"He won't bite"

While I have been neglecting my blog, I have not been neglecting my running.  Running, walking.  Intervals.  I am up to: run a mile, walk a minute, run a mile, etc. for a total of 4+ miles run.  Yes, I am slow & I built up slowly & this means the neighborhood has had ample opportunity to observe my....fine physique ambling about.  Ditto I have had plenty of time to learn the routines of the dogs in the neighborhood & label the deadbeat owners.  & now I will list them, for the benefit of all of you & the Dumb Ass Dog Owners Blog Hop (hosted by Tales from the back road & Heart like a dog) I found at The poodle & dog blog.

I begin mile one all too often trailed by the long legged beagle things that live in the opposite direction up the road.  That's right, the guy whose dogs have attacked our stock, killed one of our cats, sent the other for an extended stay on the roof, & generally made a nuisance of themselves are still around.  Animal control makes almost weekly visits to this guy but there does not seem to be much that can be done unless the dogs are caught red-pawed. 

I lose these dogs once I get to a row of yards with fenced yards & dogs in them.  One has an elderly back mutt of roughly lab-size.  It was out once (someone must have left a gate open) & I ended up crossing the street because it clearly did not want me crossing its driveway, but I would not flag this as dumb-assery; anyone can forget to close a gate once in three years. 

After the old black not-quite-a-lab, there is a pair of corgis who are kind of hilarious.  Their house is off the road but down a straight drive, so I can see them clearly, barking theirs head, off running slightly faster than me, but not much.  They invariable stop ten feet before their closed gate & make sure I know this is their house & then they run home again, as fast as they can.

It stays quiet until I turn on to the dirt road & start past the larger horse farms.  Farm number two has what has to be a full blooded Cane Corso.  This thing is HUGE.  He (yes he, no question) has only barked at me once (I passed another runner & we said "morning" or some such & maybe he was just saying "morning" too but I could live a happy life not hearing that dog-voice again).  He has the gravely bark that goes with an Ancient Roman dog of war.  Mostly he does the other thing he is bred to do, he courses.  He easily keeps pace with me, inside his fence, escorting me from one end of his territory to the other.

Another turn & another largely dog-free stretch, mostly because the houses move further off the road, until I make my final turn & move past Grayson, The Slinker. His family really does call him Grayson, I call him The Slinker because he once climbed to the top of a five foot gate, crawled through the gap at the top & slunk after me.  When I turned & yelled "HEY!" he took off back into his yard.  I saw his people & told them & the very next day there were bungee cords wrapped across the gap & a few weeks later a new, much narrower-gapped gate.  Grayson lived with the most majestic Doberman I ever saw.  I don't see him anymore; I suspect he is sleeping away/has slept away his old age because...Grayson now has two Rottweiler puppies keeping him busy.  I wish they made less noise, but they stay in their (fenced) yard; some days they do just sit & watch me go by, no noise at all.

While I am on the road I might meet the guy next door who I am pretty sure has undiagnosed Asperger's walking his big male German Shepherd whom he adores & is pretty much the only way to connect with him. Also the dog is wonderful to behold, beautifully cared for & trained.  I may also meet the other German Shepherd guy who USED to walk his dog off-leash until it took of after a little girl on a bicycle (she's fine, I'm not sure she knew it even happened, but her father saw & chewed a hole through every ear he could find & actually got the sheriff to issue a ticket-no easy feat) & now clips the leash on grumbling about leash laws whenever he sees someone heading towards them, because the rest of us using public roads is a huge inconvenience to him.

Finally, I might meet K****** who walks a faux-German Shepard she found abandoned in the parking lot at K-Mart & a boxy headed lover boy who look like they could yank her arms right off her body but actually seem more interested in tripping her than anything else.  We usually talk a bit, often about those first long-legged beagle things (the owner CLAIMS they are Walker Hounds but they are the scaredest,  scrawniest, most swayed-back walkers I have ever seen) as they often trail her home, giving her the credit for not scooping up after her dogs, which she does do but if you see a lady walking two dogs & a pile of poop a minute later it is hard not to connect the two.

I never see Bishop anymore.  After that documented encounter, I saw him once or twice being walked on a leash, but it has been well over a year since the last Bishop sighting.  I pass his house twice on my 5-6 times a week run, so I am confident if he still lived there I would know.  I guess when it became clear they could not just send him out the door (they were new to the neighborhood in those days & plenty of people not from around here think all dogs roam free in the country), he had to be relocated.

Which might leave you wondering where is the Dumb Ass Dog Owner?  After all, there is only one continuing problem & I don't go into any detail.  Well, there is a new dog in town, a short timer, as I am pretty sure it belongs to a contractor working on a sizeable addition on one of the houses on my route.  Every time I pass, this dog goes nuts.  Most of the time, it is sitting on the seat or in the bed of a pick-up & seems happy just to bark its face off but this week-end things were different.  I started this same stretch & I could hear the dog, as I often can.  I realized the sound was getting closer & looked up.  A smallish (30-40lbs, maybe), scruffy cute dog was bearing down.  I stopped.  Then I heard a guy saying "He won't bite".  The dog was still running towards me, barking.  It cleared the end of the driveway.  I shouted "HEY" for the dog really, but the guy seemed to think I was trying to get his attention & said something along the lines of "He's just being friendly.  He won't bite".  I started looking around for a rock or stick or something.  When I came up with a chunk of cinderblock, the guy decided it was time to maybe bring his dog to heal (in all fairness the dog was now less than three feet from me & had made no attempt to bite, but it was barking & lunging & barking & lunging & looked ready to settle in for a long game of bark & lunge).  We had a brief chat in which DADO made it clear that I was being completely unreasonable & I offered to smash his dog's skull in there on the public street & then we could wait for a sheriff to sort out who was in the wrong.

I meet a DADO fairly regularly (usually the same one, yep the guy with the free-range mongrel hounds), but I am often impressed by how many I DON'T meet.  There are many red-flag dog breeds on my route (& in my house:  a German Shephard, a pit-looking mix, two mini-dachshunds -the bitingest breed of all & a cocker spaniel, another breed no stranger to nips), but mostly people who get "dangerous" dogs know it & take care.  It is the people who think their little angels would never hurt a fly that are the real problem. 

52 Photos Project: Something Really Small

This week has been another month-long week here.  We have had weather (yes, I know everyone has weather) that required special prep & then, when it passed, special breakdown.  Not really adding to my pile, but certainly adding to our uh-oh levels, our next door neighbor was taken to the hospital on Monday.  She was moved out of ICU yesterday & I was able to visit, but she probably won't be home for a few days. 

Back to the weather.  I know two days with overnights below freezing (& at least a few daylight hours above) are not big deal to most people.  Here it is quite the headache, mostly because this kind of weather is so rare, there is no real long-term planning for it.  Let me give you a for instance:  three years ago we had a week of after dark freezes.  A friend of mine was living in a traditional cracker house.  Yes, there is such a thing & one of the primary characteristics is they have an empty gap between the round & the floorboards. which means no slab & more germane to this story no insulated plumbing.  this means turning off the water at the pump & draining the pipes before they freeze & not turning anything back on until the temperatures rise again.  V** has learned to live with the ice cold shows (no water in the water heater means no hot water), but in 2012 the thaws occurred after she had left for work, which didn't really matter as she would have had to drive home early to turn it drain the system & all off again before that night's freeze.  Not just no hot showers, but no showers period.  Also, no washing your hands, no flushing the toilet....you get the picture?  She too quite a few showers here & ate out a lot that winter.

I know it is popular to think people who live like this are too poor to live any other way & many of them are.  In V**'s case she is a legal secretary & not without options.  That same up off the ground characteristic meant she never had to deal with termites (the plague of wooden houses here), she had fewer concerns during flash floods (even just a few inches of standing water can destroy your house, but not hers) & her a/c bill was a fraction of anyone else's.  In short most years her house was better than ours, but not when it gets colder-than-average.

Enough about that, right?  We do not live in a traditional cracker house but our water pump is still exposed, as is some of the house plumbing & all the livestock tanks.  During a hard freeze, the challenge is to keep the pump running enough that it doesn't freeze up, ditto the floats in the stock tanks & generally make sure water continues to move more or less all night long.  We do this with a series of orchestrated drips at the outer reaches of each water line.  This is the biggest outside tank & the something really small that meant it continued to function.

C is for CURSED

I thought I would bring you a little taste of Hallowe'en this week via an earlier 52 Photos Project prompt.  & so here it is: "C is for Cursed".

Quite some time ago, the pasture across the street was sold to a developer who planned a high-end luxury gated community.  & I think I should probably start my story with that sale.  It was a sizeable piece of land which had belonged to a successful local farming family for generations.  But one generation got the littlest bit greedy.  No, no not in the way you are thinking.  They didn't sell it for cash....well, they did but not voluntarily.

The short version is in a desire to circumvent inheritance & property taxes one generation sold the land to the next generation for a measly sum.  All would have been well, if not for a divorce.  Things that are inherited can be excluded from community property settlements, after all how could anyone argue that something was acquired jointly if it would have gone to one of the parties singly with or without the presence of the other party?  It is actually more complicated than that, but that is the gist.  Had the property transfer followed the ordinary inheritance process, it might still be covered in cattle but because it was purchased it was part of the assets that needed to be divided.  & unable to be divided it had to be sold.

When the land was purchased & the proposed development was staked out we (the people in the surrounding neighborhood) were skeptical.  After all, there was no internet out here in those days.  There is still no cable television.  We don't hook-up to a water line or a sewer line; each home owner has to deal with that privately,  which is fine if you are frugal, but not so much if you are not.  What kind of luxury, all-services-included type community could work with that?  Naturally, we never counted on services bypassing us completely & running lines directly to that future development. 

Then they broke ground & built a handful of sample houses & we were stunned.  The flagship house listed for $1.4 million & then actually sold for very close to that asking price.  The people who bought it were....an interesting case.  Let me say I know people who know them & say they are quite pleasant & maybe they are.  On the flip side, they were very active in a church that I would describe as hate-mongering if not actually hate-based.  More than that, they were the impetus in a campaign designed to remove certain discrimination protections in an adjacent city's charter.  A city I can confirm they did not live in at the time.

The reason given for this behavior was something to do with the bible; I have never really understood the specifics as the round-&-round speak of these arguments makes my head ache.  Also if we are going to start governing based on a book why does it have to be that one? There are other older books (yes, there are), if age is the criteria.  Finally, why be so pick&choose?  I find it hard to be patient with people telling me the bible says so with a sauce covered rib-bib around their necks, I just do.

Anyway.

We were kinda disgusted.  It didn't help that the above mentioned church has a rather checkered past itself.  My favorite was when a teacher at the school at the church got pregnant by a student; A said he had NO IDEA conservative religious education in the rural American south was so well rounded & he would not have minded a health class featuring a live sex show.  Yes, yes we are both aware the teacher & the student probably did it in the dark with most of their clothes on.  More recently but not all that recently, a member of this same congregation took to the local airwaves to defend Sarah Palin & her worries about....witches.  Witches.  Because that was where so many of us parted ways with Sarah Palin:  witches being among us.  I guess I can understand why someone might want to defend Sarah Palin for her views, but the idea that her views on witches were the biggest problem the American public had with her candidacy...? 

Moving forward, the anti-discrimination repeal failed (YAY) & other church leaders predicted that an angel of the lord would smite us for our folly.  & then this happened across the street:

SOMEBODY got smote.

After they rebuilt, the house lingered, unoccupied on the market until just a couple months ago.  Before that, A took this picture one morning of a fairly typical view from our driveway (more or less the same angle as the fire picture). 

As for the rest of the development, the houses were rather shoddy & of the four built only three sold before the market crashed.  Some lots also sold, but only one was ever built on.  The high-end clubhouse was built, but never really opened & as far as I know the Olympic sized swimming pool has never held chlorinated water.  It is a breeding ground for a particularly aggressive mosquito, which pairs nicely with the pine beetle that has devoured a good chunk of the pine woodland left between lots to provide privacy.  Now it looks more like a Bates Motel landscape without the Bates Motel. 

C is not for Cozy, at least not here. 

Labor rich Labor Day

Things have been a little quilt heavy here, at least you would think so from the blog posts.  The reality is most of our time has been spent outside.  We have had a very rainy rainy season (YAY) so there has been a lot happening out there & none of it has had anything to do with wildfires (YAY YAY).

This weekend we went grape picking at Loftus Family Farm.  We try to do this every year, but this year the grapes were bit behind schedule.  All this rain is good, but they need sun, too, to ripen.  Mr. Loftus told us that on Saturday 900 pounds of pick-your-own muscadine were weighed & sold.  We came home with 10+ pounds of our own.  I brought about a third of them over to W*****.  She is doing OKay with the radiation but she is so thin! & I know she loves them.

I also brought her some cuttings from the Reve d'Or which is going gangbusters up the live oak tree, probably because of the rain & being up high in rich well-drained compost.  This is the second set of cutting I have done for her.  The first set got so slammed with the rain, they flooded & never took root.  She will make a better rose-sitter than I ever was & if they all make it (& really they should) she will 14 tiny little rose bushes to plant along her fence.

Michael Faraday went squirrel chasing (nothing new there) up the banana tree (uhm...OKay) & took down the stalk with the closest-to-ripe bunch.  We have had seven banana blossoms this year (I can stop talking about the rain right?).  Those stalks are quite sturdy but Mr. Faraday is no lightweight.  Since they have already started to turn yellow, A cut the stalk & it is hanging from a rope tied to the covered walkway between the house & the garage.  We are hoping this will approximate the light it would have gotten in the banana thicket.  The blossom still had some petals, so I brought it over to W***** with the rose cuttings & the grapes.

So you see, it is not all quilting-quilting-quilting.  Of course, with all the rain I get a chunk of time inside to do something pick-up-put-down, like bind a quilt or...  No more about quilts or rain, for a few days at least.  I promise. 

The sign says No Trespassing but the wall says Welcome

One bad apple

Now that I am breathing clearly again, mostly, I have started running again.  Kinda.  I have been scaling up slowly (one minute run, one minute walk for a mile & the walk back a mile).  I have also rearranged my route somewhat.  Let me go back a bit:

Last year I had a couple mildly unpleasant encounters with one particular old man; I honestly cannot remember if I blogged about it or not.  The gist of these encounters was he would tell me something I was doing wrong such as running on the wrong side of the road (which was odd as I was running against traffic, as I should), or running on road instead of the shoulder (where he started talking about this there was actually no shoulder, the road went right up to a tree line so I don't know what he expected BUT I often do this even when there is a shoulder because of the litter, especially broken glass & when the grass gets long it see hard to see holes that would be happy to trip me or worse), or he would drive by (in a gold extended cab pick-up) & honk & zoom way out around me, like I was in his way.  He was just generally be someone I wanted to avoid. 

Apparently this guy was a well known neighborhood grumpy old guy.  One day after passing the Marine Corps. Flag House (many places along my route have names like this), Grumpy Old Guy jumped out at me (really) & stopped dead in the road & started talking about....something.  I don't know what because I veered out into the road & just went around him without otherwise acknowledging he was there at all.  When I came back down that road, the Marine Corps. Flag House Husband...or Uncle I suppose, was there & beginning with an "excuse me", flagged me down to ask if Old ?Jack?Tom?Billy? (I really don't remember) was bothering me.  I said well, yea, actually he was, whenever I see him he has some unreasonable complaint.  I don't know if I said I thought he was harmless, but the truth is I did & mostly still do.  I suspect he is lonely & has no idea how to interact with people, so he opens with something anti-social & then cannot understand why people avoid him (I m not so very insightful, I have relatives who behave this same way & then complain their grandchildren never call). 

Marine Corps. Flag House Man said he would talk with Grumpy Old Guy's son (our neighborhood is thick with family farms; we might be the only people totally unrelated to anyone in the area).  He also indicated his own children (I have only seen one ?10?11? year old boy tearing round the fenced yard with the dogs, but apparently there are more) had been harangued by Grumpy Old Guy.  I said that would be great actually, as I don't know who this guy is, but some of the things he does are dangerous, like zooming up behind me & slamming the brakes & the horn.  Turns out he had been doing that to Marine Corps. Flag House Kids when they rode their bikes.  Sweet guy. 

I went back to my run & Marine Corps. Flag House Man walking across the street.  Since that day I have only seen Grumpy Old Guy a few times.  I have seen his truck, but he hasn't been behind the wheel (I don't know if this is a new development, the only time I really noticed it before was after he had done something obnoxious).  I sometimes see him in one of two front yards & although he has shouted at me (!), he has never started walking towards me & he certainly hasn't jumped out like he used to.  On the other hand he often shakes his fist at me, one of those "get off my lawn" gestures. 

& now that I know roughly where he lives, I have changed my route to not pass it.  This change isn't permanent; it is along nice shady bit of road & en route to my favorite stretch & once the summer sun hits, I will want to run down there.  On the other hand I hear Grumpy Guy got quite the corking last week, so maybe it won't be that big a deal.  Have I ever mentioned Running Girl?  Running Girl is pre-teen, bone thin & lives for speed.  Foot-speed that is; one run she passed me three times, that is three different points along my route she zoomed up from behind me & went on by.  I have never seen her without Bicycle Boy, who I would guess is in his mid-teens.  Running Girl RUNS, flat out RUNS, she RUNS like a bear is after her & Bicycle Boy rides just behind her, usually in a weaving sort of pattern.  It is very clear he is her escort.  He almost never gets ahead of her, but sometimes he rides up alongside her & they have brief conversations.  Their interactions are familial, there is no other way to describe it; they are either siblings or close cousins or something.  They are clearly both fond of & frustrated with each other.   Neither of them is ever discourteous, but when I see them I move over.  Running Girl hates to stop & it's not like my running is a speed event.  There is one other thing about Running Girl & Bicycle Boy:  Bicycle Boy is black & Running Girl probably isn't.  She has golden skin, but straight loose blondish hair.  The color means nothing, I know, but it is floppy white person hair; she usually wears a pony tail that swings around in a way black person hair just doesn't.  Because of this racial/ethnic/whatever combo, I am 99.9% sure I know which house they belong to; there are plenty of mixed race families in our general area but only one white spouse/black spouse couple near my route. 

So Running Girl & Bicycle Boy are fairly regular fixtures  I don't usually see them when school is in, but week-ends or holidays I am likely to run (no pun intended & not literally) into them.  So it should not have surprised me that Grumpy Old Guy had seen them as well.  & of course, why would his interactions with them be any happier than with me.  Or with Marine Corps. Flag House Kids.

The version I heard was that Grumpy Old Guy shouted at Running Girl & Bicycle Boy & I believe it.  It was implied that is was racial, but no one I talked to knew what was said exactly & given Grumpy Old Man's history I am not sure it had to be, but maybe it was.  Then he threw something at them & maybe he did.  On the other hand I have seen Grumpy Old Guy shake his fist like a Scooby Doo villain which could look like throwing.  It doesn't matter really, except to Grumpy Old Guy who got a visit from the sheriff's department.  A complaint had been made that he threatened two local children & he has been under much closer watch by his family since then (this I have from Marine Corps. Flag House Woman who had it from Grumpy Old Guy's daughter-in-law who has historically been in sympathy with the neighborhood).   Apparently if you yell & jump up & down, that is one thing, but the minute you throw even a newspaper that can be called assault.  Toss in a few racial slurs & you have a legal problem. 

So Grumpy Old Guy got a stern warning.  It was made clear that, given his history in the neighborhood (apparently there had been there had been other calls to the police, specifically about the aggressive driving, but no formal complaint), he could expect a charge next time.  His family does seem to be doing their best to keep him under wraps.  When I drive by either of the two houses, I sometimes see Grumpy Old Guy well away from the road, sitting in a chair, looking around.  He might still yell & throw things but no one walking by would know it.  Whether this will continue to be the case, who knows.  If he does jump out at me again, or shout something or whatever I'm not sure if I want to be the one who calls the cops again.  & for me, the first time.  For now, I am just avoiding that part of the route. 

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Poulet pays à quatre minute à neuf

It was my intention to get this quilt done & shipped off (walked next door) last spring but, well, too much happened.  A lot happened here & a lot happened there.  Ordinarily what goes on next door does not impact my free time one iota but in this case there was a death in her family, which meant W***** was out-of-state for right around 3 weeks.  She meant to go for just the weekend but discovered more unfinished business than expected when she got there.  & back here, we were having henhouse problems & assorted other issues on both properties & since I had to deal for me, it only made sense to deal for her.

As a result, this quilt, which had already been delayed was delayed further & did not get into her hands until this very October.  Doubly sad as I have PICTURES of the blocks on my blog dated March....2011.

The pattern is straight forward.  I got it from Block Lotto, made numerous blocks in the red & white colorway that was part of the direction.  It didn't take the link to the source pattern (where Block Lotto seems to have gotten it, although I am not trying to suggest this is the first place it appeared ever in the history of quilting & the internet) for me to realize this block had potential with my favorite & most useless kind of fabric, large scale novelties with peculiar subjects.

Enter chickens.  Chickens wearing bandanas.  Chickens wearing bandanas with endearments written underneath them.  Chickens wearing bandanas with endearments written underneath them in French.  Anyone who knows me will realize that of course I bought the remaining fabric on the bolt.  There was not a little & it is already almost gone. 

I am still calling the block 8:56 (4 to 9) or en français: quatre minute à neuf heures.  & they are country chickens (poulet pays), although I suppose what with the colors, etc. they could be gangsta chickens...  Turns out, there is no google translate for gangsta, so I guess I will stick with country. Yes, I realize that this all mock-french, but it will work for me.

The finished quilt measures  56"x56" more or less, just the right size for a lap or a nap.  It was pieced & quilted on my Bernina, 153 Quilters Edition.  I used an irregular on-the-diagonal stripe which I have used before.  In addition to being a bit snazzier (& easier) than a regular side to side stripe, I have learned it wears well & so it is my default quilting for anything I know is likely to see regular use & thus regular washing.

Lastly there is a display sleeve on the back, machine stitched at the same time as the binding to the front.  Under ordinary circumstances I would consider this a strictly utilitarian quilt, but I know W*****'s entire house is decorated in chickens & I suspect this might get hung up as often as it is used.

So, here it is, my entry for the Autumn 2012 Blogger's Quilt Festival.  All my previous Blogger's Quilt Festival entries can be seen here.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 56″ x 56"

Quilted & pieced by : me on a Bernina 153

Best Category : Throw Quilt, Scrap Quilt, Home Machine Quilted Quilt

& then there were four

The first of the kittens to go went to his new home yesterday afternoon.  Earnest Rutherford, now to be known as Rufus left the rest of his litter who are all convalescing next door on W*****'s sleeping porch.  He (along w/everyone else) was parted from his reproductive organs Thursday, spent a quiet night & then he in particular got down to the business of playing with string & strips of newspaper.

The five of them have gotten to be old pros at traveling (2 trips to the vet for exam, rabies vaccs et al  & then 3 weeks booster in addition to Thursday's surgery).  Rutherford/Rufus went easily into the cat carrier & fell asleep while we talked over him for another 20 minutes or so.  I have seen a picture of him in his new home where he looked plenty comfortable, relaxing on an area rug.  Before he left, while h snoozed in the carrier, the others were mildly interested in what was going on at first, but then got more interested in looking out the windows, bathing & eating.  Considering they started their new life with in our barn (& before that were on the side of a dirt road), they have made the transition to indoor cats nicely.  For some of them it will be a permanent transition, which I suspect will be fine with them.

Today was another red letter day of sorts.  It was on Friday, July 13th that we discovered the kittens (well, they discovered us) & managed to catch & bring home 2 of them.  This morning I was up earlier than usual for my run (a new pattern that will need to prevail for the next few months; by late morning the heat & humidity make it almost impossible to breathe & I end up walking the last 2/3rds of my route breathing so loud it is hard to hear oncoming traffic).   Naturally, I cannot help but scan the stretch the where kittens first appeared.  I wonder what happened to their mother, for one thing, although they were not less than 3 months old & she may not have been left with them.  I wonder how someone could have had them in a home (there is NO DOUBT they know the difference between a litter box & a bit of tracked in sand on a concrete floor) & then tossed them.  Even the most aloof of them is a very friendly cat.

I have said before (to everyone who will listen) there was no need to toss them.  Multiple rescues in town would have taken them, as is.  The local humane society shelter had a brief shut down when a cat tested positive for feline leukemia, but the other local groups stepped in & did what they could (it really was brief, no cats in or out for five days I think).  Even crazier, the group No More Homeless Pets spays & neuters for less than $50 an animal, 4 days a week. The group does not even care if you live in the city or even the county or wherever.  If you don't have the cash, call them anyway, there are ways to get it paid for.  They (& any thinking person, really) would rather a dog or cat get spayed/neutered than make more & more. 

The process was a small headache as pick-up & drop-off times are rigid, but this is obviously because they do A LOT of work every day (I was told 35 animals were being dealt with the day we went & I believe it & this was a garden variety Thursday).  The staff is friendly & helpful, & do everything they can to get you in & out in a timely way.  I cannot say enough good things about them, actually.  I am glad they were there when we needed them & have added them to the local NPR station as groups we support with cash donations.

To the person who dumped a litter of kittens at the top of our dirt road, just off a four lane highway

Dear Asshat:

Not sure when you did it, but when I went for my daily run on Friday the 13th we (me & the friend I was running with) found five (5) kittens.  Actually, they kind of found us; two of them ran into the street yowling & they all looked emaciated.  It took a while but we managed to catch 2 of them,  Actually at one point we had 4 of them but a car went by & spooked them; we all have scratches to prove just how spooked they were.

Those 2 kittens came home with me & spent most of the weekend hiding in the dense underbrush around my house.  They were frantic to rejoin the others but being over a mile away they could not hear them yowling back & also there was food at my house.  I saw 2 of the 3 kittens when I went back later that Friday & again when I ran on Saturday, but by Sunday they seemed to have disappeared.

On Sunday evening the kittens at my house moved into a tree at the front door & kept poor A awake for a good part of the night.  Monday morning A***** came by to run again; the kittens hanging in the tree crying for their siblings were hard to miss.  We went for our run & on the return trip, we heard them.  Just like before 2 of them came out to us but the last kitten hung back.  I didn't talk about this with A**** at the time but I knew we could not take the other 2 & leave just 1; it wouldn't survive the night.

I ran for the truck & the pet carrier & cat food while A***** managed to get all 3 of them to follow her almost 1/4 mile back towards my house & away from the highway.  By the time we caught all of them I was bleeding COPIOUSLY from several wounds on my right hand & I'm sure A***** had scratches too (I can also tell you she didn't smell all that good in the closed cab of the truck for the ride home; a 2 1/2 mile run + cat food being smeared all over her took a toll).  At the house, the 3 were reunited with the 2 & there has hardly been any noise since.  What they have been doing for the past 4 days is making up for lost time in the eating & sleeping department.  They also made a visit to a vet (very likely the step that made you decide they had to go because it costs money).  They were nice & calm & purred through most of the exam.

At this point, I realize you might be thinking this played out just fine for everyone: you didn't have to deal with them & still they are headed for good homes.  Think again.  Generally cats that draw blood & have no medical record are euthanized.  Immediately.  & the person who gets bit gets to go through the whole rabies vaccination thing.  It hurts.  Also it isn't free & even if it is covered by insurance there is a $120 co-pay (guess how I know this).  For $45, you could have had their mother spayed.

The euthanizing is merciful compared to the usual end for dumped animals; our vet calls them coyote snack packs.  Because ours is a neighborhood of family farms, it is a magnet for heartless slacker pet owners like you.  & because so many unwanted animals get dumped here, we have a higher than average coyote population harassing our livestock, killing chickens, turkeys, ducks, etc.

Believe it or not the story I related is the short version.  I did not tell you about the family that pulled over with their full horse trailer & tried to help to catch the kittens the first time, or the farmer that saw me when I went back Friday evening & left his work to make sure someone hadn't broken down, or the woman at the house we finally caught the kittens who is caring for her daughter-in-law's 3 dogs each of which was also dumped in their turn at the same intersection. 

As revolting as we all find you to be, it is nothing compared to our disgust at how stoopid you are.  We all presume you were just too cheap to deal with the kittens ethically.  As it happens, you unloaded them in a county with MULTIPLE agencies that would have inoculated them & placed them in foster homes at no charge to you. 

So you put a neighborhood to inconvenience & expense for quite literally no reason at all.  It is my fondest wish that some day, maybe when you are old & cannot care for yourself, that the people you always thought would help you instead heave you out of the back of a pick-up to die in a ditch by the side of the road.  I am only sorry it can only happen once.

Bishop strikes again

A few weeks ago, I related an encounter with a neighborhood doberman who scarred the crap out of me.  A day or two later, when I ran by the same house the woman made a point of coming out & talking to me, letting me know they were very sorry, he was a young dog it would never happen again, etc.  She seemed very contrite & I believed her.  She also insisted Bishop would never hurt anyone & I believe she believed it.

Since then I have been alert when I go by that house, but there was never another problem.  Until this morning.  While I was running on the opposite side of the street, I saw the front door open & a younger (I am guessing teenage) woman hauled Bishop out by his collar into the unfenced front yard & then quickly, so no one could see she was wearing nothing but pink underwear & a t-shirt, scooted back inside & shut the door.  Bishop started to sniff a bush or something, saw me running & took off after me.  I screamed HEY HEY, the door opened the girl called Bishop back in (& he went) & that was more or less it. 

Actually she called out "Sorry, he has never done that before" & I answered "Fuck you, this is the second time he has done that to ME".  I guess those years in Joisey never really left my psyche.  The woman/girl looked quite startled (I don't think she was used to complete strangers talking to her like that, never mind at 8:30 in the morning).

I did my usual run & when I went back past Bishop's house there was no people visible & no Bishop.  There was also no street number on the mailbox or I would have made a call to animal control when I got home.  We live in a rural enough area that the houses while more or less numbered in order, the numbers don't follow one another very closely; we are 1713, our immediate neighbor is 1805.  Further up the street where the lots are closer together they are numbered, I kid you not: 727, 729, 713, & 733.  The lots were renumbered in the 1980's to make ambulance service faster but, well, someone screwed up. Once when 713 actually needed an ambulance, the crew spent precious minutes looking for the house along the stretch of road where 713 would be if there was one (there isn't; it's a field); now when she calls for anything from the county, she gives the number of the house next door & someone goes into the street to flag it down.  Big improvement.

So.  A thinks I should go to the house, knock on the door & explain why this business of letting a doberman run free is not the best plan.  I feel like that has 1) already been established & 2) they don't actually believe it is a problem.  I don't expect animal control will do a damn thing until they get complaints from several people over time, but I also think it needs to start some where. 

& then there were 18

Yesterday, during a MONSOON, we relocated our remaining 18 chickens to W*****'s henhouse next door.  For those who have not had the misfortune to speak to me directly in the past week, we have gone from 27 to 18 hens; something small & vicious has been getting into the henhouse. 

First, I thought the count seemed "light", but as the ladies had not been out (our henhouse is plenty large enough for them to never leave it & be quite healthy, I swear) I figured someone was behind something or I missed someone...  Then I realized I could only find one Lakenvelder; there should have been two.  I thought maybe one of them had not come back in from the previous day's outing & I had somehow miscounted, counting one twice.  Then I couldn't find Teensie the one&only Sumatran & I knew there was a problem.

I went through that henhouse as best I could.  Any opening I found larger than my fist (& I have rather small hands) I stitched up, or rather darned, using a lighter gauge wire.   Friday morning, there were 2 dead birds still in the henhouse.  That afternoon, A came home from being in CA most of the week.  He dug around the exterior, found an opening behind & below the feeders at the back where the wooden wall had rotted away.  The next morning, there was no doubt something had tried to dig in at that point.  Whatever it was, it had managed to get in somewhere else: two more dead hens.

Saturday we took everything out & examined the four exterior walls from the inside.  We added a layer of chicken wire over the existing layer of wire on the two side walls.  We added extra wire in the corners at the roof line.  Sunday morning: another dead bird & that made nine gone.  Another bird had most of her neck feathers ripped out, but looks to be otherwise healthy.

Our best theory is that whatever it is is small enough to fit in the channel of the corrugated roof.  We packed up the live birds (we used the dead one to bait a live trap) & brought them next door, where they are all a bit cramped, but at least they survived the night.  Nothing came for the dead bird, but Tropical Storm Debby was grinding herself for hours right on top of us most of the night.  The rain was so loud, we had trouble having a conversation in any room with many windows, forget the room with a skylight.  We could not even hear the tv, sitting less then 6 feet away in a room with surround sound. 

Soooo, we don't know was the dead bird not temptation enough?  Did whatever it is just not try because of the weather? Did it maybe (hopefully) drown where ever it was holed up?  We plan to leave the trap baited another night & check back again tomorrow.  No mater what the result, the birds are at W*****'s until Thursday or maybe even the weekend, because of course A is leaving town again tomorrow.

My first near miss dog attack

I have been running for, well, weeks now.  I don't know how long exactly.  Since between April & May bookclub, like that clears it up.  Mostly it sucks.  But overall it sucks less than it did; I do not imagine there will ever be a time when it sucks not at all.

One thing that does not suck is my route.  It is mostly well shaded, mostly on dirt road, over all scenic & pleasant.  There is not much traffic except during melon or berry harvest & even then I am a familiar enough sight that most of the drivers slow down so as not to bury me in sand (I still come home, brush my teeth & spit sand out, but that is like on a dirt road during a drought; that would happen whether I ran the route or just weeded the roses in the front yard).

Recently I added a bit more distance & as it happens this takes me not even 1/4 mile down a paved road, past 1/2 a dozen ordinary neighborhood houses.  Yesterday in front of one of these houses I almost got much too close to a very fit, very well cared for, very well trained Doberman Pinscher.

I was running past the house.  I was in the street (there is no sidewalk & I only go up on to the grass when there is a car coming towards me or the water level is over the tops of my sneakers).  I do not run with ear buds.  I did not have either of my "dangerous breed" dogs on a lead with me.  I heard a small yappy dog, turned my head & saw a white west highland looking terrier type coming across the lawn & maybe 4 feet away, getting into a crouch position was a garden variety doberman.  It was not particularly large, but it was less than two full bounds away.

I screamed "Hey Hey" & ran backwards towards the center of the road & the lady of the house came either around the side of the house or out of the open garage (you can imagine what I was looking at & believe I was not scanning the background for people).  She called the dog by name, both dogs IMMEDIATELY stood down & walked back towards her.  After she had them she kept calling "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" as I continued my run around the corner & away.

& that was the whole thing, attack-wise.  The scariest part is of course the complete silence of the attack dog.  Funnily enough, I run past (twice actually as this part of the route is a double back) another house with a doberman & a different breed (bigger breed) of very vocal sidekick every single run.  That dobie is also the strong silent type, mostly hangs back but occasionally lopes to the fence.  That's right, those people have 5 foot high fence.  All of us, me the dogs, we are all clear what side of the fence we belong on & I am sure that makes all the difference.

What would Terry do?

Yesterday I was asking what would Terry do & I mean Terry Jones.  No not Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, but Terry Jones of DoveWorld Church fame.  As of this typing the "pastor" of the Dove World "church" is planning to burn a book holy to a religion not his own.  The reasons he gives have been well covered in the media locally & internationally.  By & large they read like a list of the usual I know the one true god, they have it coming & look everyone- look at me.

So I thought I would take a moment to review the reasons not being covered ( & the reasons for quotes around the words pastor & church):

Dove World church is only just barely a church.  I don't mean because they don't believe what I believe, I mean because they are a for-profit business.  They are have already had their not-for-profit status revoked for one arm of their enterprise & the rest is still under investigation.  Once you start selling stuff on eBay, it is hard to convince anyone you are not selling stuff.

In the course of investigating are they in fact a "church", the profiteers were identified & numero uno is ...wait for it...Terry Jones.  The technical term is commingled funds, but the initial issue was money made from the labor of people fulfilling court ordered community service, etc.  I want you to imagine for a moment that a person could be arrested for say drunk driving, ordered to "give back" some time making the community a better place & they went to work for well anyone really, who in turn put whatever profit was made in their own pocket.  Does this say "church" to you?  In any case, members of the organization also worked without compensation, except perhaps a Get Out Of Hell Free card.

The website sells anti-muslim books, bumper stickers & coffee mugs & where that money goes is still being investigated.  Among the t-shirts being sold is the "Islam is of the devil" t-shirt that so endeared DoveWorld to the local school district.  The short version is kids who wore this t-shirt to school were asked to put a sweatshirt over it because others might find it offensive, thereby violating the then-dress-code. That was so offensive, some of them dropped out. 

If you thought that was all that was for sale, think again.  The church itself is on the block.  That's right, that piece of real estate being photographed & displayed all over the world is on the market.

Which brings me back to: what would Terry do?  Apparently he would try to parlay his success as a media whore to make a buck.  The truly astonishing part is he is still going broke.  & there in lies the more recent what would Terry do & that is back-down.  Because it turns out the only thing more likely to make him change his mind than cash was the very real threat of a $60K bill for police services during the event, the likely cost of defending himself form "yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre" type charges & assorted civil actions from the local neighborhood association.

Blue rock of death

A few weeks ago, V** arrived early enough that she overlapped with A before he left for campus. Or maybe he was late. That detail is fuzzy but this one is not--she wanted to ask him about the blue rock of death.

A few weeks before, she had been cruising a yard sale & found a shiny, turquoise-y, glassy-looking rock. The seller of the rock said it was for a a fish tank & V** said "I have a fish tank!" & she bought it. Because it was shiny. & turquoise. & looked like glass.

She went home & forgot it in the cab of the truck for a day or two. Then she brought it in, cleaned it off & put it in her freshwater tank. By morning all the fish were dead.

She was shocked, horrified & very upset. She was scooping the bodies when she saw a small, pitted, ugly thing at the bottom of the tank & asked herself "what the f*ck is that?" It was the blue rock of death, but its appearance had changed dramatically.

She dealt with the bodies, left the rock & went to work. When she got home, the plants were starting to look, well clear. Photosynthesis had clearly stopped & they were losing their green. She took the blue rock out, put it in a bag & I am sorry to say it is now sitting on my front step.

This is what we know: the bottom of the tank is certainly richer in nitrogen than any other part of the tank. Because it is sizable, she usually cleans it by pumping it out rather than transferring fish, scoping out water, etc. so it might be even higher than most other healthy fresh water tanks.

V** thought that the pitted surface might be something that had 'grown over' the rock, but A says not. he is pretty sure the change is to the surface itself.

We would know more but A keeps forgetting to borrow a Geiger counter (would you believe he has had reason to borrow one in the past? Well, he has).

So does anyone know what the blue rock of death might be? Does anyone have any questions about the blue rock of death? Does anyone want me to send them the blue rock so they can examine it more closely ? That would last one be ideal, actually.

Over the fence

I got an e-mail early week-before-last letting me know my pasture needed mowing (which was plenty obvious). In same message W***** suggested a few times she could come over & do it. & then she did it. That Saturday I was making quiche. I made two & left one on her kitchen counter.

That same week-end, I cleared aloe "pups" from the bed along the house & under the banana trees. I packed them in newly cut grass & left a bucket of them near W*****'s truck. I also put some aside for V** & her parents (a handful each: V** likes plants her dogs cannot kill too quickly & her parents like hummingbird attractors). This coming month V** will help me take the old wallpaper off the bathroom wall (I am still unsteady on a ladder). When she goes home, she will take a dozen fresh eggs for her parents.

Friday morning I got feed for all the horses & was looking at the shelf of tick-sprays. I told D** I did not like the strong smells but what could you do? I was ready to plonk down $10+ for a small spray bottle. She suggested I use the horse spray instead. It has a milder smell & was 1/2 the price.

I like it here.

Of course I have heard of cows

I went to one of the other AG universities in the country (no, not Texas A&M) & then lived off-campus while A finished his degree. I once had to call in to work because cows had gotten loose in the apartment parking lot & were slipping on the ice, making it very difficult to move them back to their pasture (& very risky if not impossible to drive).

I have better stories than that, though. After a freshman year spent in the freshman dorms, I moved to one of the all-female dorms on campus. & stayed there for the next three years (I truly never understood the desire to live in a party dorm, much better to visit & then go home, but I have always been of the do-not-sh*t-where-you-eat mentality). This particular dorm was actually one of the oldest buildings on campus & therefore adjacent to one of the oldest schools: the agricultural school. Unlike other virgin-volts/lesbo-lockups or whatever it is your school called women-only dorms this one actually had a waiting list. If you had to get up at dawn to milk the cows before class, you would want to live as close as possible, too.

This meant that pastoral views & healthful walks were literally just outside the front door. It was like being on a campus a la Jean Webster & not circa 198x at all. Except on Ag Show days. On those days the crowd in the barns could get pretty competitive & more than once I walked into the elegant pre-war marble showers to find another resident washing a sheep. No cup of black coffee wakes a person up quite like standing groggily under lessening hot water, hearing "BAAA!" & then the crash of a liberated ewe covered in soap-suds sliding down the main staircase into the front parlor & crashing usually somewhere around the piano. I heard that one once got into the big fireplace, somehow behind the firescreen & did really amazing things with the soot, but I missed it myself.

All of this came back to me a few weeks ago when I was driving back to campus to pick up A. I had his car (i.e. not my truck) & was driving past the big field one street over when out of the corner of my eye I saw it: one loan calf had made it across the cattle guard & was now slowly munching around to the street. Cattle guards can be very scary (to cows) which makes them very effective except when they fail, they fail miserably. The cow that was frightened & somehow made it across is very very very hard to convince to go back.

I quickly reversed the Honda, zoomed down the short entrance beeping the whole way. For a moment I worried it might decide the safest route was up over the hood & out onto the road, but it wheeled around & ran back over the guard, clanging & lowing. At the other end of the field I saw the farmer, rope in hand, stop his sprint, wave & walk back in the direction he had come from.

//the dorm itself was named for the Governor who vetoed funding allocations for the first women's dorm at the the school. Where I am from this is what passes for a very good joke.

Won't you be my neighbor?

Foreclosures have finally come to my little island. Not that I live on an island; I live in the only town in the county with no surface water & no water = no island. I also live in the state with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, in a county with one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the country.

There has been a lot of speculation about why that is: Is it because so many university people live on soft-money renewed every year so they make large down payments & qualify only for smaller loans? Is it because the family farms here are smaller overall than in the mid-west so they have been able to hold on? Whatever the reason (or more likely reasons), it probably helped that we are effectively a mid-sized county in a state famous for having the most rural & the most urban counties. Everything is milder in the middle.

The house in question flew up a few years ago. It was OKay, but boring: white straight siding, no plantings except grass. We rarely saw anyone outside, they watered their lawn at strange times & aggressively. Seriously, they once watered for three straight days, 24 hours a day. Then nothing until all the grass was burned & brown. Then they watered non-stop & it came back. This was actually the first clue the house was a rental.

The second clue is inside. I have been told each bedroom has a complete bathroom, but the house itself has no 1/2 bath for guests. Neither does mine (have a 1/2 bath; we make guests use the yard), but then again our three bedrooms do not each have an en suite, either. This floor plan is typical of the student-rentals close to campus, but I really have no idea who thought there needed to be one out here.

Since the sign went up, a number of things have been done to make it look more like a home & less like an apartment block. I know some of the trees in front are new (I think there were only two before) & all of the flowers. I admit I am tempted every time a go by & see the door open &/or cars in the driveway to ask to have a look. & I am quite sure they would let me see all I want, I just have not had the time.

So it goes on the auction block in early-June. I am guessing it could be quite the financial coup for the person who wants to live there. Maybe with a couple roommates...? Maybe not.

Meet Newt

This is the new man in my life. His name is Newt. His dad is in Iraq until ?November? & Newt's original (post-dad's-deployment) living arrangement was not working out. So he is staying with us while an alternative arrangement is made. Yeah, we expect to have him right up until Thanksgiving.

Today, we are celebrating Memorial Day trying to help a future veteran not lose someone he loves while he is away. It does not have quite the same patriotic fervor as buying new appliances, but the fact is, all my appliances work fine. & I do not need any more sheets. & we just painted the house last year.

This is the time of year I wish I had a brain tumor

In '07, fire season came early & forecasters are predicting another big year for '09. From now until the first heavy rain (usually roundabout July), I will smell smoke. Most of it will be real.

I have heard that there is a particular part of the brain that responds to pressure (pressure as in the physical pressure of a growing tumor, not the other kind) by signaling the smell of smoke. People with this tumor walk around asking everyone "do you smell smoke" until they drop dead of said tumor. I realize this might be one of those soap opera diseases, but there are days I wish I had it.

That's right, I would rather just drop dead of a brain tumor than watch my home (or actually my animals) be consumed by fire. I am not good with fire. I was well into my 2os before I was comfortable lighting a paper match. You know the kind I mean, the matches that come in a flimsy matchbook & the cardboard is so cheap you worry they will flop around & light up your fingernails. Okay maybe I am the only one that worries about that.

The year after we moved here, two days after Christmas, our neighbor-over-the-back-fence had an electrical fire (the source being the unzoned trailer home I have previously mentioned). The flames took about fifteen minutes to sweep across his yard, consume our back fence & start moving towards our house. This was a slow moving fire. The fire department spent what I would describe as a ridiculous amount of time trying to put out the mobile home. They more or less ignored the creeping towards the property line until the row of pine trees went up like bottle rockets. The whooshing sound of twenty 'kerosene pines' popping & flaming at once got them to turn around. I remember the look on the senior fire-guy's face. He looked like he wished he was somewhere else. Every pasture for miles was ringed by a continuous chain of pine trees. & every farm had its own entrance from the road that may or may not be the street for which the lot has a street address.

Since that time we have put in a few gates. One of them links the back of our pasture with the back of W*****'s & D******'s; when this happens again, there will be another way to get firetrucks in & livestock out.

But on that day, the only reason we did not lose everything was D***** on one side & G*** on the other. They both worked tirelessly, brought their own buckets, their own hoses, shovels & rakes & spent the entire day watering down a large swath of grass about ten feet into our pasture. They both knew when to give up on the back line well before the fire crew. They have both put out more than one fire before (D****** on this very property when the grass grew long & then dried, touching the hotwire the then-current owner had put up to corral their stallion; G*** lost his childhood home to a fire, while he was still a child).

I remind myself how lucky we were to learn about fire that particular day. Now D****** is working out-of-state more than he is home & G*** has been dead almost two years. & I am more frightened than ever when I wonder if the person who best knows what to do when it happens again just might be me.

Losing things

At the beginning of this week I lost my keys. This is especially impressive as I have almost as many key-chain do-dads as I have keys. I say almost because I removed the little monkey that could be considered a stuffed animal when I realized it was tempting the dogs to bury the keys in their bed, their toy basket or (most problematic) the yard.

I looked everywhere, starting with the obvious & ending with sifting through the garbage, walking the yard with a flashlight & calling A at work (twice) just in case he picked them up by accident. In the end, I found them a day+ later in one of the first places I looked. Lame, I know.

But then I scaled up. On Wednesday I closed the gate at the top of the driveway, opened the emu yard & did a few chores. Two hours later, there was no sign of Cleo. That's right, I lost a giant pre-historic bird. That cannot fly. Or see very well.

Around dusk, I learned he was up at B***'s, scaring his dogs half-to-death. I learned this when a woman pulled into my driveway & told me my pet bird was up at her house: "the cracker house, up on the hill". This threw me until I remembered what passed for a hill in Florida versus Connecticut. She could have just as easily said "the house next to the blueberry field", "the second driveway on the left" or "B***'s house", but she did not. She seemed surprised that I knew B*** by name & still did not have the faintest idea who she was. I did not have the heart to tell her we have never bothered to learn the names of any of B***'s girlfriends (or wives for that matter).

Otherwise she could not have been nicer about it. Okay, she could have been nicer, she seemed a bit freaked (this was after I said she REALLY did not need to worry her dogs would hurt the bird; she needed to worry in the other directions), but in her shoes I would have been raining holy hell, so I think she was a brick. B***, as usual, was jovial-in-the-extreme. They had company for dinner & everyone seemed to enjoy the idea of me chasing this crazy bird around in the dark with a bucket of apples & a dieing flashlight. I have NO DOUBT all the crazy incomer stories were told & retold.

It was a long night & early this morning I walked back up there (he settled somewhere for the night & it is not possible to find an emu in tall grass if he does not stand up) & found him rummaging through the undergrowth, trying to avoid the sprinklers (did I mention Cleo was on the edge of a giant blueberry field? & that it was about 18F overnight, 22F when I left the house? Well he was & it was & it was) right away.

A & I both were wide awake well before dawn. I had not slept well worrying about my pet velociraptor & A got a phone call at 5:30 or so to go over some confusion in the 2009/2010 research budget. As soon as there was enough light for me to see (which is considerably less light than most need to see; yes, I am a creature of the dark), I took a bucket of feed & the rest of the chopped apples up the 'hill'. By the time A got there, I had Cleo eating from the bucket & had impressed the farm workers with my machismo, hand feeding the giant bird that had been hissing & kicking at their dogs (none of them were crazy enough to go near him themselves).

Cleo would have happily followed me (& the bucket of feed) home, but those same dogs objected to his passing them & in the end, A threw a blanket over him, lifted him into the bed of the pick-up & sat on him while I drove home. Once home, A lifted him out, took the blanket off & Cleo has been walking around his yard, his feathers ruffled (no, really) since then. As far as we can tell, Antonelle is not speaking to him. When he goes near her, she turns away. I leave you to imagine the dialogue between that unhappy couple.

Bad luck always comes in threes (or twelves or two hundred & forty sixes) so I am a bit worried about the next one, nine or two-hundred & forty four things I am going to lose.