Partially Settled Vagabonds

Of mice and dogs...

It was a bad weekend for members of the animal kingdom. First, John Mark's family had to euthanize their 14 year-old beagle. For those of us who grew up in dog-loving environments, this is about as traumatic an experience as one could imagine.

Yesterday, the animal fate didn't get any better. It was a beautiful fall day, with temperatures around 45 when we got up and topping out at about 65 for the afternoon. One of Calvin's new favorite hobbies it to be tied to the back of the barn so that he can sit and watch the squirrels and rabbits. Yesterday afternoon I was in the kitchen when I looked out and saw him digging ferociously under the barn. I whistled for him to stop and he did. A few minutes later I looked out and he was doing backstrokes in and around the fresh pile of mud he had shoveled out from under the side of the barn. I went out to check on what he was doing, and discovered a freshly killed mouse (presumably the work of Calvin) on top of which he was doing his celebratory roll. It was a rather disturbing sight to say the least. He looked up at me with a beard turned brown from the mud as if to say, "Got 'em...high five." So, we haven't really been accepting kisses from Calvin for the last 24 hours.

We hope everyone had a good weekend despite aborted attempts to fly to San Antonio and exhaustion from Chic-Fil-A openings. Margaret is off to work, but is coming home this evening. She made the most fantastic meal last night and we have plenty of leftovers if anyone is interested. Homemade spinach artichoke dip, homemade marinara sauce from fresh tomatoes someone at work donated from their garden, pizza with fresh basil and ground meat. You all would have loved it. She's quite the chef. The marinara sauce is actually for tonight's meal, which is under my charge. We discovered two episodes of Monk at Blockbuster that we had never seen, so we rented them and watched them over culinary delights.

Talk to all later-

Mag and John

posted by John and Mag @ 7:33 AM