Because it’s fun, my favorite recent random search strings that brought people here:

• boil an egg for 24 hours and alien appears
• Aztec Goodness of the Moon
• mean women
• how to write porn (interestingly enough, I’m the second hit on this — it goes to the write porn index, which makes me laugh and laugh)
• dangers of yoga + full Moon (I’m the first hit on this one; yay!)
• yoga and hangovers (same person?)
• fake name + ysabeau wilce

I have now officially proven myself capable of self-sufficiency once more, as we have just had what fellow dog owners will recognize immediately from the following descriptive title: A Great Dead Bird Incident.

For whatever reason, for one time only, Emma’s Golden Retriever side kicked in and here she trotted to the back door with a tiny beak hanging out one side of her mouth and little claw feet out the other. I ran through my options: wait until Christopher and Barzak arrive home and hope she hasn’t eaten it; go over to the neighbors’ and get them to deal with it; or do something.

I’m unwilling to dip too far beneath the surface of Lake Helpless Female it turns out, so I got a trash bag and a bag of newly-purchased Greenies. She’d deposited the bird on the mat at the door. I could have kissed her, were it not for the dead bird breath and her being a dog. I distributed Greenies to all three dogs (ours and the neighbors’ puppy Pickles), scooped up the bird in the trash bag and put it in the dumpster.

And the orchestra swelled…

Christopher can deal with disposing of it properly when he gets home.

Now I work on final revisions of a loooong-overdue short story.

Three things that happened today to illustrate the difficulties I now have keeping the household, er, myself together solo:

1. Stopped to get gas this morning and pulled up the wrong side of the car to the pump. Twice. Then drove away in shame as the man at the pump between the two I’d flirted with laughed and laughed.

2. Was given a pity supper by someone at the office concerned about what I was eating with Christopher away — literally, I am like a hapless widower that the community decides to bring casseroles to.

3. Got two-thirds through dog walk — which was taking place during our city’s crowded gallery hop — before realizing that my T-shirt was on inside out.

Not to mention, I only managed two yoga mornings. Luckily, Mr. Rowe returns tomorrow.

Tonight was the night for the other kind of phenomenon you only have to notice in passing when accompanied: the scary weirdo hanging out on your street.

Puck and I — spylike — took a back entrance so they wouldn’t know where we lived. And that wasn’t even the guy with the umbrella under his arm at the odd angle who kept pirouetting at the corner and told me "purty dog." Definite serial killer vibe.

To beat all, guess what my husband is getting ready to do on the mountain with the other smarty-pants writer types? That’s right. Play Dungeons and Dragons. I blame Holly — my sixth sense tells me she’s the ring leader aka dungeon master! (I shoulda totally asked her D&D questions in her interview. Except I don’t really know any.)

Now I’m going to go read more of Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible, which turns out to be perfect fun post-semester reading (even if I am pretty sure I’ve figured out a big twist already).

These days I’m hardly ever walking one of the dogs alone, because usually C’s there with the other one. So, when Mr. Charming slows down his car and yells "Put me on a leash!" to the amusement of his friends, the best I can manage is a reflexive, loud, "Ewwww."

Effective, sure, but I used to have much snappier retorts.