While waiting for Richard to get home from his meeting after work I was camped out in the living room knitting, and looked up through the front windows to dinner to see activity on the side of our lawn. So I went out to see how things were progressing with the neighbors’ pipes.

A little back story – two nights ago the doorbell rang at shortly after 10pm � it was our next door neighbor, concerned because there was a very large quantity of water pouring down from right where our two properties meet. I hollered up to Richard to put on some shoes and grab a flashlight, and then went outside to peer at the water. Eventually his wife came out too, and with a few small flashlights, we eventually figured out that the water was coming from his side of the line. In fact, we could see it bubbling up right behind a tree, only a foot or two away from the water main (where the meter is). Our neighbor removed the water main cover and tried to feel around through the water with a wrench, hoping to figure out how to turn the water off, but since the main happens to be set into the ground, in a spot downhill from where the water was pouring, it was pretty much impossible to see anything at all.

Since I was the only one in bare feet and shorts, I sloshed through the mud and felt around the hole. We�d been hoping it was just a busted sprinkler pipe, but no such luck � the hole was substantial, and also quite deep. So he called the water department (for future reference, there is an emergency number on your water bill � just something to keep in mind), they sent someone out to turn it off, and we all went to bed.

Yesterday when I came home I was confronted with a very odd and very loud noise that reverberated through the entire house. I eventually tracked it down to the water spigot in the backyard, which had been left on. I followed the hoses and found that someone had attached our hose to the neighbors� hose, which was still attached to their house. I immediately panicked, turning off the water and detaching our hose because I couldn�t figure out why someone had done that and I was worried that it would be damaging to someone�s pipes � either theirs or ours. They came home a little later and immediately came to talk, and it turns out they were the ones who�d set up the hose connection, on the advice of their son. Home owners, take careful note here. When the city turned the main water off, that meant they had no water to their home � not such a big deal except that they have several house guests, so not being able to do things like flush a toilet was kind of a big deal. Then their son suggested this little trick. They basically had to turn the water off in their house, and then hook up the hoses, so that, from what I understand, it creates kind of a negative pressure within the hoses, so there would be enough water in the pipes to flush the toilet and so on. Very clever. And once I figured out what they�d done and why, I had no problem letting them hook back up again � although this time to the front hose spigot because it has less of a tendency to �sing� than the one in the back.

So back to tonight. In order to get to the broken pipe (which turned out to be just far enough �downstream� from the main line that the city wouldn�t fix it), they knew they were going to have to take down the tree, because there was just no other way to reach the pipe. Luckily their son either owns, or has access to, the sort of large equipment necessary to take down the huge tree, which was ultimately responsible for the break, so when I walked outside the first thing I noticed was that the tree was gone and all that was left was one poor bush, precariously balanced on several uneven piles of still slightly soggy dirt. They’d dug a rather impressive hole down to the pipe and he showed me the piece that had been punctured. It’s an odd concept to wrap your head around, that something as flexible as a tree root can actually bore its way through thick PVC piping, enough to create not only a sizable hole, but also to completely crack it in two. But this does mean that they’re not likely to put in a new tree to take its place, just in case in another fifteen years they have to go through this whole thing again. Good news for them, I suppose, since he told me he’d never much liked that tree anyway, but bad news for us in the short term because it turns out that it was this tree that shielded our bedroom window from the glare of the street lamp that’s right outside our house, and now there is nothing in the way at all except our curtains, which are simply not sufficient to hide it completely from view. Ah well � a small price to pay for our neighbors getting running water back in their house again. Besides, this whole experience gave us a chance to really chat with them � something we�ve never had much opportunity to do because we usually just wave to each other in our cars as either they or we head off somewhere else.

Several weeks ago I got it into my head that it would be really neat to be able to dry our own fruit. I’m not entirely sure why I suddenly decided this would be a cool idea, beyond the fact that at the rate our trees are going, eventually we are going to have fruit coming out our ears and finding a way to preserve it (short of canning it, which I also intend to do, but I also recognize that canning is an extremely time and labor intensive process) would probably be a good thing. Or rather, assuming that the apple tree actually does more than put out a few piddly white flowers, and the peach tree can churn out enough peaches that even the birds can not eat them all before I can get to them, we will have fruit coming out our ears.

I started poking around online looking at prices and comparing the different features available on Amazon.com, but I wasn’t entirely ready to commit to that kind of financial investment without getting some actual word-of-mouth input from someone who has actually *used* one. But then the church had its annual barbeque and silent auction, and lo and behold someone donated a food dehydrator to the cause. We didn’t actually attend the auction, but they set it all up beforehand (for precisely this reason) and I scribbled in a $10 bid, figuring maybe I might get lucky. And what do you know, I did.

So far I think it is one of the best $10 we have ever spent. It’s a larger, slower model, since it only has a heating unit and no fan to speed the drying process along. And it does have the annoying quality of being too large (the trays, at least) to fit into either the dishwasher or the sink, so cleaning the trays is a major hassle. But it also has five trays, which hold a phenomenal amount of sliced bananas, or six apples, cored and sliced thin, and more importantly, I have finally found a source of dried fruit that I actually *like*.

We picked it up before we left for DragonCon and after we tried it out on a few different types of fruits (dried pears, by the way, are *nasty*), we decided to start a round-the-clock drying effort, and managed to produce a large pile of dried apples and bananas, which I then divided into single serving Ziploc bags for us to take on our trip. This turned out to be a better idea than I’d imagined � not only because United no longer provides free meals on their longer trips, but also because a little bag of dried fruit makes a far healthier snack, and an easier one to procure when you only have a short period of time between session and there are several thousand nerds in various forms of costuming between you and the nearest source of food. Plus, apples I’ve dried myself are really quite good. I’ve never been a big fan of the dried fruit you can buy in stores because it tends to have this squishy, rubbery texture that I find really quite revolting. But these I can dry until they almost snap, and until they have a very satisfying chewy quality. I think the dried bananas are foul and disgusting, but Richard really likes them, so we each had our own stash and it worked out really well.

Since we’ve returned from DragonCon I’ve been intent on developing a decent stockpile of dried fruit for snacking purposes, as well as to take on trips. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the last time we were at Costco they had huge bags of bananas and apples for really cheap. It does take a little bit of time and effort to get the fruit prepared � the bananas don’t need any pretreatment, but they do have an annoying tendency to adhere to the trays, which means once they’re done someone has to then pry every single chip by hand from the plastic mesh, and the apples have to be dipped in a preservative (ascorbic acid or lemon juice) to prevent that icky taste that can develop when they start to turn brown from exposure to air. However, I’ve been doing a little experimenting in the last few days, to test a few theories. I’ve discovered that leaving the peel on the apples doesn’t change the taste or texture, so that’s at least one less step in the process. I’ve also been dabbling with flavoring. I did one tray of apples sprinkled liberally with cinnamon and once they’d dried and set a few days, those turned out marvelously, and I am pondering trying a few with a mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and allspice (and a little sugar for sweetness) to try to duplicate an apple pie sort of flavor. We’re also realizing that eventually we’re going to have a lot of citrus fruit from the tangelo and grapefruit trees, so at some point in the near future I’m going to try candying a few test batches, to see how those turn out.

I feel, now that she is gone, as if everything around me is rushing back into focus. It�s not relief, but more of finality in knowing that, as much as I was dreading it, it is finally over. Since we returned from DragonCon I barely touched my knitting because one of her favorite spots to sit was on my chest when I was at the computer (requiring me to lean back pretty far � not the most comfortable position for me, but one does a lot to keep a sick little kitty happy), so I spent a lot of time upstairs, poking at my computer and mostly just holding her as much as she would let me. I am starting to realize that waiting for Allegra to die has been, mentally, a much longer process than I was aware. You tell yourself that somehow, knowing it is coming makes it easier, but really, I�m not so sure that it does. I�m not sure there is anything that can make it easier.

She was always a bit of a wonky kind of cat, due likely to extremely poor health during the first 8 months of her life (she had a sibling with failure to thrive, so I assume some of her odd quirks, and her occasional lack of balance, were due to something not quite right in her development), and one of her main things was that she had this habit of going into little periods of being annoyed and snippy � we referred to them as her snits, and it was not uncommon, back when she was healthy, for her to have one at least once a day. Most of the time these would be marked by her racing around the house, half-yelling, half-growling under her breath, tearing up and down the stairs and various cat trees, and generally letting the world know she was in a mood. Most of the other cats knew enough to stay out of her way, although occasionally we�d see Rosie following her with a look of fascination on her face (much like the look she gets when she follows the Roomba around, come to think of it). We humans also learned to stay out of her way when she was in one of her moods, although sometimes it was kind of fun to waggle a finger or a hand around her head when she was in full snit mode, just to watch her roll around and yell at it. I also knew to warn people who tried to pet her and didn�t know all her rules for where she could and could not be touched � she was wonderfully soft and pretty and prone to exposing her tummy to tempt the unwary to touch her there, mere seconds before she would then expose all five pointy ends to let you know that her tummy was most definitely off limits.

So bearing all of that in mind, one of my favorite memories of her – and one of the best stories I can tell about what kind of funny little cat she was – happened a few years ago. There are two doors to our computer room � both on the same wall (one leads to the hall and the other to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom), with just enough space in between for a cat tree. Basically you cannot get out of the computer room without passing by the cat tree, and the way it�s set up, there�s no way to avoid exiting either door without coming into cat paw-grabbing range at some point in the process. A few years back Richard�s family had come up to visit, and at one point his mom and his little sister were upstairs by themselves in the computer room, checking something online. The rest of us were sitting downstairs, chatting, when we heard a loud and laughing �Help!�, so went up to investigate. Turns out Allegra had decided it was time for a full-fledged snit, and every time one of them approached either door she start doing her funny little yell-growl, and swinging her paws. Richard and I knew her well enough to know it was all just a big act, but his mom and sister didn�t, and were basically trapped there by this tiny, floppy cat.

Once we stopped laughing and could move again, I �rescued� them by distracting Allegra with head scritches so they could slip past her unnoticed. She would come out of her snits as easily as she slipped into them, and it’s this sort of thing which was the reason why she was one of my favorites.

If there is a place where we all go when we die, I would like to think that she is there, lying in wait for any unwary newcomers, rolling around on strategically placed cat trees, offering a running, trilled commentary on everything she is doing, daring people to pet her tummy, and maybe sometimes, curling up on someone�s chest � someone who understands just how she likes to sit and who doesn�t mind having to type with only one hand; someone who maybe had to leave their own wonky little cat behind them and so is willing to let her settle in, and just be.

Yesterday I took her in for final blood tests. Last night the vet called to confirm what we both already knew. She was in complete kidney failure. Oh, there were a few options, but even as he offered them his voice indicated what we both knew was true.

Richard called to make the appointment because I did not think I would be able to say the words without bursting into tears. All morning we have been eying the clock, and every time she would let me I held her close, told her I loved her, and told her goodbye.

The vet came this morning and I held her in my arms as she slipped away. We put her in her favorite box – the one that’s sat on my desk to hold bill paperwork. We’ll bury her in the flowerbed, next to Rebecca.

Goodbye Allegra, my musical little cat.

How do I even begin to describe how very much I will miss you?

When the planes crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York City and I watched as the towers came crumbling to the ground, there was a curious detachment underneath the shock and horror I felt, sitting there, huddled into a ball on the sofa in front of the TV. There were a lot of people dead and a lot of people scarred physically and emotionally from what happened, but through it all it never once touched me directly. No one I knew was there; no one I knew had any friends or family members who were there; no one I knew saw it through any other means than the Internet or the TV. The only time I was ever in New York was quite possibly over twenty years ago and we were only there a short time. My impressions were that it was large and gray and dingy and I was glad to not have to stay very long. So I can easily go back to that city and never know that anything had changed. A few buildings turned to dust, a few thousand people killed, but in another few years there will be new buildings there and new people working in them and as time goes forward it will be easier and easier for all of us to relegate the whole thing to a rather unexpected and unsettling memory.

I write that, not to belittle the tragedy of 9/11 because it was a tragedy, a horrible, awful tragedy, even as it opened our eyes as Americans to the simple truth that we are not immune; even as the rest of the world offered their condolences while whispering behind their hands ‘it’s about damn time you had to live like the rest of us live, never knowing the next time the terrorists will strike. I write this because this is how this particular tragedy impacted me; or perhaps more because this is how it did not. I have no more qualms about getting into a plane than before. I have no more fears about being on the top floor of a skyscraper than I normally had (being someone who is a wee bit afraid of heights, I doubt I’d have ever been willing to go to the top of those towers anyway, planes or no planes).

And so here we are, dealing with another national tragedy, except that this one is, on the scale of tragedies when measured in sheer dollars of devastation and numbers of people who will be impacted, and again, no one I know has died or been lost or impacted. But this time it is different. This time I *feel*. It’s not just the vague pity and sorrow for a group of strangers who died far out of my reach. It is the sheer horror and shock at what is going on in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. The tragedy, in this case, is not the hurricane; no, Katrina was only the catalyst. The tragedy is how this dismal excuse for an administration has reacted to the aftermath; how this administration blithely cut funds and ignored the desperate pleas for money to fix the problem before it happened; how the administration pretends it was never warned it could ever have been this bad, and how the administration seems callously oblivious to the fact that a national disaster is growing with virulent strength near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and all they can do is suggest that perhaps it is the fault of all those people who stayed that they are now in danger of being drowned, starved, dehydrated, infected with cholera or other water borne illnesses. Why should they, the administration, be required to care about tens of thousands of people who were so poor that they had no way to leave the city, who still have no way to leave the city, and who are facing devastation and horrors we smug Americans think only happens to people in third world countries, but never our own? The head of FEMA thinks we should just blame the victims. After all, they were ‘stupid’ enough to stay behind. And underneath it all is the underlying message. Why should they give a damn about the ones still left behind? Or perhaps, more appropriately, why should they give a damn about the poor?

Richard and I talked about what we would do if we were in this situation, on the flight out to Atlanta. We have two cars at home, and a nice house, and if there was a hurricane warning in our area we, at least, have the means to pack up the cats and some essentials, and go somewhere higher, drier, safer, to wait it out until the worst had passed. Even if our home was destroyed and our town with it, we have insurance, and the means to rebuild. We are educated and possess a wealth of skills that look nice on a resume. My company has offices in various parts of the country; if we, for some reason, had to relocate because California fell into the sea, we would still be okay. It would be hard and frustrating and stressful, but the important thing is that we would be okay.

There are thousands of people in New Orleans that do not have that comfort; that did not have it before the hurricane and the horror and the flood, and most certainly do not have it now. And I wonder – what will happen to them? Even if they somehow rebuild the city, sinking levees and casino barges and all, will those people ever be okay again? And my heart aches for them; for all of them. I will have no more fear of water and of floods and of high winds and hurricanes than I ever did before any of this happened. But unlike September 11, I do not think I can so easily put this behind. The current administration is quite possibly one of the worst things that has ever happened to this country. They proved it with the way they have ‘handled’ this recession by tossing money in the form of tax cuts to their rich cronies while cutting services to those who needed them most; they proved it with the way they threw us into a war based on nothing more than big fat lies; they have proved it yet again by the way they have so callously mishandled, so far, the situation in New Orleans. Every time I think they cannot sicken me any more, they prove me wrong.

Allegra’s been sliding slowly downhill over the past year due to the kidney failure, but in the past few weeks it feels as if this thing has picked up its pace. She is so thin now, and her face looks old. She still falls over and trills a greeting when she sees me and she still wants to be held, especially when I am trying to do anything else, but I cannot remember the last time she raced around the house for her daily snit. These days she mostly just sleeps, curled into a tiny ball somewhere warm. And we are deliberately leaving out blankets and making places for her, just to make sure she can find whatever works best for her.

We have a new medication to give her that is supposed to help make her feel a little better � assuming I could convince her to take it willingly. They originally gave it to me in liquid form, but she immediately made it clear she considered it foul and poisonous (the foaming at the mouth was a dead giveaway as to that opinion) so the vet found someone who could compound it for us into capsules. She�ll only get to try them out for a few days, however, because Thursday we leave for DragonCon, and while I�ve talked my dad into giving her her daily fluids, I am not sadistic enough to ask anyone else to try to feed her or give her the pills. And I am also logical enough, despite my not wanting to admit it, that at this point a few days with or without the new pills are not really going to make one bit of difference in the end.

At night she comes up to crawl into the bed beside me, and there she stays, most of the night. So there I stay too, sometimes in one cramped and awkward position most of the night so as to avoid disturbing her, because I realize that time is precious with her now, and I want very much to bend over backwards and keep her warm and happy and safe, and most of all I want to somehow find a way to turn back the clock on her failing organs so she will get better instead of worse. Because we are no longer counting months with her, and I am not so sure we are even counting weeks. I strongly suspect that for her we are down to counting days – not until she dies, but until I am strong enough to call the vet to come out and put her to sleep.

I still have far too high a vacation balance from work, and Richard and I wanted to go to the State Fair, but also do our best to avoid most of the crowds and the craziness that usually ensues on the weekends. So to that end we took yesterday off from work, and instead of getting up early and poking at computers and searching for the state of the construction market in various parts of the country, we instead slept in a little bit and then went to the fair. Or rather, I still got up as early as I ever do because my mom and I were going to do Curves, except she called to cancel so I took that as the perfect excuse to go right back to bed for another few hours of mostly-uninterrupted sleep (there is no such thing as pure uninterrupted sleep in a house with cats, after all.

We got to the fair around 11, still early enough to get parking close enough so we wouldn’t have to hike too far, and headed inside. It was hot yesterday, but not as hot as it’s been in years past, so we decided to wander through all the outdoor things first before heading into the exhibit halls, which would hopefully be air conditioned relief from the weather.

We wandered the midway and Richard spotted one of those cheesy haunted house rides, so we forked over money to get enough tickets for the ride. It turned out to be short and mostly dark, interspersed with the occasional dim light flashing over some kind of monster-like creature trapped in a cage growling at us as we rode by. But one does things for nostalgia sometimes.

We next headed for the livestock exhibits and found a huge barn full of cows, and a smaller one beside it full of goats. I’m not sure where all the other livestock was housed; we never made it out that far, unfortunately. Not being farmers, we didn’t stay very long because when you’ve seen one row of cows you’ve seen them all.

One of my favorite places to go in the fair is the vendor’s mall and the county exhibits, because they are so much fun, and they didn’t disappoint. The county exhibits ranged from large and flashy and spectacular, to tiny and primitive and dull. It was obvious which counties set aside money in their budget for the State Fair, and which ones really didn’t feel the need to bother.

There is a garden area nestled between the buildings that house the vendors and the county exhibits, and every year they do it up with a different theme. This year was pirates and hidden islands with buried treasure, including a volcano in the middle of the garden with glowing red lava, and the occasional puff of smoke from the top.

I’d heard that this year there was going to be sand sculptures but we never found them. By the time we were heading for the art and culture exhibit halls we were running short on time, so I know there was a huge part of the fair we never made it to. But we did make a quick run through all the displays of artwork – textiles, industrial art, the kids’ art, and of course the food art, where they were judging preserves as we walked around the displays.

I was a little disappointed because there was no large animal built entirely from dinner knives, like there has been in the past, but there were other really fun sculptures and paintings, and a quilt full of monsters that was quite possibly the coolest quilt of all time.

Then it was time to leave, so we hiked back to the car and drove home to collapse for a very short time, just long enough to rehydrate, and for me to grab some knitting, and then it was off in the car again, this time to Campbell, for Richard’s parents’ annual play. We weren’t sure how much time to leave since traffic in the Bay Area is very unpredictable on Fridays. We gave ourselves a lot of time, which meant we ended up getting there over an hour early. This was okay, however, since we tracked down a nearby coffee shop, bought sandwiches and chai tea for dinner, and had a chance to sit and relax and knit (me) or write (Richard) and catch our breath before the play.

This year they did Suessical, which was impressive mainly for the way the authors managed to compile as many unrelated Seuss stories into one vaguely cohesive plot. Richard’s dad was a wonderful Horton, and Richard’s little sister played a very energetic Cat in the Hat, and the woman who played Gertrude McFuzz and the little girl who played JoJo were outstanding.

By this time Richard and I were pretty much exhausted, but there was still post-play pie, which was delicious, even if I was ready to fall face forward into my plate. Luckily Richard was willing to drive home because I think I might very well have dozed off somewhere on route and really, that would not have been a very good ending to an otherwise fun (busy) day.

We did more yesterday then just go crazy buying hand puppets. I feel as if it is important that I mention that. We also got haircuts so now I have my cute style back again and do not feel nearly as frumpy as I usually do. We tracked down a music store in Vacaville and discovered that they really didn’t have much of a selection of recorder music after all. We picked up a new bottle of epigen for Allegra because we could not possibly be done with the three-times-a-week injections yet (did I mention she is now getting these injections? I can’t remember anymore). I chatted with my vet, yet again, about why it is that in my house, meals versus free-feeding is not an option (the fat ones get fatter, the skinny ones get skinnier, and the ones who need to be on a special diet are always the skinny ones who keep on losing weight). I admit that sometimes I feel a little guilty about the situation because yes, it would be better for Allegra if she was only eating her kidney diet. But this would require that she be isolated 100% of the time, and she would be miserable without constant access to pets and sunbeams and my lap when I am at my computer, so I weigh the choices between quality of life and quantity, and yet again, quality wins, hands down.

Most of the rest of the day we spent camped out in the living room watching the SciFi channel’s miniseries of the new version of Battlestar Galactica. We started watching the series late last season, and really like it, so it was interesting to see how the whole thing begain and why some of the characters are the way they are. We are now eagerly awaiting the release of the first season on DVD so we can catc up on all the bits of plot that we stll have yet to see, and in the meantime, have been careful to make sure to set the VCR so we can tape it on Friday nights when we are not around.

Today was recorder rehearsal, where I revealed that I am an idiot and was under the impression that the alto recorders play in an entirely different key (they do not – duh) than the rest of the group. Admittedly I’ve never attempted to find out one way or the other, it just got into my head somehow and I simply assumed it was true. Now that I know this is not the case an entirely new world of music possibility is opened to me, if only I could convince the rest of the group that they really *are* good enough to play it.

And this afternoon was a new (to me) knitting group. They meet at a bakery in downtown Vacaville, near the new library, and one of the attendees *told* me this at the knitting night at the library two weeks ago, but when I looked up the address and directions rom the bakery’s website, we ended up off in the industrial park area of Vacaville, nowhere near a library or a downtown or anyone wielding sticks and yarn. Luckily Richard and I decided to go there for lunch so we had plenty of time to find the real meeting place, order sandwiches, and chat with a few other early arrivals. By the time the meeting was in full swing (and by that time Richard left, since he needed to be home in time to catch a phone call from the instructor of the writing course he’s taking at DragonCon) the table was surrounded by knitters. And we knitters were a loud and boistrous bunch.

The annual Men’s Barbeque and Silent Auction was tonight at the church but we sort of lost track of time (okay, so we were feeling really ambivalent about going, so let the time get lost) and did not go. Instead made Kraft Macaroni and Cheese because sometimes nothing else but nuclear yellow cheese will do, and we watched La Bouche, which is an incomprehensible movie that claims to be a comedy but is not remotely a comedy, and in fact has no defnitive ending except that it just sort of cuts out without resolving anything. I’m not sure why we stuck out the whole thing, except that we kept waiting for it to be funny, like it claimed it was.

But such is the chance you take with putting strange foreign films on your Netflix queue. Sometimes you get something wonderful and sometimes you do not.

After the weekend where my nephews came down to spend the day with their grandparents working on the puppet theater, and after how much they really seemed to like the little set of water creature puppets I got them from CostCo, I decided I had to go back and get them all the rest of the puppets available. I swung by CostCo the following Tuesday night and picked up what I thought was a set of the cast, a set of the birds, and a set of the buggs. However, my parents came by Thursday night to borrow a sleeping bag (they were at some sort of choir retreat this weekend) and my mom saw the puppets, which have been sitting on the kitchen counter because I hadn’t gotten around to moving them upstairs yet, and discovered I’d actually bought two sets of the bugs and no cats at all.

Naturally I was immediately intent on getting back to CostCo to return the extra set of bugs and swap them out for the one remaining set we didn’t have. I worried that maybe they might have run out of them. Heh. I had nothing to worry about, as it turned out. Turns out in between when I was there the first time, and today, they lots more of the adorable hand puppets – not only of the five original sets, but also a few more. Wild animals! Cats *and* dogs! Farm critters! And best of all a set of reptiles that are just about the cutest things ever.

I suppose it is no surprise that I immediately dove into the pile and made sure to grab a set of every kind they had. The boys are going to get a huge pile of hand puppets for Christmas. And I think between now and then it would be better if I didn’t wander the toy aisle in CostCo, because I think 7 sets of puppets may just be critical mass and maybe I should just pretend that they don’t really make more of them, and considering that my brother-in-law says that every puppet show the boys have put on since they got the theater includes an introduction of each puppet, and I have now purchased 28 more characters who just might need introductions at the beginning of each show, I think it is better if now I stop.

These past few weeks I feel as if I have been walking around in a constant state of exhaustion. I cannot ever seem to get enough sleep, yet I can’t sleep in on days when the time is there to try. It’s hot outside – and it’s been hot for weeks and it’s only now that the temperature shows signs of dipping a few degrees. I don’t know if that’s the reason I am so tired, or it’s just adding to some other underlying cause. Ugh.

I have also been mulling things around in my head for this journal. I think it’s safe to say that it has been many, many months since I’ve updated regularly – without serious back-posting, that is. I still have the need to write, but sometimes I dream wistfully of having someplace where I can just dump short snippets of thought, instead of feeling as if I need to flesh everything out into something longer and possibly more meaningful. The very word ‘blog’ makes me shudder and grit my teeth and so I cannot see revamping everything over to that sort of format. Maybe I just need to find a way to make this work a little differently. I don’t know. I’m not going to stop writing. I just need to figure out how to get brain to release everything in a more timely manner.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m tired and cranky, and sick of it being so damn hot out. And maybe it’s because I have a stupid Neil Diamond song in my head and it will Not Go Away and it is driving me ever so slightly nuts because while Neil Diamond music is amusing for elevators or background music, it is not the sort of thing one wants to find oneself humming at all hours of day and night, humming, or singing, ‘when I would call your name, Shiloh you always came’, oh for crying out loud make it stop.