Paging the Magic Elves

Oh, my . . . where do I start?
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Well, you know how they say bad things come in 3's? Well, Sunday of Memorial Day weekend my elderly next door neighbor hired someone to work on her yard. That someone foolishly and irresponsibly brought with her a springer/beagle bitch in heat, who immediately took off for my property line and killed Rudy, my longtime companion and all-around favorite rooster.

He was such a handsome boy, full of personality and as social as can be. I was VERY upset, especially since the dog's owner seemed absolutely thoughtless about the whole thing and had been so casual about letting her dog run wild like that. In the end I gave the sheriff a tour of Rudy's last moments and then sent him over to have a talk with her about personal responsibility for one's animals and destruction of "property." Then I dug a grave, which was NOT what I had hoped to be doing on Memorial Day.

The next day (Monday) I had planned to do some weed-whacking, and since our machine is crotchety at best we decided to get a fresh batch of gas/oil to feed it. I wanted to dispose of the bit left over from last fall in as safe and conscientious a way as I could, so I thought I'd burn it with some brush in the fire pit. WHOOSH! crackle crackle crackle . . . . It's a good thing I had my hair back in a knot and my sunglasses on, because the fumes lit in one big ball of flame that caught a bit of my hair on fire!! I'm okay, but it could have been much worse. Suffice to say I won't be burning anything else for a while.

Tuesday I bit into a Mentos candy and broke a tooth. A friend of mine commented that "my planets must be crashing into each other." Wednesday my dentist said that I'd need a crown, but I'd already used up my dental insurance benefits for the year - so I either needed to wait until January or cough up an extra grand. Thursday I played it safe, mostly staying home with a therapeutic pint of Haagen Dasz Green Tea Ice Cream. (Notice how the nutritional information is artfully covered by the cap.) And Friday, I had my previously scheduled root canal on another tooth, which will need its own cap in a few weeks. It still hurts.

Meanwhile, Rick took all of last week off in an effort to get our 1978 VW van in fit condition for a camping trip this week. He was truly heroic with his efforts, but we made the command decision last night that with an untried engine, a suspicious (if small) oil leak, and a battery that may have an internal short, it just wasn't wise for me to take the beast on a solo trip to the very northeastern tip of Wisconsin. Pity - it would have been SUCH a cool thing to do. But instead, I'll be packing up a tent and a cot for the big Peninsula State Park 100th anniversary gathering starting on Wednesday.
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Before then, I need to put the house in order for the guests arriving this weekend. (This would be where the magic elves come in. If you see any, please send them over.) I also need to finish post-processing on the family portrait session I did on Saturday at the lake, and teach on Tuesday, and practice violin before my Wednesday lesson, and get a fresh blog ready for one of my clients, and put together a "trade booth" set-up for an event I've been invited to attend on Tuesday evening. Blogging purely for my own pleasure seems a little decadent just now, but I'll try to post van photos and some other updates before I leave town Wednesday afternoon.