,depending on the clues they receive from each other.

However the questions are good because now I know what I need to go back and trowel into the cracks to support the  bricks of the story.

As for you who haven’t read the story at all: now wasn’t that fun?

My dog has not called home. Perhaps I should locate my new cell phone which still does not have voicemail because I have flunked the intuitive directions of how to set it  up. There’s a button missing somewhere. The last thing I want to do is leave my dog with her sitter too long–the woman is worth her weight in gold.

And on it goes… 

The dogs are bored.

One is lying in a lump behind my chair (the lump is well-placed in a patch of warm sun) and the other came in from outside. He appears to be headed for the Boring Couch, where old dogs and women with hip replacements lay.

the cat is curled up on the top of the tool box in the sun.

Earlier today we visited an old haunt, our cell phone service center. There was a time, many months ago, when my cell phone service and my Internet came from the same source. Except we were on the very edge of the service area and often my Internet service didn’t ‘come’ at all. It took me a long time to get that: that you really can appear on television as a kindly, avuncular man with the customer’s best interests at heart and still sell service in an area where  you can’t provide the service. And seem surprised when the customer complains. And respond, essentially, with, “Well, YOU signed the contract…” I had 30 days to figure out the problem. Didn’t make it. The contract was for two years.

We broke it.

But we still have the erratic phone service. It turns out I have erratic phone service because my actual physical phone has issues. Nancy has erratic phone service because she can spin her battery like it’s a bottle (this means the battery is warped, apparently, and therefore not much good.) Our contract expires in a day and a half.

In the meantime the man who sold me the service for all of this stuff has moved on. The company has built a boatload of new towers, decommissioning the ones that no longer work, and I would be surprised by how much better my service either is or will be in the next few months.

I would, I agreed, but I have a lifetime limit for lies any one particular provider can tell me and this particular service has exceeded my limit.

They understand.

They’re nice guys trying to do a job. They told me stories. They charged Nancy’s battery. There’s nothing they can do for my phone, even for two days: the devise rejects revision.

My cell phone, when run on the diagnostic machine, gave them the first red dot they’ve ever seen. Orange means it doesn’t work very well. Nancy has excellent service.

Three days ago Nancy tried to return her hospital bed to the people who delivered it. She laid on her couch with her cell phone on her chest and waited for the pick-up/delivery guy to call her. He finally showed up at the door. She said, “I was right here–my phone never rang.”

He said, “it’s flashing red–that means you’re not getting service.”

I can only presume from that the service we are not getting is excellent.

 

 

I have located the source of the barking problem.

I thought it might be the two resident chows on our north, or perhaps the emotionally damaged weimaraner to the south. I was wrong.

It’s the bulldog.

S/he lives across the street at what is either a daycare center or some very well-indulged children’s home. They have, within a small green picket fence, a slide, a house above the slide, swings and other childhood paraphernalia. The bulldog comes outside, climbs up in the child-house above the slide, and sits there.

Looking.

Right into our back yard.

This behavior drives Annie into a frenzy of yard defense.

His/her persistent peering into our private lives is an invasion of unacceptable dimension, so intense and so unforgivable that sometimes she wakes from a dead sleep, bolts off the couch, races outside and warns the Space Invader one more time.

And, of course, because she barks, Riley is driven to bark as well.

I am tempted to squirt myself in the face with citrus spray and see if I can get high on it because I am really, really tired of following the dogs outside to shake a tin can at them. It works. For about 37 seconds, but then, 37 seconds of silence is better than 0 seconds of silence.

*     *     *     *     *

Yesterday my Beloved came home from her business meeting invigorated with independence and announced, “I’m going to drive.”

I said, “take the car.”

“Why?”

“It’s easier to drive.”

“For you, maybe.”

We’ve reached the spicy stage, I see. “And because your truck is full of dead bamboo stalks,” I noted.

“I’m just going to drive around the block.”

She called me from the recycling center. “I just dumped the bamboo,” she chortled, “I think I’m going shopping now!”

“Bring chocolate.” 

“Can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t go shopping?”

Questions like that just confound me. Every relationship has its own balance of power. I adore Nancy. Part of adoring Nancy is knowing that she does NOT adore being told what to do, having suggestions made about what she should do, receiving hints, intimations or anything offered that could, with enough tinkering, be construed as…being told what to do. We have been together for something like 15 years by now: I am all out of the habit of offering advice. Why would I bother to think of reasons why she shouldn’t go shopping when they’ll just get me into trouble? 

“Nope,” I said. “Have fun.”

Some minor problems arose. She’s not supposed to carry more than 10 pounds. This left that distressing distance between the truck and the kitchen, but I’m used to going to out help carry the groceries.

And now she’s driving.

As I was helping her load all of her valuable got-to-haves into the truck this morning, I noted 3 different kinds of walking aides in the kitchen, the walker, the crutches and her cane. She is not quite steady enough for the cane. Really tired of the walker. Still–for the moment–stuck on crutches.

I think she’s doing fine. 

I don’t do it often, but I threw a full-blown verbal tantrum today. Iwas so wound up I was shaking, slamming laundry into the basket, lecturing the dog like she actually spoke English with a sarcastic accent.

When I first decided I needed a dog, one of the first dogs I found that needed to be rescued (to his forever home) was a Golden Retriever with an unfortunate past. He was living behind the living room chair in a house populated with dog lovers. He was terrified of the man who once cried when he told me how someone had trained one of his rescues with a shock collar and permanently damaged her brain. I did not take this dog because I do not do well with dogs that are afraid of me. I have never abused a dog, but (it’s a close call, and) I am related to people who have and I fully understand the mechanism. Like everything else, it is learned behavior and much more intuitive than it is made to appear on television.

Annie is for the most part fairly fearless, but if you grab her once and do something she doesn’t like (ie, latch the crate door,) it can be worth your life to catch her the second time. Or even the first if she’s suspscious of your motives. I find the amount of time it takes to sit down, calm down, chill the dog and figure out a way around the problem exasperating when all I want her to do is get in the car or come in from the garage or wipe off her muddy feet.

So Nancy went to a business meeting today. It was the first time in a long time that I could anticipate a long period of time when I would be home alone. Even the dogs went outside.

I hauled out the vacuum sweeper, which pretty much assured they would stay outside, swept, and then I dragged out the carpet cleaner and began. Our carpets have taken some heavy abuse lately, and I have been less than diligent about cleaning them.

I don’t really like to clean. I don’t hate it; I just never developed that deep sense of personal satisfaction other people seem to find in the task. I do like having a clean house, but not necessarily enough to work that hard to get it. And my knee hurts. And my shoulder aches. And if I put too much effort into life, my back can hurt, I’m slower than molasses and no matter what you do to clean anything, you have a steadily building list of things you have to get done first to get to it.

On the other hand, if you live with cats or dogs, there is no single thing you can do to a house that will improve the appearance as quickly and as dramatically than sweeping–unless it is steam cleaning.

So off I went. I cleaned the front hall, part of the dining room (it’s easier to do it in pieces), part of the living room, and part of the Conservatory. By then several situations had developed.

a.) Annie decided she had to come inside. (The ghost of my mother hovers in our bathroom, dramatically wailing, “I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself…” in my ear while I soap off in the shower with a small black dog steadily watching me through the door.) If I closed the storm door, she kicked and banged against the dog door so hard I thought she might break it. We have already had this performance in her crate today, and when I released her from the crate she ran outside for an emergency bark session. And then she found some toy she had buried in this lovely wet, black dirt and brought that in, and when I tried to deter her, she decided I was going to beat her and she ran exactly the direction I did not want her to go in holy terror. With a filthy dog toy dripping damp, black dirt.

b.) My nose started to bleed. I’ve never had a nosebleed. As a nosebleed it wasn’t all that, really, but it’s the principle of the thing.

c.) Did I mention my shoulder hurts? This is because my beloved dog Annie tripped me and I fell into the doorframe, slamming my right shoulder into the frame of the house. My right shoulder is the shoulder that ten years ago took probably 6 years to recuperate from tendonitis. The tendonitis is back. 

d.) I decided I had done enough cleaning for one day. I had done about half of the job. I can do the other half tomorrow while Nancy is at work. Things look half better, which is progress in my book.

e.) I took the steam cleaner apart, dumped the dirty water, wound up the hose and the dog came in.

Annie found that lovely filthy toy by digging it up. Out of black dirt.

So everywhere she stepped on my clean but damp carpet, she left little black dog prints. Everywhere.

I tried to catch her.

I can’t catch her because I want to: this means I’m going to beat her. She has to run away now, so she can track black mud all over the parts of the carpet she missed coming inside.

I offer her a treat.

She can’t come take a treat because if she does I’ll catch and beat her.

“I’ve never beaten you,” I snap. 

Clearly I have lost all patience and today is the day. Blackfooted, she jumps up on the couch.

By now if I catch her I AM going to beat her, so I turn and stride away to fold the laundry in the dryer.

click click click click    

Riley is not as smart as Annie, but he is more practical.  The cat flounced his tail and disappeared when the sweeper came out. No, it’s Annie, exactly a grab-and-a-half away, gazing at me with intense brown eyes that plead, “Why would you beat me? I’m the best dog you’ve ever had…”

And she stands there, leaving little black dog prints on the faux hardwood floor that I had no intention of cleaning today…

Dear Unborn Children: I hear you. And thank you. I did the best I could.

I actually did it. I bought a citrus no-bark collar. Loaded it. Mounted it on the collar. And then chased the dog outside and shook my tin can at her to make her stop barking.

This morning while I was grabbing clothes and throwing them on my body, all the while suspiciously eyeing the white stuff strewn all over the lawn, Annie raced outside and barked 75 times at the wind. So we loaded Nancy in the car, took her to work, went to the store to buy cat food, came home, I put the collar around her neck, she ran outside, turned around and came right back inside. Sat on the floor between my knees, gazing at me intently ( I had secured for myself a small quantity of ‘drops’, my latest addiction.)

Nancy is weaning herself of her pain meds because they cover her brain with fuzz and she can’t think. So far she’s doing fine. This morning I took her to work and will go later to pick her up, tomorrow her son is picking her up, and Thursday she hopes to drive herself.

And yes, I give my dog chocolate. Very, very small amounts. One of them. The other gently closes his eyes and just, ever so slightly, turns his head as if to say, No, Cheryl–I won’t eat that, even to please you. 

Surprisingly enough, the pudgier dog is the one with taste.

Anyway: all of the above explains why I now have an expensive no-bark collar lying on the desk in front of me while my barking dog is out making a noise nuisance of herself in the back yard again.

Yesterday she (Annie, not Nancy) spent most of the day with her friend Lisa.  She went to the dog park, played with a boxer, fixed a roof, watched TV, met Riley and me at the dog park, played some more… She had to sleep almost an hour and half after we came home to catch up with herself.

So, I went outside, caught the dog, put on the collar, let her back outside. Marauding herds of foreign dogs incited all of the natives, a bark fest broke out.

Collar doesn’t work.

Doesn’t spray.

I even barked at it myself: no spray.

Reminds me a lot of obedience class.

So I just tried refilling the citrus collar, barked at it, and sent my own dog into paroxysms of barking.

The collar did not spray me. Or her.

On the other hand, the dog doesn’t trust me any more because I barked at her.

Riley went outside and told me not to call him again until Nancy comes home. 

 

 

It is a wonderful temperate day, the kind of Saturday I like to spend running outside behind my dog and shaking a tin can with about 25 pennies every time she barks.  (It’s cheaper than the citrus collar I have not yet located for her.) I’m not sure shaking a tin can of pennies has deterred her barking any, but I can feel my biceps tightening with each shake.

Inside the house I am baking beans for the barn party tonight and playing spider solitaire. There are only about so many games of spider solitaire you can play. There is always the ultimate question: how hard do you want to make this game? I play the easiest game and win about 60% of the time. I need to win. Nancy plays the harder version and almost never wins, but she is made of stronger stuff.

Right now her stronger stuff is piled on the couch in the living room. She’s watching a movie on TV. Between her recent surgery and the drugs she’s taking to control the pain, she’s only good for about 2-3 hours of upright activity a day and then she disappears into the couch and snores for a while.

I have an unnatural affection for this photograph. I think it demonstrates the tank-like qualities of my dog. When she trots around the back yard she looks like a little rhino. I put a pink collar on her so people would know she’s a girl, which is the first time in my life I have ever actively courted pink. Look at the solid set of those muscular little legs. This is a dog intent on her personal purpose, which is the detect and disarm whatever may lie on the other side of that fence.

Good Lord, what is on the other side of that fence? you might well ask.

Usually nothing. Worse case scenario: two chow chows, neither one any bigger than Annie. Neither one has ever made a single sound that I’ve heard. They don’t bark back. I sense they do dash around the back yard, perhaps even in a semi-stalking manner like Annie: the point is, there’s a fence between them and they’ve all lived in the same place for 2 1/2 months now. There are at least 7 dogs in residence in the 5 houses that comprise our half of this city block, plus the 3 dogs across the street from us. The newest dog is Annie. Every time any one of these dogs comes outside, Annie runs outside to bark. 

A few years ago, when I was pure and dogless, I wrote unkind things about my backyard neighbor whose dog dashed out to bark hysterically at the wind at 4 o’clock every morning. Her name was Princess. She was a min pin. She had a bark that could peel the hair off the top of your skull. He managed her barking tendencies by throwing open his patio doorway and shouting, “Princess, God-damned it, GET IN HERE!”

I have since issued commands very much like that. I don’t wake up at 4am to let my dog out, but then…I was out there at eleven last night muttering bad language and pointless commands, so…

Now I rage out into the back yard shaking a tin can with a handful of pennies inside.

But my dog’s bark is not annoying as his dog’s bark was, and besides, he did it first, so he owes me so many 4am wake-up calls before he can really complain.

I’m sure that’s exactly how he sees it.

I opened Yahoo! this morning for my fix on the news and I read a horrifying and contradictory headline that made my blood run cold.

Spinach Recall.

To be up front and utterly honest, I have been striving the past few months to lessen my impact on the planet by reducing the amount of weight I slam against it at every step, and my primary method of achieving this end is to improve the quality of the food that I eat.

This was not a major struggle, actually.

Eliminating Fritos, Cheetos and potato chips–and Dr. Pepper–is a major health move for me.

The extreme opposite end of such a health move would be spinach or kale, neither one of which have ventured into my physical system for several decades.

Still.

I was saving them for more desperate days.

The notion that someone could get sick by eating spinach is just…treason. What is this world coming to? 

Some things are just sacred. Not necessarily good-tasting, but sacred, none-the-less.

I didn’t read the article. I have found that this approach to problem solving works increasingly well for me. I tried paying attention to the election and wound up spitting and hissing and shaking things in my teeth like Annie. My patience with the other-minded is fading with age. (And yes, I acknowledge this: I do remember the expression of bemused patience on the faces of my Grandparents as I explained to them how the world needed to change, those oh, so many years ago. God what an arrogant little shit I must have been.)

I assume wild pigs have been eliminating waste in the spinach fields of California again.

I can’t grow spinach in my dining room for much the same reason.

Yesterday I borrowed my friends Lisa and Suzie (who may actually prefer being known as ‘Sue’–I should ask her)  from her anniversary celebrations to help me take Annie to the dog park. They played in the woods, and then came into the grass park. Lisa is more mobile than I am and more of a dog person, so she recognizes signs of trouble coming faster than I do and can get to them. I think we are making progress. 

Right now there are two dogs lying side by side in the sun streaming into the Conservatory. My clothes for the day are still clicking in the dryer and my partner, still on drugs, just cut her own hair. It looks nice.

I was supposed to go to writer’s group today but my fellow writers have succumbed to various maladies.

And life goes on.