The dog killed a ground squirrel this morning. Her first, I think. She pounced into the bushes, grabbed it in her mouth and gave it a vigorous shake. And then Mr. Pear chased her off with a big stick. Mini-pear wanted to bring the poor thing home so we could "taxiderm it".
I draw the line at home taxidermy for seven year olds. You know who'd end up doing all the work.
***
After lunch at Bety's, we went for a walk in the Botanical Gardens. I really want a roof like that one on the left. It would really nice on my cob house, no? Mr. Pear likes the idea of a cob house, but he also likes to ask questions about building codes and such, and the only advice I've encountered so far seems to suggest the best way around building codes is to build in a secluded area. I don't think he's taking that as a satisfactory answer. Maybe I could thug a roof like this up on my suburban home, or at the very least, on my garden shed. Since I don't own either of those at the moment, I have all the time in the world to plot and plan and conspire ways to circumvent the building code.
This little family of cactus struck me as comically human, or perhaps more accurately, Hensonian. Speaking of puppets, at the library yesterday I though we might check out a DVD. Our mail carrier has a habit of leaving outgoing mail strewn across the sidewalk so I've learned to make special trips to the nearest mailbox to return my Netflix. More often than not, this translates to carrying them around in the car for days, leaving us with nothing new to watch over the weekend (it's okay, we always have sex as a last resort). I spied a copy of the Dark Crystal just as Old Yeller caught mini-pear's eye. In some unfathomable turn of events, we ended up coming home with the latter. There is no accounting for mini-pear's taste.
Anyway, it was an inspiring afternoon, walking among the various gardens. We came home and attacked the lilac in the garden. I hack away at a few branches once a week, but this afternoon Mr. Pear could not resist the call of the new pruning saw, so we massacred it. Now the little tree behind it might actually get to grow. We also found another football and a nice little wooden planter.
I was going to tell the story of how I met the woman who used to live in our house, but Mr. Pear just informed me that it's almost 8 and we haven't eaten. Is this my job? Apparently it is. Lately I think a lot about getting a real job.
Oh, real quick about the lady who used to own our house. So I'm at mini-pear's track and field club a couple of towns over and I'm getting small talked because I'm new. I mention the name of our town and the woman I'm talking to asks if I know the D_____s. That's a little wierd, because it's a small town, but it's not that small and I did just get here, but oddly enough, we get a lot of mail for the D______s. So I say I'm sure it's not the same D______s, but we do get a lot of mail for a D______. Then she says, "It's not Bruce and Patty D_____, is it?" and I say "Actually it is!" So then she leans over and yells over her shoulder, "Hey Patty, get over here and meet this lady!" and I'm thinking wierd, small world and Patty is really odd and stand off-ish and doesn't seem to think it odd at all. She wants to know how we figured out that she used to live in our house and so we tell her about the mail and then she gets really stand off-ish and I tell her it's just junk mail, but she appears unconvinced.
And now I have stalled and Mr. Pear has made my dinner;)
