Yesterday...

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet. ~Colette

Yesterday was a bit of a blur for me... after starting so poorly, things kept going downhill. Dakota, typically full of enough energy for three dogs, spent the entire morning sleeping. Finally, I went over and petted her, and when I got to a particular point on her abdomen, she flung her head around a shoved my hand away.

Aha. Called the vet, brought her in... she seems to have a kidney infection.

Then, at about five p.m. DD told me she felt nauseous. She and the dog laid down together on the couch for a bit, and then DD decided to go to bed. She's still sleeping!

In any case, nowhere to go but up!

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Got my final, final cover for "Kitchen Matches" yesterday. I can't wait until I can show you... unfortunately, my editor sent it to me for approval on her way out the door for a long weekend away, so it won't be today that I can share it. Soon...

Now, I just need to get something else done, polished and submitted.

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I need to stop looking at Fictionwise. It's demoralizing. Do you suppose people rate your stuff more brutally there because they are anonymous? Because they are pretty brutal. I don't think I write poorly, but in looking at how my stories and books are rated, apparently many of the Fictionwise readers do. I wonder how the ratings would change if they had to own them?

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It's been rainy and cool all week, but today that will all change. From highs in the 60s and 70s to a hot, sunny day in the 90s today. Whoo! My poor garden needs a little warmth before it rots, for crying out loud.

Everything but my peppers have blossoms or baby fruit. The one pepper DD put in her garden has a bloom though. Deer came and ate all the tops off of my potatoes, though, so I need to dump some milorganite down, and maybe hang soap. They got my pepper last year, and they love the tops of the tomato plants, too.

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Pillar Place 2008: Swallowtail is about midway done. All but one of the dill pillars is a pupa (or almost a pupa). And the parsley pillars are starting -- two are pupated, and a couple are about big enough. OTOH, we have a couple TINY ones on the parsley, too. I suspect we brought in eggs at some point, because these guys appeared out of nowhere on other pillars parsley (I try to keep them one to a plant, because they can get aggressive when they're big and hurt the smaller pillars) -- then we'd have Fight Club 2008: Swallowtail, and I don't want to go there.

In a couple weeks, we'll start the monarch egg hunt. I think we're going to leave the ones on OUR milkweed outside and concentrate on the field across from our library. The same field they wait to mow until the monarch pillars are at their most active and numerous. We hope to avoid the Pillarcide 2007 . We'll see. Obviously, we can't save them all.

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You Are a Crocodile

You are incredibly wise and knowledgeable. In fact, your wisdom is so deep that it sometimes consumes you. People are intrigued by you, but you find few people intriguing. You are not a very social creature. You are cunning. You enjoy deceiving people a little. You are able to find balance in your life, and you can survive anything.

What Reptile Are You?