Too Soon

We met Chica on Wednesday--a sweet dog, very affectionate and most desperate for attention. But it made both of us realize just how much we miss Echo. We're still too sad and not ready to give our hearts away again. It wouldn't be fair to the new dog to always be comparing to the old dog.

Bill made it safely to Illinois, and is presumably sitting in Cousin Steve's "tree stand" at this moment, for opening day of deer season. Steve's stand is actually a kind of a boys' clubhouse on stilts in the woods--I always expect there to be a "No Girlz Allowed!" sign over the door when I see it. There's plenty of room for a full pack of manly men and their guns. I imagine the haze of testosterone is miasma-like this morning.

His plan is to hunt through the weekend with his cousins-in-laws, then go to St. Louis with his dad on Monday for the big oncology consult. He will come home on Tuesday, just in time for my oncology appointment on Wednesday. His dad may come to spend Thanksgiving with us, or he may decide to stay at home. All plans are tentative. We are in the land of "playing it by ear."

I continue to do the homebody thing, with forays into library-land two days a week. I made a really boneheaded mistake yesterday--sending an Inter-Library Loan book back to the wrong recipient. But I think I made up for it by getting the check-in and check-out computers back on line after an electrical brown-out scrambled their brains. One plus and one minus. It's the story of my life.