But the fire burned right through her

We had an adventuresome weekend over here, not least of all due to the reappearance of one adorable pooch named "Caper" from down the street. As it turns out, her owners are out of town - and someone in the neighborhood is dog/house-sitting. But at some point while the sitter was out, Caper discovered that she could bounce her way to the (very high) gate latch, pop it open, and use sheer brute force to push the (ancient and heavy) wood gate's corner juuuuuust far enough for her to squeeze out.

How do I know that? Because she performed this little trick IMMEDIATELY upon being returned to her yard. A neighbor and I then spent fully half an hour trying to re-corral her, then brace the gate so she couldn't do it again.

Anyway. Greyson says, "Thanks for the play-date!"




* * *

Semi-related to Caper's caper...I went shopping with an old friend on Saturday and found some awesome fleece Wonder Woman jammies at Target.

I say "jammies" but what I bought is basically a hooded union suit, sans footies. Naturally, I was wearing this awesome garment when my husband came home with Caper (who'd joined him on Greyson's afternoon walk), but I was 100% sober - so I changed clothes before walking our visitor back home. More's the pity. It would've made a hell of a blog post.

And here's a picture of the cat telling me that I'm not allowed to have those jammies back, because now they belong to her.



Or as the most boring man on the internet correctly pointed out via Twitter...she's yawning.

* * *

Here's today's progress on my modern gothic ghost story about a salvage crew trapped in a doomed southern mansion - now with a crunchy murder ballad center and Bonus! clandestine cemetery where the stones don't match the bodies (and were never meant to). As inspired by a (semi)true local legend:
Project: The Family Plot
Deadline: January 15, 2015
New words written: 2387
Present total word count: 20,412



Things accomplished in fiction: Finished clearing out the first floor of the old carriage house; made a couple of phone calls; got rained on; had a bright idea but it fizzled.

Things accomplished in real life: Neighborhood jaunts with dog; lunch with the husband; trip to grocery store; trip to the bank to deposit a long-awaited check, hooray!

Yardwork Other: Still none. It's been raining off and on today for one thing, and my back still isn't quite up to snuff. It's much better, but I don't want to run around swinging heavy garden implements willy-nilly.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 171,489