All Quiet on the Western Front, My Beloved Treasure

Not a lot to report today. I worked until 0300, fell asleep around 4, and was up and working by 1115. I was actually quite surprised to get seven hours of sleep. Lately I've been in one of those 4 hours of sleep, 20 hours awake cycles that I despise. 'Course those wacko sleep cycles mean I've captured the Inspirado and I'm writing like a crazy woman.

Bosley took advantage of the nice weather today and spent two hours outside. He loves it out there, but man is he rough on grass! When we had the back sod put down (in August?) he would drag entire squares of sod around the back yard. I would have to chase after him, drag them back into place, and hope to god Dave didn't notice when he came home from a shift. Nowadays he's so big and heavy that his strides throw up massive clods of grass and dirt. It doesn't help that the lawn is soaked from the recent rains.

His digging genes seem to have kicked in during the last few weeks. There is nothing quite so terrifying as glancing toward the backyard and seeing your 36"tall (from feet to shoulders) Great Dane standing in a trench that's deep enough that you only see his head peeking over the sod. Seriously--our back yard looks like a shooting location for Im Westen nichts Neues. I'm just waiting for some stunt guy to start setting off mustard gas squibs.

Needless to say Dave and I are considering renting out Bosley as a gravedigger/landscaper. We have to pay for new sod somehow.

So anywho--Bos is digging today, but I can't see him because I'm not facing the back window and I'm busy revising my opening scene. He gallops throught the back door, slides across the linoleum in the kitchen, ricochets off a wall, and races into the living room. He trots over to me and drops a seven pound "gift" in my lap. At first I'm stunned. What the hell is that thing? The more I look at it, the more it starts to resemble, well, a human femur.

Suddenly I have one of those The 'Burbs moments. You know what I mean. "Ray, there's no doubt anymore. This is real. Our neighbors are murdering people. They're chopping them up. They're burying them in their backyard. Ray...this Walter!"

I jump up, take the possible femur into the kitchen and start knocking chunks of reddish clay off the outside of it. My mind is racing with paranoid thoughts. I remember our sales agent's shifty eyes when I asked what, exactly, was on this tract of land before we put our house on it. Those bastards, I think, they did build our houses on top of Indian burial grounds!

And then I realize that it's just a really strangely shaped root/stick that had lumps of clay on either end. I heave a sigh of relief, step out onto the patio, and hurl the femur stick over the back fence. That's when I see Bosley's latest trench. I tried to explain to him that the Germans aren't, in fact, advancing on our Western Front. He can cancel his order for barbed wire and scrap the plans for the machine gun nests. Im Westen nichts neues meine liebe Schaetzen, I tell him.

Anyways. So before I go I have to pass along this hilarious quiz: How Many Five Years Old Could You Take In A Fight? Try it. You'll laugh your ass off. I did.

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