So Dolores and I are pulling weeds and doing some general cleaning around the yard as summer winds down. She gets out the Ortho and starts to spray around the base of the house to prevent bugs and such from getting in. I'm in the back of the house and she's in the front, and I hear a scream.
She yells for me, and when I meet up with her, she's lost her normal coffee-with-cream completion and is as pale as...well...me. She chokes out the second worst name of invaders home owners fear the worst, "we have rats."
(The first is termites.)
She points a shaky finger at the slate water-catch under the eaves drain and tells me to pick it up. I ask her what she saw under it, and she screams "JUST PICK IT UP, DAMMIT!!"
Hesitantly, I pick it up. I have visions of a giant, black, greasy rat springing for my jugular the moment I expose it to daylight. I toss the piece of stone to the side and leap back.
And I do see black fur--I concede that. The black fur on the back of an absolutely terrified two inch long mole.
"IT'S A RAT!!" Dolores screams.
She proceeds to defend herself by pulling the trigger on the Ortho Max bottle at a rate that would do Chuck Conners as The Rifleman proud. Sadly, her aim is a tad wanting, and I find myself doused in enough chemicals that l think may mutate or otherwise make me develop superpowers sometime in the near future.
The poor little mole scurries away, terrified but otherwise unharmed.
The other day, Dolores bought our dog Scoobert an "official Rockets Mascot" T-shirt (the Rockets is the name of our local high school team), and he's been wearing it non-stop for ever since. I felt really bad for him until I saw THIS picture:
That's not a dog costume; they shaved and dyed that poor poodle to look like that.
Eighteen years ago last Sunday, Dolores and I went to the hospital and within a few hours Dolores had squeezed out one of the cutest baby girls to ever grace the planet. Now Kathleen Carmelita Lane is old enough to vote in the presidential election.
These last few years, we've seen our share of grey hairs being parents to a beautiful young woman, but it's been well worth the stress and aggravation. In a few weeks, though, we'll see how much we love each other; she'll be in my senior English class. If we don't end up killing each other by October, I'll know we're over the hump.
Pictured here is Kathleen the last time she smiled in front of us voluntarily.
I decided to upgrade the blog, and that necessitated moving some stuf around and migrating some information. I got most of th eold posts back, but I did lose a few things. This will hopefully motivate me to post more often.
As the year wraps up, I always try to reinforce one last time to my seniors how important literature and poetry have been to the health and well being of humanity. After one of my spiels, a senior in my fourth period class sent me the link to this peom that was featured on HBO's Def Poetry series.
Freestyle isn't normally my cupa'joe, but this one did raise the hair on the back of my neck.
Stephen Colbert has been doing a great job in the past few weeks promoting donorschoose.org, a site that allows people to donate directly to help fund programs in Pennsylvania public schools. Because of his efforts, the site raised more that $100,000 in just a few weeks. That alone puts him on my "what a great guy" list, but tonight he went over the top. He plugged the site once again during his build up to his own trip to Philly for the upcoming primary, and this time he mentioned a couple of the programs seeking funding. The first one took me by surprise because it was from my own district. Yes, he did joke concerning a request from Titusville Middle School's band program. Here's the bit:
After a few minor glitches in trying to pay my artist who lives in Argentina, I finally have some penciled pages for presentation to publishers. Robert Bienvenu is currently finishing up the inking, and I should have six fully scripted, inked and lettered samples to go along with the story and scripts. When Robert finishes them up, I'll post a few here.
In case anyone is interested, the request from Titusville Middle School that Stephen Colbert mentioned on air this week was completely funded by the next morning. More, apparently the good will spilled over into the rest of the district because this morning three other teachers received word that their requests were also likewise fully funded by donations made via donorschoose.org. Seriously, what Colbert is doing is just too cool for words. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go finish putting my request for funding together.
An Erie, PA scientist has found a way to ignite sea water. This boggles my mind in a couple of ways. First of all, if there's a way to create a practical application for this, then our energy problems are solved (eventually). Secondly, this looks to be a totally clean burning fuel, as its only by product would be water vapor. But the way this spooks me most is that the first real oil well in the world was drilled here in Titusville, PA, just forty-five miles down the way from Erie. It would be a bizarre coincidence if both major booms in fuel production were developed so close together geographically. I just hope the oil companies don't squash this in its infancy OR find a way to corner the marketplace on the process.
Scoobert is feeling a bit anxious today. Tomorrow morning he goes in for surgery...again. It's not major, hopefully. He's got a big, black mole on his belly that bleeds if he catches it when he's scratching. The vet just wants to take it off as a precautionary measure. We love the little guy like a son, so of course we agreed. And, of course, it's going to cost us about $100 or more.
This is the second trip to the vet for something of this magnitude in 2008, and the third in the past full year. If it keeps him healthy and happy, I'm not complaining, but I sure wish I could put him on my health insurance as a dependent. It's barbaric that this country, the richest in the world, still has such vast number of its four-legged citizens that go without the basic security of health coverage. What does it say about us as a people when a family has to choose between surgery for their puppy and being able to afford new chew toys? And while we're at it, have you seen Scoobert's teeth? His lower jaw juts out a full half inch beyond his uppers. He looks like a hairy extra from Aliens vs. Predators.
Sure, we'd love to get him braces, but we just can't afford them now. This means that Scoobert must continue to live with being mocked by the neighborhood cats who I have heard call him "shovel jaw." Scoobert puts up a good front, but dammit...he's crying on the inside. I can just tell. Could I at least claim him on my taxes?
Eighteen years ago last Sunday, Dolores and I went to the hospital and within a few hours Dolores had squeezed out one of the cutest baby girls to ever grace the planet. Now Kathleen Carmelita Lane is old enough to vote in the presidential election. 
