A Typical Sunday

Jackson has discovered the fireplace, and either he finds it very good or very not good: it's hard to tell. He spends all day digging all the ashes out, which spreads them all over, and I do mean all over, the living room, and trying to wedge himself into the fireplace. Then he bays up the chimney. I guess he likes the echo. He bays every 2 - 8 seconds. I know, because I timed him this afternoon, when I was trying in vain to take a nap. It is possible to distract him from the fireplace with food, or treats, or the promise of a walk, but then he goes right back to the damn fireplace. It's a bit wearing.

So this afternoon after making waffles I walked out the back door to read. I nimbly avoided the three new dead voles and the remnants of the older dead voles and hung out in the sunshine, reading Terry Pratchett. M came out to join me and we ended up playing a gloriously destructive variant of baseball with gourds and a 3 foot piece of 2 x 2. If you hit a green gourd hard enough with a 2 x 2, it explodes in a beautiful shower of gourd rind and flesh and seeds and juice. It's great, and you can do it several times, because gourds are big, and each piece has explosion potential. However, a badminton racquet will not work well, although the breaking of the racquet has its own intrinsic wonderfulness. Then you can hit cherry tomatos with pieces of gourd neck, or with the 2x2 (they go right through the badminton racquet.) Half rotten cherry tomatoes splatter beautifully.

We left the house and the baying dog and went to see the Wallace and Gromit movie, which was totally wonderful, and to eat sandwiches at the brew & view, and came home some six hours later to Jackson, who was still baying every few seconds up the chimney. I don't understand why my neighbors haven't firebombed my house yet; I guess it's just a matter of time. So we built a fire, which tends to distract Jackson a bit, although not enough, and watched Salem's Lot, which was really scary, and not just for the vampires: the clothing, particularly David Soul's extremely tight jeans, was completely terrifying all by itself. A decided to mend her feather comforter (guess who chewed a hole in it?) and brought it out to the living room so she could share the incredible snow globe like cascade of feathers with all of us, thus mixing them nicely with the thin coating of ash that Jackson put all over the living room. It kind of looks like a chicken house on Mt. St. Helens in there now, and we all, including the dogs, look like we were sitting in that chicken house when the volcano went off. Somewhere in the middle of all this Mr. Bill, the more neurotic cat, did his usual loud meowing freak out in the kitchen, and now I'm going to bed. Because even I can't quite believe I live like this. But I suppose I wouldn't have it any other way.