Doing Catchup

 I'm at home today and able to catch up on a few things. First, I want to apologize to Karen Cobb for not following through with her message to her kind neighbors when I said I would. Here it is now:  (Sent to me on the 13th)

To all who helped find Gunnar today when he took off past Frank Dolan’s camp.A cadre of people went into action, so thanking all of them for their concern and assistance. Super folks up here always!

Turns out he was 2 doors down swimming with another yellow Lab! In the dog house with me currently, but that doesn’t mean much as he knows how much he is loved!

Anyway, so thankful he is okay.

I'm so glad Gunnar was ok. For those of you who don't know Gunnar, he is a lovable pup who, like many other doggies, loves Vermont and swimming in Joe's Pond. 

My excuse for lots of things these days is that I've been busy working on the West Danville history book. We put in another six hours yesterday in order to meet the deadline for getting it to our editor for a final edit - this time, of EVERYTHING, not just the main manuscript. We were coordinating photos and captions to be sure everything is now in place as it will be in the book, not miscellaneous bits and pieces in files on our computers.

I was exhausted when I got home last night and after I ate, I settled into my chair to watch the news and enjoy my cup of tea. It was already well after seven o'clock, and I had changed into my heavy fleece robe because I was chilly and intended to go to bed early. I don't believe I watched more than five minutes of the news before I fell asleep. That would have been ok, but I had a nearly-full cup of tea and the TV remote in my lap. NOT a good idea. The tea spilled into my lap, soaking the remote and two layers of my heavy robe before it reached my leg and I woke up. 

Long story short, I changed into dry clothes and then discovered that the remote was useless. I tried wiping it, shaking the water out of it, then took it apart and tried to dry it with my hair dryer, but nothing worked. I had another remote that worked to turn down the sound and turn it off, but I wasn't able to change channels or reach anything I had recorded. Finally, I ended up calling Jamie - by now it was after eight o'clock. Fortunately, Jamie had a spare remote just like mine (Jamie never throws anything away) and now I'm using that while he works to bring mine back to life. I think mine is programmed specially for my TV setup, because there are a few things I cannot do with his - but at least now I can find some of the programs I had taped and change channels. Lesson learned. This has happened before, but I never drowned my TV remote or did any other significant damage except ending up with wet clothing or a wet chair on occasion. Yes, I admit to falling asleep in my chair a few times before this with a drink of one sort or another in my hand. Sometimes the message just doesn't get through right away! Jamie thinks a sippy cup might work.

I apparently had a bear in my back yard digging out some compost I'd used around the small maple tree that had been transplanted a few weeks ago. The compost was pretty well decomposed and I had mixed it with soil before putting landscaping cloth over it and a few inches of wood chips on top. The landscaping cloth was torn up and the chips spread on the grass - I'm pretty sure that bear was disappointed when the aroma was misleading and there wasn't much edible there. I know bears have a very acute sense of smell, so will be more careful with my composting efforts from now on. This batch clearly needed more "brown stuff" in it before I used it. Another lesson learned!