And then the phone rang . . .

All I have managed to do tonight is stitch this one little corner, and it's not for lack of trying.

So far, we've had two calls from charitable organizations requesting donations, a call for Baby Girl from her Alumni Association, also requesting a donation (she hasn't lived here for almost three years and they still can't get their records corrected), a wrong number (three times) from a rather inebriated individual attempting to make a dinner reservation for Friday night, and a call from a neighbor wanting to know if we have seen her dog. We haven't.

And don't want to. We like dogs, cats, horses, and assorted other mammals and birds and have loved and lived with them all. We do not like her dog. It likes to bite. She calls them "love nips." Dearly Beloved, who has a remarkable rapport with four-legged critters, can't even tolerate this one--and we have seen him calm bucking horses and growling dogs. I can't repeat what he usually calls the animal. We don't even call it a dog, actually--we call it "the animal."

Dearly Beloved just said that it has probably been picked up by whatever alien spacecraft left it here--that it was most definitely not a canine from this planet but an evil alien from another. I am not going to mention that to its owner. She already thinks we're strange.