Is taking three heavy reading on-line courses a good thing for a procrastinator to do??

hmmm.... perhaps.... not....

Just now, the city is taking out limbs from the trees in my front yard that it deems "in the way" - but they refuse to take out the tree that is leaning on the one wire and destined to fall sooner rather than later (it's old, and rotted and dead dead dead).

They've been out there for hours already and only now have my fearless mutts realized.

This blog title: THE HOUNDS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS. Or: HOW I ACQUIRED A BLEEDING HEART, LOST MY JEWELS TO A BURGLAR AND RESCUED TWO SHELTER MUTTS WHILE LISTENING TO VAGINA MUSIC AND CHAINSAWS JUST OUTSIDE MY DOOR.

We have a racoon in our crawl space. In fact, I think I may be sitting on top of it at this very moment. We think it's a racoon. It could be an opossum or a rat. EEK! But we had a racoon in our garage several weeks ago, gnawing down on the cat's food and suddenly we have something under our feet gnawing on WHAT?? WIRES?? WOOD??? GAS LINE??? mr. zippy heard it wrenching the crawl space door open the other night but I've been listening to it building its nest below for a few days.

him: "If we were rednecks we'd just let the hounds loose on it."

me: "That would be cruel to our hounds."

Racoons are vicious but CUTE killer critters. And besides... the hounds in question only JUST recognized the men sawing limbs in the front yard. So a critter catcher is due to set a trap this afternoon. We had our choice of two, one that euthenized "Because the state requires it" and the other eunethizes only if the critter tests positive for rabies otherwise they release into the wild ("But shhh, don't tell anyone, we could lose our license.")

Guess which one we chose? heh.

OH. COME. ON!!!

critter catcher: "We're using a new vaccine that the racoons ingest so it's getting to the critter population more easily."

me: "I was unaware."

critter catcher: "This is their land we're invading. They have to go some place. May as well be miles in the woods away from us instead of the incinerator."

this blog title: HOW MY BLEEDING HEART HELPED HONEST CRITTERS ESCAPE THE BIG UGLY MAN.