Vile and hostile threats are being issued right now. It is uncommonly dark for 9am and thunder is just rolling through the atmosphere as if 50 miles away Lake Michigan itself is under siege. (In this area of the woods, we blame all storms on Lake Michigan or South Bend.) Riley has gone outside to boof the storm into submission. I am having minor, minor technical challenges which are steadily becoming more problematic. The delete key took a vacation (always problematic for someone with my typing skills.) It appears things have restored themselves.

I am sitting here in the near dark listening to the thunder and drinking my morning coffee. Nancy is not feeling well this morning, which is both uncommon and worrisome. So I got up this morning, released the hounds, freed the chickens, fed the hounds, laid out her mother's breakfast array. Ilah is having her breakfast, Nancy is still in bed, Annie is napping on the couch and Riley is out in the back yard holding off the rain.

We lost power last night in the storm. It went off, it came back on, it went off, it came back on...Ilah's oxygen machine went into full screaming panic, all of the clocks reset themselves to midnight and Nancy and I raced like children around the house, closing all of the windows... The house is low to the ground and has a fairly wide roof over-hang, and it's in the city, where low, ground-level breezes are blocked thirty different ways by the time they reach us. Closing the windows is not the panic it used to be when I lived in the country on a slight hill in  two story frame house. It's really more of a ritual, now. And we hate to close the windows after three days of mid-eighties weather when the breezes are cool and exciting, as storm breezes tend to be.  We restored the oxygen machine, flipped the TV back on and went on with our evening.

Cheryl, Riley alerted me, there's bad weather outside. 

"Then stay here inside with us."

Oh. Okay. Ill protect you, Cheryl.

"Thanks, Rile."

I'll be right here.

"Good dog."

I'll just touch you from time to time to make sure you're okay.

"Thank you, Riley."

I'll do it, Annie offered, I'll do something--what should I do? She ran around the inner track in the house three times, but in the end she piled on the couch and watched TV with Nancy. Giving her strength.

For all of the threatening, there does not appear to be much of an actual storm right now, but I should probably not say that out loud until next Tuesday.

I wonder what Neil Gaiman is doing right now. (He's on the cover of this issue of Poets and Writers, which happens to be lying on my desk. I subscribe to it religiously, as if having the magazine around will automatically make me a better writer. I suppose it would be extreme dedication to actually read it.)

The sun might actually come out.

And somewhere I have received a text, facebook alert or some other telephonic communication, I can tell by the faint buzz in the background. Interestingly, the one thing my phone almost never does is ring.

My father should be at home again, recovering. Hey, Pop. Love you. Say hi to Ella for me.

 

 

   

Cheryl and I went to our Holly Class at PetSmart Saturday morning. We are pretty good at the class. We've taken it twice before. Cheryl says we have not progressed beyond intermediate because a.) we are unable to behave in a peaceful and sociable matter around certain other dogs (little, old, too high-strung) and we are unable to walk into PetSmart to meet Holly without the use of our Gentle Leader.

We hate our Gentle Leader.

We rub up affectionately against Cheryl's leg, pretending love and affection, when in fact, we are trying to rub off our Gentle Leader.

Without the Gentle Leader, we lunge and jerk and pull and behave badly.

We cannot pass our Canine Good Citizen test wearing a Gentle Leader.

Sometimes we hate it so much we stop dead in the middle of the road and start digging at our face for all we're worth. We would turn inside out if we could. We hate, hate, hate the Gentle Leader.

Not quite enough to behave well without it...

...but we may get there yet. 

There are 5 other dogs in our class. There is Sophie. We like Sophie. She's like us. And there is Lucy. Lucy is short and thick and easy-going and we like her. There are the puppies, who are both huskies and don't have a lick of sense between them, but we kinda/sorta don't mind them any more. And there is Vinnie. Vinnie is evil. Vinnie is so small we can hardly see him and he's a poodle. We hate poodles. At first we thought we would like to eat Vinnie, but Cheryl and Holly both say no, we can't do that. Now we would just like to meet him. They won't let us do that, either.

In our class we played a stupid game where the people shout 'heel...heel...heel..." while waving Lickety Sticks in our faces and we walk past all of the other dogs in class. One of the puppies came over and nose-kissed us. Ordinarily we would object to that, but hey--he's just a kid. We let it go, this time. We were supposed to 'sit' while the dogs all heeled by sucking Lickety Sticks. I told Cheryl, I'm not sitting. This floor is hard and it's hot in here and I'm not doing it.

"She's lost her mind," Cheryl said to Holly.

Then we put on long strings and ran down aisles and every time we found something interesting, Cheryl would shout, "Leave it!" and then "Annie, come." I guess that was fun for her. She got all happy and gave me a whole handful of treats because one of the interesting things I left was Vinnie.

And then we went home, and we helped Nancy work on the chicken pen all afternoon. I thought maybe I could go inside the pen and smell a hen or two, but both Nancy and Cheryl said no.

I never get to have any fun here.

This is me helping Nancy.

 

 

 

 

I have been saving past blogs to my hard drive. There is a method set up to archive all of the blogs through Xanga, but I am convinced I will end up with a bunch of files I can't use because they're written in some language my computer refuses to understand. I'm saving them, blog by blog, in Word. Which is pointless... Old Word files die over time as well, it's just...my printer won't print color any more and it's a pain to print in B&W (requires diligence and additional keystrokes--otherwise everything comes out green.) I suspect whatever is wrong with my printer is a simple clog, but I have no idea how to fix clogs and when you can buy them for $50, no one fixes them any more...

The dogs are at work, the chickens are fine and it's not quite time for lunch yet. Someone is mowing their lawn. The birds are chattering away in the yard. Peter peter peter 

Annie and I have class tomorrow morning. She was home with me all day yesterday while Nancy came and went, running errands, shopping for groceries... She did bark and do a lot of running in and out, but she's better. She's still Annie, however. She and Nancy went out last night to shut the chickens in the coop and Annie sat as instructed while Nancy went through the yard door. However, Annie very much wanted to go too and the release cue for 'wait' needs a little work yet, so she concluded waiting and bolted into the hen yard (being four times as fast and Nancy or I have ever been, and certainly are not now...) Nancy expected her to dash right through the coop doorway and decimate all four hens before she, Nancy, could even get there: she didn't. We're not sure why, but the chickens are fine. Instead Annie decided her diet needed a generous helping of chicken shit, and so she ate that, leaping from deposit to deposit to avoid Nancy's grasp... By the time they made it back into the house Nancy was mad enough to kill, no treats had been dispensed for good outdoors-going, and Riley was burrowed down in tight in a hole somewhere. Annie came to me. Nancy's gone crazy, Cheryl--she hates me now and I didn't do anything wrong... 

But the ladies survived, as did the dog.

I have to say I have really been enjoying the weather lately. Today is a little warm, but the evenings are nice, the sunlight is wonderful, and nothing seems parched or dry quite yet. I'm happy. 

And it would seem I am possessed of no particular insight or wisdom this...noon...so away I go. I will be steam-cleaning the carpets this afternoon, so the lovely attitude is doomed. On the other hand, it isn't that hard, never takes anywhere near as long as I expect, and it will be nice to get it done. Again.

And she's coming. It's lunch time.    

I have assigned the chickens names. This is complex because a.) I can't remember their names from one day to the next, b.) they're not my chickens, and c.) I can't tell three of the four of them apart. The chicken above is one of the three. She is braver than her sisters (they were huddled against the back fence, clucking to each other about the nerve of me, stepping into their yard,) and she came over to determine what I was doing. She stared very intently at my right shoe for some time. This apparently told her everything she needed to know and she went to the back of the yard to report her findings.

So, this may or may not be the same chicken. As you can see, she's deformed (or holding her breath.) Some of their larger feathers are just not quite right. My grandmother's chickens used to molt about once a year, and we would drop by for a family visit and her chickens would be running around about half-naked in their yard. Every so often she would have a hen in isolation because chickens are not at all bright, nor are they particularly kind to each other, and when something looks a little different, they peck at it. So all of the hens would decide Gertrude looked a little 'off' today and begin pecking at her, and soon Gertrude started sprouting holes, which would then bleed, which only fueled the frenzy... This dampened my ardor for chickens, actually. I was a child who had enough problems of her own in the school yard. 

 

Somewhere in the neighborhood some little kick dog is issuing a singular Bark! followed by 7-35 seconds of silence and then another high-pitched Bark! And it's not my dog. My dogs are behaving quite well, at the moment. They have given up on the chickens. This morning, after another character-building session of courage and food-eating, Riley burst through the back door and ran over to the chicken yard: once there, he looked around, seemed to nod to himself Yeah, they're still there and went off to visit his other morning checkpoints. Annie has been in and out thirty-five times already this morning. She has a regular path worn into the lawn. First I go here and then I go there and then I duck back over here, and then I check the fence on the right and then ...

There is a sound the dog's paws make when they're digging at the fence. It's much like listening to someone hammer on their roof. Someone must be working on their roof because I've heard that sound three times already this morning, dashed out to rescue to the chickens, only to fall over Annie as she raced (yet again) through the hole in the back door and find Riley ambling along Annie's path. Neither dog was anywhere near the chicken yard. I believe I can relax my vigil. Riley spent most of yesterday afternoon outside and he never once went near the chickens. You sprayed me six times with a water bottle, Cheryl. I hope weasels eat your chickens, and don't think I'm going to tell you, when it happens...

My father is back in the hospital. He is on a number of medications that continue to do their work with complete disregard to how the rest of his system is functioning. Someone tested his blood and said, "Whoops--this is pretty much water, at this point," which--while improving the flow--is not exactly the consistency the body expects of blood.

I have called for an update today, but while I can hear her, she apparently can't hear me.

  

The Ladies have survived 36 hours in our care now. This morning Nancy checked on their food and water, let them outside and they bolted through the portal, skipping across their tiny yard, chest-bumping each other. I have no idea what that means in the mind of a chicken. As far as I can tell the vigil you see above this paragraph is barely noteworthy, inside the yard.

The chickens themselves are hard to photograph. This is because I have a digital camera which preserved, in all of its glory, that 10 second lapse between the time you press the shutter button and the time the shutter responds. For a chicken, this allows time to lurch forward, backward, or turn her head 60 degrees. When you are trying to convince the camera to ignore the wire between you and the chickens, that lapse can become fatal. The chicken moves, the camera thinks, Hey--fencing! and you get a great shot of chicken fencing.

The ladies inside their enclosure.

Anyway, the dogs came home last night (the dogs go to work with Nancy during the day) and the chickens were still there. Riley was beside himself. My big, goofy good ole boy who needs a chorus of Eye of the Tiger just to eat his breakfast determined he was a Bird Dog, and he needed to get those birds! He barked. He whined. He dug at the fence. I squirted him with water, which he does not like and he was annoyed, but undeterred, so I squirted him again. And again. And again. And again. And again... The last time I squirted him he turned on me, thinking bad dog thoughts, and then he thought oops! that's Cheryl and he did a puppy wiggle and stalked away. I could hear him muttering as he went. Stupid woman, keeps chickens in the back yard with a bird dog...has no appreciation for my work here as a dog...sprays me with water, *&^$@()@&^... Now I have to go sleep in the hostas again...

 

Annie sought other respite.

This was originally Riley's shelter as well, but Riley... Well, Riley was in the hostas. Like every little sister known, she sees no reason to work out her own solutions when she can simply steal whatever he leaves unguarded.

And today a new day begins....

 

 

 

My Beloved has left me for another woman. Four of them, actually: three isa browns and a sex-link. And she is taking the dogs with her.

Fortunately they're just out in the back yard.

These are calm, Relaxed chickens. They were raised by a Newfoundland, so something as small and insignificant as Annie does not concern them. (Apparently Hadley June, the Newfie, got too close for comfort once, and was nose-pecked for her efforts.) They are teen-agers, not adult chickens. Nonetheless, they rode from Marcellus to Three Rivers in a dog crate (they were raised in the dog crate, so they're fine there) and eventually released into their new home in the back of our shed. Immediately they began their quest for food and water. That satisfied, they were perfectly content to settle in and take a nap, even with a grown adult sitting in a lawn chair at the end of the shed, watching them.

This morning they were released into their yard.

Whimsically enough, the most disturbing response to the chickens was not Annie's: she did pretty much what I expected she would do, and eventually she calmed down.

Riley, on the other hand, identified his life goal: MUST EAT CHICKENS.... (He has since recovered and is now napping on the couch again.) We had another Eye of the Tiger breakfast, and now he's good for the day. But for a while there he was a quivering, whining, pulsating mess of purpose-driven predator.

This is the truth: My Beloved, in a flannel shirt, tennis shoes and her nightgown, is sitting in a lawn chair in the shed, watching her chickens.

I am married to the chicken lady.

 

I never had children. I say this with great personal satisfaction because I feel I have saved the world from a host of misery, not only from me, but from my unborn children as well.  My Beloved has a friend who maintains they all come out more or less the same by the time they're forty, but I still maintain there are serious flaws in my parenting techniques.

For instance, I feed Riley has breakfast every morning. Or, I try. Before Annie came, Riley was a self-feeder. We loaded his dish whenever it seemed empty and he disappeared into the laundry room when the mood to eat struck. He could not eat during laundry day because there are huge, noisy machines in there that come after him, but then, there were days when Riley had difficulty going through the kitchen because the dishwasher would attack. Annie joined our family, and we fed them both at will. About two months into this feeding schedule the dogs ran completely out of food, and Nancy began calculating how many cups of food a dog would have to eat a day to run dry in the allotted time schedule. She calculated Annie was eating about 12 cups of food a day.

This is not the recommended dosage for a 41 pound dog.

This is, in fact, six times the recommended dosage for a 41 pound dog.

So we measured their food out into dishes and fed them individually.

We feed them individually because when Annie came to us she was half-naked and covered with open, weeping scratches. We assumed she had been used as a bait dog, but it turns out she is allergic to something dog food. Specifically, Riley's dog food. Also Riley's dog food was designed to control his weight (he takes after his mothers in that respect) and the vet suggested this might not be the best thing for a hyperactive puppy. So we bought her bags of dog food that talked lovingly of sweet potatoes and bison and such on the package, bragged NO CORN, and sells on the open market for about the same price per ounce as gold.

We gave her 2 cups of food a day plus all she could beg.

Annie became our constant companion. I love you, I love, she said, Are you really going to eat that? Because it just so happens, I love that....

Riley had a different response altogether.

His response was sheer horror. You expect me to eat in front of you? On your schedule?  I can't. I mean....I just can't. And he went belly-up on the sofa and staged a sleep-in.

Annie, in the meantime, not being a stupid dog, determined that we feed both her and Riley at the same time in separate dishes. Her food smells better, tastes better and cost more per pound than steak, but a dog dedicated to the wholesale consumption of food can empty a cup of dog food placed in a dish in roughly 37 seconds: and then she just happened to rush by to see what might be in Riley's dish.

All of his food was there, actually, because Riley is a slow, methodical eater. His eating technique involves taking no more than five and no less than three kernels of dog food delicately in his mouth, carrying them into the living room, spitting them out onto the floor and then eating each individual kernel before he returned to the bowl for more.

Each time he returned to his bowl there was a little black dog licking the bottom of it.

This lead the fights, because while Riley cannot be rushed to eat, it was, after all, his food.

This evolved, gradually, to Cheryl and Nancy placing Annie's food inside a toy, which she has to chase around the house, repeatedly knocking over in order to get her food. This slows her down, at least. Riley is fed in his dish by my side, so I can protect his food, should an emergency nap strike him mid-dinner.

In the beginning, to acclimate him to our new schedule, I fed him by hand, 3-4 kernels per handful.

Annie would stand a safe distance away, her head cocked to one side, her thoughts printed in a marque across her forehead: You NEVER do that for me... 

Over time Riley had adjusted to having his dinner on the floor next to my chair, but he is still not a dog who adapts readily to violent change. His dish on the floor by Nancy's chair, for instance, throws him completely off.

Breakfast, however. Breakfast is a problem. 

Part of the problem is that after a long, hard nap on the hard bedroom floor, Riley needs a restorative meditation on the couch. This is usually when Cheryl is sitting in her chair, saying, "Riley, Riley come--Riley, come eat breakfast..." His tail thumps. Often that is the only part of the dog that can move.

But eventually he will come over, stopping to s-t-r-e-t-c-h once on his long journey (seven feet) to my chair. He then self-positions himself between my knees, and I give him a massage, chunking his chest and shoulders while revving him up with a pep talk. "You can do this, Rile--eat your breakfast!" And I break into a rousing chorus of Eye of the Tiger.

I know I have him when he picks out three kernels of dog food and spits them out on the floor.

I borrowed my sister's son, once. His birth dipped me into a brief period of baby-envy, and I was still contemplating my rapidly aging egg supply when he attained the Age of 'No'.  I took him to my house, which was an hour and a half from my sister's house. I asked him what he wanted for dinner.

He said, "I wanna go home, see my mommy and daddy."

This was to become an recurring theme for our evening.

I cooked that child four different dinners, having been promised in advance that he really liked that particular thing until, of course, it appeared on his plate. Immediate change of heart. More comments about 'see my mommy and daddy...'

I only have about four things I can cook, so this kid was in serious trouble.

I did the only thing a self-respecting, dedicated Aunt could do: I took him back home to see his mommy and daddy.

If I had had a less-returnable child, however, I suspected s/he would have ended up much like Riley who--even skipping the occasional meal because he can't be bothered--is gradually developing a physique and workout program much like mine.

If that dog didn't wag his tail he'd never get any exercise at all.

    

The Storm of the Century came and went. The wind blew, thunder boomed, lightening lit up the sky...

*nose bump* I'm concerned, Cheryl.

"It's fine, Riley. It's just a storm."

Oh, my God, Riley, what was that? Are you all right? Should we run outside and bark at something? I'm worried,  I'm really, really worried...

Cheryl says it's 'just a storm'.

Oh, thank God, because it scared me half to death. I'm just going to curl up in this chair here where I can watch Cheryl, because if SHE starts looking worried...

Not me. Storms don't bother me. ZZZzzzzz.

We stepped outside to do our evening work. Most of that entails eating a Greenie. Cheryl has other expectations, but...she's Cheryl. Riley took his Greenie out in the rain and he watered something himself. Annie never left the steps.

I can't go out there, Cheryl--wet stuff falls out of the sky on me.

We all came back inside. I did a few of those things we all do just before we go to bed. By the time I reached the bedroom I was the last one in. Annie was sprawled out over my side of the bed, Riley was tucked up against the waterbed on the floor with his feet stuck out. He apparently likes to lay on the tiles because they're cool. We have put a blanket down for him to sleep on (actually it's a down comforter, a marvelous, fluffy bunch of warmth that neither I nor Nancy can sleep under.)

Riley has only recently begun sleeping in the bedroom with us. He used to crash out on one of the couches, but Annie sleeps with us and he is, after all, the pack leader.

But Annie sleeps on the waterbed, between Nancy and me (very best position: nose tucked against one, butt tucked against the other, feet s-p-r-a-w-l-e-d as far out as they'll go for maximum bed coverage) but the water bed slops and it wiggles and it's too hot.

*nose bump* I can't sleep on this thing, Cheryl.

"Do you need me to let you out of the room?"

No, I'll just go lay on the floor over here. How long do you think you're going to be in here, anyway?

Anyway. I slept like the dead last night. I half-expected someone to wake me up (We have to go outside, Cheryl, really, right now...) But it never happened.

We had power all night. (I would know. Many people just sleep through power outages, but I have a breathing machine. When it quits, Cheryl comes right up off the bed. Well. It's not THAT dramatic, but I notice.)

A friend has offered to help me navigate the blog sites and figure out how to set one up. I will probably take her up on that, I just...have 33 days, yet...

There is a website entitled 10 Best Free Blog Sites. I have explored them because I am cheap and, at least for the time being, bitter. It is possible Xanga will survive, I gather, but my lifetime membership is a thing of the past (really, I have nothing to whine about: had I paid my regular yearly membership, I would have paid more; and forever after only occurs in fairy tales.) But, this new change requires...change.

I would move to Blogger but apparently you have to have Google as your default browser. My default browser is Yahoo! I just paid for the yearly upgrade to get rid of the annoying advertisements on the right last week. It was not a lot of money (it was TWICE what it used to be) but it seems a little pricey for a week. Also--because I already have Gmail in another form, all of the lovely promises Google makes about the Perfect Online Life I will lead, once I convert to Google, won't happen because if you already have a Gmail account, you can't sign in to blogger because someone else already has that name. Even if that someone else is you. I used to find these Kafkaesque adventures amusing. I don't any more. They make me mad and I leave the website. 

I would move to Word Press, but membership to Word Press is a chunk of change which leaves me wondering...what do I get if I take the free one? Whatever it is, it can't be much, now can it? Also if Xanga goes anywhere it may go to Word Press...and once again we have tapped the 'go away' key.

In the meantime my Beloved is building a chicken house and yard out of reclaimed objects. Several doors. Part of our shed. A few posts, a couple of skids, some chicken wire... We are expecting to become the proud parents of four chickens. Which we fervently hope will not almost immediately become dog food. It became very quiet in the back yard last night, and eventually I wandered outside to find her, covered in sawdust, sitting on one of (the many) wooden boxes I have claimed and re-homed in my long life of collecting boxes. "I have the nesting sites worked out," she greeted me, and she rambled on about worm boxes sawed in half and bricks of coir that won't reconstitute any more and how we can cut them... My eyes glaze over during building projects. She seems to genuinely enjoy the whole 'found objects' and 'repurposed objects' aspect of this build. My mind really is more on the 'do you realize you're covered with sawdust?' level. I don't like sawdust. It messes with my asthma.

On the other hand, she has apparently never once in her life considered writing a book a form of self-amusement, so we are probably even.

This morning I found an object, and I have no recollection whatsoever what it was when I first acquired it, so I dedicated it to the Chicken House/Yard Cause. She was entranced by the limitless possibilities.

Right now I am waiting for the World's Worst Storm, which is apparently last year's World's Worst Storm only bigger. Why don't I remember last year's World's Worst Storm? There is a new Spanish word for us to learn to describe this storm, which is essentially a thunderstorm/hailstorm/possible tornado/with killer straight-line winds which (forgive me) we call "Michigan in June" around here... I am sure I will pay for that.   

My house may blow away.

I am ready now to file my final report on The Little Gray Machine, which I will henceforth refer to as TLGM.

TLGM has no effect whatsoever on Riley, who weighs 52 pounds. (Apparently the larger the dog, the less like the machine is to work. They say.) On the other hand, Riley is not a rabid barker.

TLGM does not stop Annie from barking. Annie weighs 41 pounds. It did, in the beginning. That wore off. What it DOES appear to do is break her concentration just long enough to prevent that insane build-up of aggression and hostility that causes her to run like a mad dog around the house, barking at windows and doors and gates and fences and dogs barking five miles down the road. It stops the escalation, which makes it possible for us to say, "Annie, leave it. Come here, good girl. You don't have to bark at that, we know all about that and we have it under control." And she will leave it and she will come. She may start barking all over again 6 minutes later, but she won't sound like one of the Hounds of the Baskerville's. This is a measure of the progress we have made: Jetta lives on the other of one of our fences. Jetta is pure evil in a Weimaraner suit. We hate Jetta. When Jetta barks she goes from alarm to hysteria in 37 seconds. We used to really get worked up at that. We used to bark and growl and lunge at the fence and just come completely unglued. Now Cheryl or Nancy calls us, saying., "Come on, Annie, leave Jetta alone," and we sigh and we bark one more time (we have to, or they win,) but eventually we go see what they want (sometimes treats are available, and we love those.)

It has happened once or twice recently that Jetta went hysterical and we just plain ignored her. Oh, no. You're not getting US in trouble again! (We'll go bark at the chows now.)

Barking at the chows is not as rewarding because the chows don't bark which means Cheryl can't hear them so she thinks we have just randomly lost our mind and attacked the fence. She shouts, "Annie, stop attacking the fence!" and we can hear the little chows laugh to see such sport. We hate chows.

Chows wear clown suits.

They probably shed.

When we shed, it looks like eyelashes floating on top of the water.

Not even a Weimaraner can say that.       

It would appear my blog site for life is going the way of my health insurance for life, my pension and my Social Security, all apparently included in the big punch line: ho, ho, ho, you didn't think that would just go on forever, did you?

I guess I should have known. One of my first jobs in a waterbed factory. The waterbed factory was the owner, the girlfriend who actually did the work, a graduate student, me, and a handful of other drop-in, drop-outs. We made waterbed and pool covers. We guaranteed the beds for life and sold them for about $10 apiece for a full-size. It wasn't a bad gig. I was paid well, and for a long time the owner took us out every day for lunch. The problem: the plastic sheeting we made the waterbeds out of would only hold a weld for about three years. Sometimes longer. Eventually the beds would start to leak at the seams. No problem, right? The owners brought them back. And we would re-weld them. Unfortunately, the second weld looked excellent. It felt good to our hands. The one little thing it didn't do was hold the two sheets of plastic together. We could literally weld the plastic, let it cool, and then pull the weld apart. We checked the welding machines, we checked....everything we know how to check... We ended up replacing the beds. Which, sold at perhaps not a realistic price evaluation in the first place, began to affect the business' bottom line. You can guarantee anything for life, I guess: that doesn't mean it will last that long.

At any rate, the blog site is reorganizing. The last I knew they had 34 days to raise a boatload of cash, but even if they manage to do that, there will be changes. They can no longer afford to rent the building where they keep the server. Beyond that, there are a host of technical problems I do not understand. This is what I know: the lifetime membership I paid a few years ago appears to be the annual fee for the blog site they are recommending we check out. It's not an extraordinary amount: it is a chunk of change and  a fairly self-indulgent one at that. I mean, face it: what exactly are my observations about my life, my random photography and my dogs worth a year?

So far I have applied relied on a time-worn approach to solving this dilemma. I've decided not to think about it.