The proper door has been installed.

Both Nancy and I have stepped outside and come back in.

I opened the door, let Riley outside (he has been campaigning to be a free dog ever since I closed the Conservatory door and cut off his access to the back door-installer) then I put my hand through the new dog door and called him: he raced back to the Conservatory door and came around from the opposite end of the kitchen to see what I wanted. Sadly, we have trained them to do this. The treats for very well behaved dogs, outside barking dogs who come when called, and outside barking dogs who can be tricked inside when we open the treat door, are all stored on the back room by the back door.

It looks like a dog door.

It smells like a dog door.

No way is Riley going through a strange dog door unless Annie goes through it first. Annie has a skull of reinforced concrete, so she runs 100 mph through the Conservatory door and even if it's closed, it will bounce off her head and open for her. (Well, not if it's bolted, but if it's bolted, how would she get outside?)

Riley knows this. He also knows his skull is not as hard. No, really. You go first.

So we have waited through 5 months of suspense, three home calls and a four-hour installation to achieve a dog door neither dog will go through. (Okay, we've been here before. The first dog door, if nothing else, was cheaper.)

Then Nancy and Riley went to work and Annie said, "Unt-hunh, I'm not leaving your side, you might eat something." (Yes, I do. I shouldn't. I will live to regret it, I'm sure, but yes--I share my treats with the dog. It wasn't so much a problem with Riley because he has discriminating tastes. So far Annie has turned her nose up at celery, although she will drag it off and hide it to conceal her dislike.) She is sitting on the Conservatory couch right now where she keep close watch on whatever may go into my mouth. Recently we shared a Cutie. The dog eats skillfully-marketed tangerines.

I am doing my laundry. I am panicking over my short list of things to do. I'm sure something critical has been over-looked. I counted my small gourds. Twice.

When I get back I will be ready to do my annual stint as a gourd-painter at ArtWorks, a school program for fifth-graders. I doubt that my class is anyone's favorite, but they keep asking me to come back. I need about 100 small gourds so each of my students can paint one. This is a project that takes less than the allotted time, and I have learned that bored fifth graders are creature of a whole different realm. I'm sure I was one, once, but that was so many broken habits ago. So one of the tasks on my list was 'count small gourds'. I counted them. I have enough. I have them packed.

Knowing this does nothing to assuage the sense of inevitable doom. (This should not be confused with anything remotely akin to reality; just more of my grandmother gene's moving in, finding things to fuss about.) 

Oh, dear, something awful is in the front yard. Annie really does not like it when the family splits up. She was fine all morning, even with a stranger doing odd things to our back door. Nancy and Riley left for work this afternoon, and now she barks every 6.5 minutes to alert me to some pending disaster. She is on high alert. Something Is Wrong.

She has returned to the couch, where intermittently she chuffs, tiny, swallowed barks. I am not happy here. I don't like this situation at all. Could you call Nancy and ask her to come home?

I'm afraid I'll get there and realize I've forgotten something. What would that be? Nancy won't let me take the kitchen sink. Or the washer. Everything else is packed to the fourth level of redundancy.

I'm afraid I'll get to the counter and they won't give me a rental car after all, but they'll keep the payment hold on my account for two weeks anyway.

Perhaps I should go read a book.

The installer came with the back door today. It's the wrong size.

A brief history of The Door: last fall it occurred to me (because I sit in the direct line of the Conservatory door) that the dog door, which we must have installed last spring (?) allows air the same temperature as the outdoors to flow into the Conservatory and right up my back. It may have been a coolish day in the fall. Fall. That season of increasingly  coolish temperatures with no hope for reprieve. I mentioned this to Nancy. That and the fact that the dogs rush outside, where they have converted our nicely sodded back yard into a mud pit, and then dash back inside, creating this brown track from the door to wherever the most of the dirt finally wears off.

The BACK door, however, does not blow air up my back, and it opens onto an artificial hardwood floor which seems, in my imagination at least, easier to clean.

We thought, "Why not install a dog door in the back door?"

I imagined an $80-150 dog door, but it turns out the existing back door has non-cooperative panels. It leaks (always has.) We needed a whole new door. 

Nancy called and ordered the door. For a mere $35 additional dollars a trained professional could come to our house to measure the door. "Oh, pooh," you might have said, "I could measure my own door!" This would indicate you have not repaired anything in this house, which was built to withstand tornadoes and nuclear attack and NOTHING IN IT is a conventional size. This includes the back door. It's an odd size. It's also built right into the house. (Really. Still, this seems to come as an odd surprise to installers.) It's built right into a brick house. We paid the $35 dollars, which so far has saved us something close to $1000.00 and it's still climbing.

Nancy ordered the door in early October, before she has her hip replaced. Something happened, some sort of delay, and we let it go for a while. Last month they delivered the door. I was...somewhere else. The door had been mismeasured. They sent it back.

We waited a month. (The times here could be off: it has become such a saga I no longer remember fine details.) They rebuilt the door and then scheduled a new install.

The day of the install arrived in a driving blizzard and the installer called in snowbound and rescheduled. For a month later.

Then someone called and scheduled it for the next day instead.

This morning the installer arrived, door in tow. He went to the back door and measured.

The door is the wrong size.

He could install the door, but it would require modifying the door opening, which is a.) time-consuming, b.) sacrilegious, or c.) a pain in the ass. He called the company that sold us the door.

By now Nancy and I are sitting at our twin computer cracking jokes about how many installers it takes to deliver the right door, how many doors it takes to fit the hole, and we are burning sage and doing ritual thanksgiving dances over the best-spent $35 of our lives.

So while the installer was talking to the company on one line and Nancy was talking to the company on our land phone, my cell phone rang: it was the company. The door did not fit because it was the same door they brought the last time. The new revised door was still sitting in the warehouse.

So the installer--his name is 'Mike'--has gone to fetch the other door. We think he's coming back.

We're pretty sure he's not going to install our door in the house of his next customer on the list because--I may have mentioned this--everything in our house is odd-sized. 

   

I woke up this morning running lists in my head. I am driving down to Bama saturday for about a week, and such extreme distruptions in my retirement schedule require lists. Things to do. Things to remember. Things not to forget. Did I pay the credit card? When I was trying to sleep this morning the list was endless and I could see things falling off the end to be left unattended. When I got up and sat down to write up the list...I have three things.

This warns me of impending disaster.

Oversight is inevitable.

I'm not sure whether this is a sign of increasing miles logged on the car (I will be driving a rental this time) or of miles logged on my psyche, but I do not look forward to this trip with the indifference I once had for driving 714 miles at a crack. It's a relatively easy trip. I like to drive. I am just becoming increasingly superstitious about the odds and potential car accidents. I have lucked out so many times now...

And like my Grandmother and her obsession with the Mackinac Bridge and my sister, who spent four years of her life on the wrong side of it (she went to school in Marquette, which meant she had to cross the bridge every time she went to school or came home) I don't know how to stop the fretting once it starts. I'll be fine. I am just genetically predisposed to fuss.

Unfortunately this trip comes at a bad time in Annie's young life. I suspect we will be re-enrolling in Obedience II because a.) mom has been lax in her practice, and b.) Mom is leaving the state for a week in the middle of the class. We didn't go last night because of the weather (having gone the week before through incredibly ugly weather to get essentially a private lesson since we were the only dog and mom there.) I would take her to Bama with me but she has a few bad habits and the people I am going to visit have some worse habits than Annie. The neighborhood has at least 6 strays dogs that regularly cruise the streets and Annie behaves badly around other dogs. And I did not rescue her and spend a pocketful of cash on obedience lessons, spaying, tags, toys and winter coats to take her to Alabama and lose her.

Nor will Riley, the door-bolter, be going to visit a family of door-wide-openers... (They are not terrible people. They are people--apparently an entire community of people--who have, essentially, farm dogs, those unleashed, unchained, untied dogs that hang around the house and get fed now and then. I am more hands-on and obsessive about my dog ownership. I am all over the days when the family dog just disappears for three or five days and life goes on as usual. Been there, done that, don't ever want to do it again.)   

I am going to Bama to spend a week or so with my father while Jenell comes up to Indiana to inspect her family. One of her daughters fell unexpectedly ill a week or so ago, and while she has apparently recovered, the alarm has been sounded. (Also there are a raft of grandchild birthdays to be celebrated in March every year.) Apparently "Janean and them", whoever 'they' are, are going down later in the month. To further accentuate the sense of urgency, Jenell's son had a heart attack two weeks ago. (Also recovered.) I was under the impression he lives in Birmingham, which is about 100 miles from her house, but then, he moves around and I have learned not to hold Jenell too tightly to specific details. She wants to see her family. She has every right to do so. My father wants to stay home and not be driven around the country. He has every right to do so. I can make that happen. And it is the very least I can do.

I'll be fine once I get there. It's not even the drive: it's thinking about the drive.

So this is really not about going to Alabama at all: it's about aging, about having lived through (or around, or near, or long-distance from or an artificially safe distance away from) potential disaster too long. Poor Lynn is going to have to drive over that bridge...* It's about fussing about things I never thought twice about twenty years ago. I am terrified about walking on ice (what if I fall?) driving in snow (what if I go in the ditch?)  I've driven through blizzards: I live in Michigan. It wasn't fun but I survived.

*I've even driven across Big Mac. It's a long way down to the water, which is hard on those of us who are not fond of heights. When the wind blows the bridge sways, which is technologically clever but emotionally alarming. And--while I do understand the theory behind it--the Big Mac is a series of holes loosely crocheted together, which I do not care for at all. There is no doubt in my mind that bridge will out-live me by centuries. It certainly has out-lived the woman it bucked off into the drink. The fact that that even CAN happen dampens my enthusiasm for inter-peninsular travel by the time I've reached Alma. I once narrowly missed the opportunity to ride my bike across the damned thing, which broke the hearts of my travel companions and came very close to instilling in me a belief in divine intervention.

I am going to turn into my grandmother, whom I loved dearly and to whom we were forbidden to mention entire lists of subjects with each visit. Or my father's mother, who treated herself for skin cancer (she covered it with foundation whenever she went to the doctor,) diabetes (she avoided all sugars until she passed out from low blood sugar in her doctor's office,) allergies to MSG (essentially she stopped eating most foods) none of which she had when she died of dementia in her 90s.  I don't expect to live as long as she did. Perhaps it will save me at least some of the worry.  

 

 

I am not as good at correcting color as I am at correcting exposure (and however relative this statement may be, it remains true.)

Those colors are wrong. Well: the red is a little tto red, the orange seems okay--it's the greens that are screaming at me. I have tinkered and tinkered with this picture. The whole role was wonky, but luckily they were mostly shots of stuff I've either shot a hundred times before or since, they were out of focus or they were just...Cheryl amusing herself with the *click* of the lens. Nor is this a particularly monumental shot: other than the fact that the colors are wrong, there is really nothing all that spectacular about it. Well. When it was taken, which was in the late 80s, early 90s, the balloon festival in Jackson was held at Ella Sharp Park and on-lookers could mingle among the inflating and launching balloons. I will assume we were pests, because eventually the festival was moved to the airport and pedestrians were fenced out of the launch area.

Is this any better? (Contract reduced.) The colors are still wrong, but they glare a little less.

Anyway.

I took a LOT of really bad, ill-conceived, underlit, over-exposed, dark, light, faded, unfocused photographs in my time.

As I write this I am scanning eight--8--photographs of Derek in the pool. From my limited understanding of negatives, they all appear to be good shots, and I am a firm advocate of the philosophy, 'if there is any doubt in your mind at all, take the shot again', but still: eight? (I;m not sure I can see any difference between the two shots above, now. Oh, well: perhaps that IS the problem.)

Well, okay. He's cute.

You should see him now. I should modify that somehow. My nephew is a very attractive man. He is a body builder, very careful about what he eats. I tend not to take many photographs of him because it makes me feel self-conscious. Who knows what that is about. Equally, his older brother is an attractive man and I take very few pictures of him as an adult because as soon as I pick up the camera he shoves something in front of his face. Perhaps I took too many pictures of them when they were kids. 

Things I know for sure I photographed too often:

I have more photographs of this lighthouse than most people have photographs. Of everything they've ever taken a picture of. Altogether. It would appear I spent my summers in my dad's fishing boat, floating past the South Haven lighthouse while clicking the shutter click click click click. You would think that somewhere along the line, if purely by accident, I would have an outstanding photograph of the South Haven lighthouse.

Well, it is time for my first game of Phase 10 for the day.

I am going to Alabama this weekend to spend a week or so with my Dad. Which right now means I won't be be scanning for a while, which may, in fact, be a welcome break.

I wish I had taken a few more really good pictures. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is no doubt about it: I have taken too many photographs in my lifetime. After working diligently scanning negatives for most of a month, I finally made my way through the box I kept upstairs and was able to go to the basement and take on the two big boxes I have stored down there. Except I didn't, because I found a third large box, dragged those upstairs and began working on them.

Several things worried me when I took on this project. There are five siblings in my family, two of whom have children. I took considerably more pictures of my sister's children than I took of my brother's. I felt this inequity might weigh on the project. Probably not. I have more pictures of my brother's kids than exist of--for example--me at comparable ages. Lance may cringe at the sight of a camera lens, but 'Becca is well represented. I have everything but the photograph she asked for, of her on Grampa's boat. But we are barely through our first box, so...

The only volume control I apparently had was forty year-old eyes: I stopped taking pictures for a while in my forties because they were all coming back unfocused. And then, of course, I changed my glasses...

Has this slowed me down?

Riley and I went to the dog park yesterday so he could run and this where we reconnected with our friend Ruby. As you can see, Ruby is not a large dog, but she is fearless and she fully enjoys her romps at the park. 

This is Ruby's co-dog, Sam. Because he is a black dog he is more of a challenge to photograph. This picture is pretty much a silhouette. He's no bigger than Ruby, scruffy, bouncy.

So yes: I took a break from scanning to go to the dog park and take pictures of someone else's dog. I know Ruby's human companion by sight. I'm not sure I know his name...

Prior to about three years ago I was far more prone to photographing other people's cats. or my own. Other frequent subjects of mine: sandhill cranes and South Haven.

And bad photographs: I have a boatload of BAD photographs. My artistic technique was apparently 'just keep shooting', kind of like a monkey at a typewriter eventually banging out Shakespeare. Time, persistence, and judicious editing.  

On the other hand, I can remember which bed room I slept in in the ski lodge in Barothy last year. Probably because I have 3-7 pictures of it somewhere.

What we can't remember we can always photograph. 

 

I'm back.

(Did you know I was gone?)

I went on our annual pilgrimage to Barothy Lodge in Wallhalla, Mi., which is between Baldwin and Luddington. A bunch of us who began as a volleyball group (I think--I am not one of the 'Original' members) began making yearly trips North to a ski lodge on the Pere Marquette River. This was 'our' 32nd trip. I am a virtual newcomer, but sadly I have forgotten what year it is for me. It's probably close to 20, I would guess. Also Barothy has a variety of lodges available. The one we use now was not even built when the group first began going, so we have stayed in a variety of buildings on the property. This is the view of the river from our current lodge's front porch.

The thing most of us have in common is employment at a particular office of the variably named Department of Social Services (also known as DSS, DHS and FIA, to name a few.) This year marks a kind of passage for us: the last of us retired from state service. NO ONE works for our former employer any more.

"So what did you talk about?" my Beloved asked.

Knee replacement surgery, dogs, cats, aging parents, life, death, infinity, religion, how busy the life of a retired person really is and the volume of the television. What we're reading, where we're going, grand children, the foibles of the modern world. Cranberry flavored beverages. We did not discuss the fat content of what we were eating as much this year. One of us was unable to make it at the last minute because she failed her stress test. One of us is going to update his kitchen. One of us--certainly one of the more fiscally responsible of us--is an expert on every gambling facility in the tri-state area.

I left Friday afternoon and came home Monday afternoon. I felt like I'd been gone a month: it was really like hitting the 'reset' button.

While I was gone Nancy had a revelation about her mother that may allow her to relax the vigilance of her caretaking. Annie was Annie. Riley is apparently not feeling well and either because he missed me or he doesn't feel good, has become my constant companion. Today Nancy and Annie went  to work and Riley and I are staying home with Ilah.

On our way to Barothy (and for the geographically-challenged, we went past Barothy and then came back) Bob and I went to Luddington for dinner, where I discovered that Luddington has a light house. (The odds are Luddington has always had a light house, and the odds are even better that I've seen it before, since I have, twice in my lifetime, ridden the Milwaukee Clipper from Luddington to Milwaukee and back. This memory, however,has also warped slightly, since I remember the trip being from Luddington to Oshkosh. I'm going to have to do some research to sort out this tangle.) Sitting at the dock in Luddington we found the ferry the Badger (as well as the Spartan.) I have never heard of the Spartan (I have heard of the Badger.) The Milwaukee Clipper was retired several years ago. Nonetheless: there in front of us was a lighthouse. I love lighthouses, as demonstrated by the 347 photographs I've taken of the South Haven Lighthouse.

How did I forget that?

So now I am home again, Ilah has had her breakfast, Riley is napping on the couch and I can occasionally hear his belly upset. I would give him some Pepto, but I know from past experience he won't take it.

The dog door we began negotiating in October may be installed tomorrow, which could remove the cold breeze blowing up my back today. (Probably not retroactively.)

It is snowing lightly, big, fluffy flakes falling, at least in the back yard, straight down. We have acquired about an inch of it in the time I've been awake today (two hours.)

And so it goes.    

Little known fact: if you have Comcast basic cable service and suddenly you have no sound on 2 channels, press the 'lang' key once. This works whether you perform this task intentionally or you just reckless pick up the remote, mashing levers at random. The first tech I called didn't know that, either.

I am in charge of the cable service. There are two reasons for that. One is, I am more likely to be home where the cable service is and all cable service help requests will eventually require walking into the room where the service is delivered and (at the very least) staring intently at the misbehaving box (it usually requires moving the dresser away from the wall without spilling the TV and unplugging the service, counting slowly to ten and and plugging it back in. (The other reason is Nancy is usually too tired to problem solve in the evenings.) These are the steps that must be performed first, even if you have called for service repairs 6 times in 2.5 weeks. The actual physical technician who came a week and a half ago told us the real problem is the line, which is old, over-loaded and last year's technology--but since we still get service, the line will be replaced 'eventually'. And yes, you're right: I should have told him then that our premium channels--for which we pay extra--pixelate during dramatic minutes (or quarters of hours). I wasn't the person he shared that information with.

There was a time when I knew how every machine in my home worked. Well. That's arrogant and needs immediate revision. I knew how every machine received and sent signals over which cords, wires and remotes. I knew that 'electricity flows like water' and could trace the power through the maze of wires on the backs of my machinery piles. My knowledge could best be summarized as: "I knew what was wrong when..." It was useful. I felt powerful.

However, technical information changes daily, changes with every update, every new service, every replacement of previous service and/or equipment and I think the beginning of the end was the cell phone. When I was a child we had a black telephone (they were all black) with a rotary dial (actually we had wooden boxes with a little handle that rotated, an earpiece that hung in a hanger on the side and a mouthpiece mounted on the front of the box--just like June Lockhart on Lassie.) You had to listen to the pattern every time the phone rang because there were 6 people on our party line, and our calls were codes as one long ring and four shorts. If you picked up the receiver, other members of our party line might be talking on the phone. Listening in was considered rude. Now I have a little glass rectangle that rides around in my pocket and plays games, lets me access the Internet, calls me, texts me, takes pictures, reads books, tells me the weather and doubles as a flash light.

Somewhere in between those two phones I lost interest in relearning how to use the same conceptual base every other year. I blame computers in general and Word in particular, which needs to be relearned every other year. I now know more obsolete information about Word than I know about the current version.

It's curmudgeonly of me, I know.

My current phone hangs up on me, tweets for no reason, and suffers from hysterical narcolepsy, and I have no idea why. I haven't really reported it to its maker because it's malfunctions may or may not have something to do with the keys on the outside of the case which I may or may not pinch while trying to pry it out of my pocket or hold it to my ear. I have no idea. It annoys me that it malfunctions, but apparently its maker said, 'hell, those people never real the manual anyway' and never printed one. Nancy's phone hangs up on her mid-conversation as well, so I have diagnosed the problem as 'systemic'. I find that as I toddle on toward obsolescence, navigating automatic answering programs is not how I choose to spend my retirement.

I am in charge of the cable service. Did I mention that?

I live with a 95 year-old who views life through a remote that can cause random cable malfunctions just by the way she picks it up. I know this to be true because as I was talking to the technician on my narcoleptic phone I picked up the remote as directed, flipped to the misbehaving channels and they talked to me--which they have not done for 5 days--and just as I was about to assure her the problem had magically resolved THEY STOPPED TALKING. Fortunately the technician was able to talk me down, because what I wanted to do was throw the remote through the TV set.

Which would have involved buying a new TV, taking out the old one, wiring up the new one, finding the secret ID code to program the TV to the cable remote (shit, what did I do with that?) and calling the voicemail maze to tell someone that, yes, once again--she has no sound on channels 3 and 8 (which are physically the closest to us: the announcers could just yell a little louder, really.) 

Yesterday I: went to writers group, went to PetSmart to schedule Annie's private lesson, picked up the dogs, came home, found the secret code to access the voicemail on Ilah's phone, identified, via a tech call, the secret code to get sound back for channels 3 and 8, turned in our extended cable services for flagrant pixelation, heated her lunch, beat her at Phase 10, took the dogs to get their nails clipped, shared my cache of new knowledge with Nancy when she came home...

Today the technician is coming between two and four, assuming I answer all of the preceding phone calls appropriately, to re-order our pixies so they dance in proper alignment.  

And once again the giant invisible monster is looming in the back yard. Riley has it under control. I have determined, through careful observation, that the Monster in the Back Yard is actually a game of musical chairs the prize is not overcoming the monster so much as getting back in the house and claiming the left end of the Conservatory couch. (The best end. The superior end. The Only Really Good Place to Sleep in the entire house.) Where Annie now is, coiled and sleeping, while Riley is still pacing the gate in the back yard, wondering where the hell the monster went...

He was here just a minute ago, Annie said so.   

The other day I was driven out into the cold and snow for supplies. Distilled water, I believe. One of those small necessities that run out without warning and force the sedentarily inclined into unaccustomed action.

I went to Walmart. It's big. It's cheap. I don't have any serious quarrel with the quality of available distilled water.

And as I was wandering through the aisles, past the photographic equipment aisle on down toward food (and therefore, distilled water) I happened to notice these tiny slippers made of fleece and brightly colored...fleece, and I thought, cold-footedly, I want one. Or, to be precise, two. 

Slippers tend to last a long time in my wardrobe, compared to other footwear, because I never wear them. Eventually  all of Nancy's slippers die terrible deaths and I will find her hovering over mine with a look of despair on her face. And I say to her, "Would you like to wear mine?" This is one of the few ways I have of gaining points with my partner with a minimum of effort on my part.

This winter my feet turned cold. Bam. Overnight. Every time I walk into Ilah's room, which is 112 degrees, I think to myself, "This is your future." At present, however, the only parts of me that seem to crave heat are my feet.

The slippers I found in Walmart were for children, but cleverly I back-tracked to adult shoes, boots and footwear and found the same design on sale suitable for sizes 5-10.5.

That always gives me pause. It's hard to imagine anything that fits a size 5 that would also fit a 10.5. I've experienced failures of this claim in both socks and gloves.

But they were $4.50.

And they have Hello Kitty on the toes.

So I bought these tiny fleece slippers that look like Cinderella might be lurking near the grate and I brought them home.

Both Riley and Annie were highly excited by my new slippers. Unusually so, I thought: Riley kept trying to grasp them and run off with them in his mouth.

And I looked at them.

And I looked at the assorted piles of fluff that adorn our flooring, and I realized: he thinks I bought him a dog toy.

The odds of my new slippers surviving the next week are slim to none. Like everything else soft and fluffy and adorable, they will be hunted down, torn limb from limb and gutted.

Bitterness will be expressed because no dog could find the squeakers.

And they do fit my size 10 feet, by the way, but if I were a 10.5 I wouldn't hold out much hope. Nancy's feet are size 11, so she will never be able to wear my Hello Kitty slippers. Which is just as well, because Annie is waiting with bated breath.    

Recently I took Annie to the vet. Why? I can't remember why--it was a minor consultation about some issue, cost me a visitation fee and while I was there I asked, "Can I ask another question?" And we discussed Annie's hair (or lack thereof.) I was rambling on about anti-allergy foods, her treats, her baths, and the vet said, "You know, some dogs just have a sort of alopecia." She has female pattern nakedness. (In addition to the scratching, the rocking the waterbed, the scratches she incurs as a result and the occasional flares of redness. She DOES have allergies: it's just the hair Nancy and I are so determinedly 'growing back' may never have been there.

This is important only because the dog in the photograph has hidden husky blood flowing through his veins. The dog in the photograph is fine in snow, cold and blowing winds. (He does not handle heat particularly well.) He likes to spend time outside. He is a sniffer, a squirrel hunter, a domain keeper. Annie and I step outside barefoot and we have about the same endurance.

We have a summer dog and we have a winter dog.

Also, we pay real money to heat this house. Real enough that it hurts Nancy's heart to sit at her computer, paying the bills, while a 18" X 12" hole looms in the back door with gale-force arctic winds surging through it, across the Conservatory and up her back.

We made alternative plans for the winter. So far they have not developed into an actual better-placed dog door.

So I am pleased to note that Nancy's mother moved in with us a little over a week ago, and our biggest problem is the unauthorized entry of cold air into the Conservatory. Every now and then I go to Ilah's room to alert her to supper or to deliver her phone to her, and it's 112 degrees in there. I scurry back to the Conservatory...

Annie went to her second intermediate class last night. She did well, allowing for the occasional distraction of a chocolate poodle shopping in the store aisles (our class is in a pet store, and we practice in the aisles. And she did not want to eat the poodle, she merely wanted a meet and greet.)

Right now Annie is grazing in the kitchen, Riley has settled in in the back yard where he sits and gazes solemnly around his back yard. His expression seems to say, "This is mine: all mine."

And a tiny, very cold wind is blowing gently around my feet.

Because--while he is a sweet dog--he is not always the brightest dog and when he decides to come in he is apt to come barrelling through the dog door and give himself a concussion if I close the storm door to stop the wind. Or, he will cuddle up against the side of the house without telling me he is stranded and shiver until I remember him. He barks at squirrels. He barks at his sister. He barks at the dogs conversing down the street. He even barks at me to let him out. He NEVER barks to be let back in.

Ah, yes. I took Annie to the vet because she had hives. Which vanished in the two-mile car ride from the house to the clinic.

"She has these little bumps all over her back," I reported to the vet, "she's had them for two days, now..."

And there stood my semi-naked, smooth-coated, hiveless dog.

"Hi," Annie said to the vet. "Got treats?" 

I have been neglecting my reading public.

There are several reasons for this. I have been scanning photographs. All day. Most days. I live by the hum of the scanner. And I have been supplying...what would you call that? Emotional support.(Yes. me.) Yes, I can run to the store. Nancy's mother is settling in. We are learning about the effects of medications on the elderly. Most of her belongings are now properly stowed and her pictures are all hung.

It has been a very busy week for Annie. Annie really would prefer that Nancy and I sit still in the same room: it causes her just all sorts of fussing and trotting when we wander off into different rooms of the house. So you can imagine what adding a THIRD PERSON to the mix has done to Annie's nerves. Ilah spends most of her time in her room (Nancy and I steadfastly refuse to heat the entire house to 112 degrees) but she does occasionally move around in there and every time she does Annie bolts awake, barking INTRUDER! INTRUDER! Oh, wait... She goes to Ilah's door 40 times a day and looks at her.

On the other hand, neither Riley nor Annie are afraid of walkers, they just don't like them, so while I fall over Annie about six times a day, neither dog creates a traffic hazard for Ilah. In fact the biggest dog problem for the past few days has been the weather and not any additions to our home. Because it's COLD outside Annie cannot be out for more than six minutes at a time and while Riley does well in cold weather, he finds he must continually come to Cheryl to get the door open again. (The cold air blows in through the dog door, across the Conservatory and directly up Cheryl's back.) This is a bother. Sometimes he just gives up and takes a nap.

We bought a new door for the other end of the house, with a dog door built right into it. We paid for the door. We started this whole process (Nancy started this whole process) in October. We almost got the door the beginning of January, but someone mismeasured something and apparently we have to start all over again now. I estimate they will install the new 'freeze the house on the other end' door probably in early May. Ours is not a house to be taken lightly. It doesn't seem to matter whether the plumbing is stopped up or the door needs to be replaced, there is something about the construction of this house that makes installers shake their heads and mutter, 'well, you don't see that very often...' Brickwork seems to be  constant obstacle.  

We had an adventure. Well...someone had an adventure. Annie graduated proudly from her beginning dog obedience class (she was the star of the class, which I stress because it makes me feel better) and Tuesday we began intermediate obedience class. Our old friends Blue and Cain were there, and another problem dog had joined us. (We remain the problem class.) A barky, hyperactive (pedigreed) Schnauzer. Annie took one look at the Schnauzer barking and jumping and leaping and just generally being a puppy and she fixated on him and would not let it go. The trainer gave me tips for controlling my dog, but I apparently burned out my ability to focus on three different things at a time while still on the job. And while I was hoping to learn how to overcome this problem during our classes, it appears I won't have that opportunity: the little show dog is switching to a different class. 

On the other hand, Annie remains very good about meeting strange dogs in the store aisles. We did a meet, sit and greet with a puppy husky while practicing our manners, to discover the husky was shopping and not attending our class. But we did very well.

Annie has developed a new fetish. I don't particularly like it, but I can see the end result already. She had decided, for whatever reason, to remove the skirt from the Conservatory couch. Nancy reinstalled a recently removed section earlier this week: I now have two more. All the repair really requires is a staple gun and some patience, but I see skirtlessness in this couch's future. Efforts to curtail this sport have fallen on deaf dog ears because she only does this when I am not in the Conservatory. I believe this is another variation of the 'give me peanut butter in a Kong and put me in my crate' game, but it's hard on the couch.

Yesterday she put herself in her crate, but there was a peanut-butter-in-the-Kong failure and she was forced to come out and act like an idiot until I figured out the problem.

Someone (I have no idea who) told me their dog's favorite toy was a ball that comes with ears and feet. I needed to buy coffee filters from Amazon and they were about $5 less than the free shipping (and I HATE paying for shipping) so I bought a ball with feet and ears.

Best toy ever.

Or it was, until she chewed off both feet (slightly more than an hour) and then broke the squeaker (about two hours.) Now it's just another rubber ball which, when pinched, says, "whoosh".  It HAD a really, really satisfactory squeaker, but that broke (into some seriously choke-worthy pieces, I hasten to add,) and now it's no good at all.

Of all of Annie's toys to date, the longest-lived and most satisfactory remains the water bottle-lined snake. It's gone blind, but otherwise appears impervious to terrier damage. That and the Kong. The Kong fills with peanut butter whenever Cheryl loses patience (which can be intentionally engineered, if need be) and this makes the Kong the very, very best toy. But the snake is second.

The rest of the dog toys are dismembered bits of fluff that seem to retain a certain emotional value. Otherwise, our house is random colonies of fluff and stuffing with stray arms and legs strewn here and there. 

Oh, yes: she still shreds, shakes and batters sofa pillows. They do not appear to be built to withstand dog abuse.