Sweet Remembrance

Temper, the remaining Old Lady of my poms, left me today. She just couldn't bear to be alone without her sister and this past week, seemed to have lost her will to live.

My original Mutant Poms had been with me for 18 years, from dad Brando to the final two babies, Mira and Temper. My home was built for them, with their own back room and big yard; and they've been my home for a long, long time.

Sweet dreams, my baby Temper. All of us in our younger glory:



Today my heart will remember my sweet ones, the original Mutant Poms:

It came to me that every time I lose a dog, they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life, gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are. -- (UNKNOWN)

Brando, Magic, BoomBoom, BoyBoy, Miracle, and Temper.

Together again.

Mommy loves and misses all of you.

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Figure Skating The Romance Writers Of Sports Pt 2

Here's another example of these "reporters" who are so bored and unhappy at having been assigned the Olympics. From SALON's wrap-up:

A sportswriter friend of mine is in Vancouver. He is not particularly happy about this. He would, no joke, rather be back home covering the NJ Nets in their deathless struggle to get to six wins. Yesterday morning sent me an e-mail. He was watching Elena Glebova of Estonia do her long program and needed to share.

"She just fell on her ass. I laughed out loud and 6,000 people tut-tutted me." (The fall is 3:20 into this clip.)

Another journalist friend quipped back.

"In my vast past experience covering Olympic women's figure skating finals (too many), I always found that the most fun is to be had shouting "Down goes Frazier!" every time another ass hits the ice."

When I read that, I spit orange juice through my nose.

Oh yeah, so darn funny to watch athletes fall. He did mention all the other falls by skiers and speedskaters, as well as crashes by bobsleders, but I guess it's funnier when the athlete wears sparkly clothes and fall executing their twists and turns to music. It's the music, isn't it?

So, of course I have to compose a letter. I've grown so tired of figure skating and my love of it being slammed by these snickering sports writers. I titled it
LOOK I'LL TAKE AWAY YOUR PAIN:

The next time you're assigned to go to the Olympics, just send me in your place and I'll take away your misery. You can stay home and play with stupid video games all your geeky mind can take.

I know I'll definitely enjoy all the events so much more than you and can present a nice critique of the ladies figure skating without laughing if any of them fall. It was, after all, the best ever flight of final six with a woman who achieved 3 triple axels in this competition, and all you could muster was a tired old snicker. Stay home. Give me your job. You deserve to just thumb through your ESPN channel.

Yes, I've been on a warpath about this. But enough with the snide remarks already. When you dare to strap on some blades and do a quad out there on the ice or be thrown by your partner and expected to land on one blade, without protective helmets and aero-dynamic suits, then you've earned the right to snicker. Butthead.

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Bad Puppy Chases Happy Swimming Ducks

Our food supply is running low. They told us not to flush our toilets or take showers. Some of us have no electricity. My subdivision is isolated from others because of the waters and the inhabitants are behaving like they're living in Old West--the braver men walking the perimeter at night; the women handwashing; the children flocking around.

News arrive from the outside world in the form of the fire trucksheriff at the entrance and everyone gathered to look at LEAFLETS telling us which roads were underwater. We heard about cars driving into canals while going to work yesterday. GOING TO WORK???! We were told to stay home because of flood and possible tornado! Maybe these people were lying; they went out to use McDonald's bathroom.

We shook our rain-soaked heads when we were warned not to go SURFING because the waves were rough. SURFING???! Umm. See here, sheriff, are you making fun of us? We're simple folks here, just needing food and a bath. We don't take kindly to no surfer punks here in our tiny enclave, hidden from civilization. In fact, we ban surfing because it's a sin. The gosh-darned water-rats caused the rain and the rising waters, yes they sh'ore did.

By the way, some of our cell phones died and we don't have no landlines these days, so can you make a trip over to check on Aunt Bee and Uncle Luis down the dirt road? They live all alone in the woods and we're worried since it's been since Sunday since we last seen 'em and they hadn't called us at'all. Thankee kindly.

20 inches of rain, people. And more still pouring.

There are ducks swimming down my river/street and Bad Puppy is determined to catch us lunch because we're stuck in our house and have to now live off the land. Yesterday we netted some fish that had ESCAPED from the pond and were joyriding the river/street. Tomorrow, I'm sure we'll be hunting down a water buffalo. Or wrassling an aligator or two.

That is, if my house hasn't floated away by then.

The rain, it's still coming down and the waters, it keeps creeping up that driveway.

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OK Now I'm Starting To Worry

It's been raining here since Sunday and they're forecasting another 24 hours of the liquid stuff. View from my front door.


A tree has fallen over and I can't really walk outside to check on it:


The worrisome part: the street is flooded and you can see here that the water has reached the end of my driveway and there is still another day or two of rain coming:

I really hope the water level is going to recede some. I don't want my house flooded. Argh. It's so wet even my furbabies won't go out to do their business.

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One Of Those Days When Zombies Sounded Good

I'm in a horrible mood, so pardon the sulky post. The week has finally descended into my coming home at 8.30pm to find my air-conditioner flooding my garage floor. I almost wept from the frustration.

Gah. I foresee a hot sticky night ahead since the repairman can't come till morning, and I'm still wondering how to let him do his job when I need to be off to my job by 6am. Double Gah.

I promised my editor to read Virtually His and Hers back-to-back so I can answer a few of her concerns and I haven't been able to carve out a block of time to do this. Computer problems. Working overtime at the roof from hell. Bills and unexpected home improvement projects kept interrupting. A frustrated woman here.

I did hear something on the radio that gave me a grin, though. Did you know they've found a parasite that can infect the fire ant and make them into ZOMBIES? They basically forget to look for food, march around like zombies till their heads fall off. And you think zombies invading our urban fantasies/paranormals were just weird things popping up in an author's imagination.

Of course, this particular author starts to think up about how this parasitic can be changed into a chemical idea to be used in the super soldier-spy series. Can you imagine, an army of zombies created specifically for one thing, and then their heads fall off. A little gruesome, I know, but it's been that kind of week. I deserve to kill people in my head. Bunches, in fact.

The idea does have a fascinating hold on me, though, because the more cynical of us know the government likes to experiment on people, even their soldiers, don't we? Hmm. Virtually Zombie. Hmm.

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BIG BAD WOLF CH. 11

Taking care of a sick dog all weekend had finally taken its toll and early this evening, I konked out on my sofa till a couple of hours ago. Sigh. You know what that means. This coming day is going to be a torture to get through because I'd be wanting to nap all day.

There were several things I wanted to boast about yesterday. Miracle ate! Ranger Buddy clapped a few beats and threw some music terms at me! An astrologer I talked to told me my coming "new" year was going to be better than this past one! Miracle ate again!

But I fell asleep instead. There were a lot of ups and downs this past few days. If you don't believe the mental fatigue, just check out the zits that appeared on my face. Disgusting. How can that be happening when I am ONE year older?

So, here's Big Bad Wolf Ch. 11 (link no longer works). I didn't spend as much time rewriting/editing it as I'd like and there might be a few typos because again, exhausted. Sorry to the typo-gnashers in the reading crowd. I promise to go over it when my brain's less taxed.

Topic discussion of the day: What is the first thing you forgot today?

Game of the day: Name of your first dog and the street name of your first house. That's your Hooker name ;-). Mine happens to be Lady Heights. If it's in the US, then my working name will be Ruddy Cherry. Which is, like, ew. LOL. What's yours?

For those reading Big Bad Wolf--what is it with Jed, huh? Always doing THAT.

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