The Dog Part:

When we left our story of the Amazing Escaping Terrier, Willow had confounded our attempts to keep her corralled in the dining room/kitchen by pushing things out of the way and crawling out through whatever bottom space of the Expedit room divider looked promising. The squares are alternately filled with cookbooks and other things. The four cubes at the bottom have games in three blocks and cooking magazines in the fourth. The games have been either stacked up upon themselves or in a basket, and the magazines just held up with a bookend. Wil has respected the barrier since we moved in, but since the neighbors with the Weimaraner moved in next door, she doesn't want to stay in the dining room/kitchen in the daytime or at night. I come home from work and find her wandering around or sleeping on my place on the sofa. At night we're woken up by the jingling of her collar as she wanders around in the living room. She's kept regularly bathed and if I wasn't allergic to her I wouldn't care a whit that she was sleeping on the sofa or even if she came to sleep in our bed. But the allergy precludes that, and also sometimes she forgets herself and relieves herself on the carpet.

All I can figure is she thinks the "big slavering short-haired floppy-eared wolf" is going to come after her and wants to be somewhere safe. We blocked the magazines and the games last night and it worked, but this afternoon she pawed the basket with the smaller games out of the way to get out. So last night we bought two canvas cube containers to put the games in and fill the space more fully. Plus we purchased four clear magazine holders to put the cooking magazines in/block that hole. There was one opening left, but it was blocked with a stack of games and led directly to a metal panel at the back of James' computer desk which we thought would block her way.

Evidently not. She pawed the games out and crawled through anyway and there she was outside the gate this morning.

We had a heavy piece of pressed cardboard and put it at the back of the gap. It worked; she was still in when we got home this evening, but she had pawed the games out trying to get out.

Ikea sells a box that exactly fits into one of the Expedit openings, the Lekman. Guess we'll just have to get one of those for that last opening. (Oh, twist my arm! Force me to go back to Ikea...)

The Seashore Part

By July it's usually pretty miserable around here: temps in the high 80s into 90s, little wind, smoggy and thick air. But yesterday we had a day that was, for July, delightful: it was only high 70s and there was quite a brisk breeze. It was like being down at the seashore. In fact, when I drove to lunch yesterday and stopped at the corner of LaVista and Clairmont Roads, I thought I was hallucinating: I could swear I smelled sea breezes. James says there is some type of retaining pond down there and probably all I had scented was that small body of water, but darn, I could almost smell the brine and the sand!

It must have stuck in my mind because, sleeping late this morning, I had the most delightful dream. I don't have very good dreams any longer and haven't for years. James wakes up some mornings with delightful narrations about flying airplanes or competing in adventure games or doing something absurd. The nicest of my usual dreams is cleaning the bathroom, scrubbing a floor, or finding ants crawling around the house. Most of my dreams involve being trapped in small, dark, enclosed places and I wake up screaming and not knowing where I am.

But this morning I had a lovely dream: we had moved into a seaside house and had decorated the front yard with small concrete statues of animals, and then went for a drive down the beach. I had my head out the window and was breathing in the sea air deeply. It was all in vivid color, blues and browns and golds.

If I could have turned over and gone back to it, I would have, but instead I got up.

For lunch we went to Red Lobster...

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:06:00 PM

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