Jaci Dawn

Billie let go of Ella. “But we never checked to see whose car is parked out there. If it’s Mike, he might be looking for us. He would know we might come out here. He’s our friend – maybe he could just drive us to the cabin.”
Ella nodded. She really didn’t like this tele-transportation stuff. “I think Billie is right. We should at least see who is parked out there, and if it’s Mike…”
“No, the fewer people who know about us, the better,” Twerp interjected.
“Mike’s my friend, too, Billie, but his dad has always been pretty anti-wizard,” Gran raised a paw.
“Shh! Guys! There’s a bike coming! I can hear it!”
Everyone jumped back into the shelter of the fern. Their ears automatically swiveled in the direction of the sound: someone was pedaling and doing stunts, grunting, and coming closer. Billie and Gran poked their noses out to see who was coming. A whoosh of rubber on dirt, then a skid. A tire threw dirt and small rocks at the fern as the rider stopped suddenly. A large foot bound in leather came down in front of Ella, and she jumped back.”
“Come on, text back!” The voice sounded frustrated. “Where are you Billie?”
Gran pulled Billie back, shaking his head ‘no’. She struggled against his hold, but by the time she was free, the bike had taken off toward town. Billie burst out from under the fern and yelled as loudly as she could, “Mike! I’m right here!”
“Come on, Bill, you think he’s going to believe you’re a mouse?”
“Why’d you hold me back!?” Billie whirled on Gran.
“You saw how close he came to stepping on El. He wouldn’t have seen you and you could’ve been caught in his spokes or run over!”
“You’re jealous! Mike asked me out before you could!”
“In your dreams!” Gran threw up his paws. “I don’t care if you go out with my friend. But getting run over first would be a stupid idea.”
“I’m going to try to get his attention before he loads his bike in his car.” Billie whirled around and began to jog down the middle of the path.
“What if he makes one more circuit? You’ll get run over!” Gran chased after her, with Ella and Dish on his heels.
“I’ll help you, Billie!”
“C’mon, Gran, it’s worth it to see if he can help us!”
Billie disappeared around a corner. Gran and Dish were nearly side-by-side and Ella was considering running on all fours to go faster. Suddenly, Billie screamed. Well, squeaked a shrill squeak that sounded like life or death.
Three mouse voices called out, “Billieee!!” The boys rounded the corner and skidded to a halt so suddenly that Ella ran right into them, knocking them over. She scrambled for ground.
“Oomph!”
“Ow!”
“Slow down, El!”
“Billie!”
“Guys. Guys. We have a big problem…” Dish had regained his footing and was staring upward.
Ella saw Billie in front of her, staring almost straight up. She ran forward and hugged her friend. “Bill…”
“El. Up.”
Ella peered upward. A large black dog’s nose hovered just above her. A nose on the end of a narrow, white muzzle. A nose above a sly grinning muzzle. Greenish-yellow eyes with cat’s pupils. Very large, pointy, red-furred ears.
“Well. I see you are still running pell mell into danger, young wizards.”
“Pell what?”
“Who are you?”
The girls merely huddled, holding each other closely.
“’Pell mell’, Mr. Cartwright. It is a term of speech meaning ‘in a hasty, and unthinking manner’, much in the way you have all been behaving the past 24 hours. You are very, very careless. I suggest we all make our orderly way back to the rest of your companions and away from this very obvious wide trail where anyone can see you. Now.”
The fox emphasized the last word it a point of a black paw. “You trot, or I carry you.”
Ella pulled Billie back ward, then slowly turned around, keeping a wary eye on the fox. It didn’t lose its wicked smile. Gran and Dish followed the girls, Gran still arguing. “Where do you get off calling me ‘Mr. Cartwright’?”
“March, young man. I used your formal name; there is no ‘getting off’ about it. You are Gran Cartwright, are you not?”
They came over the hill to see Aric, Twerp, and Horace standing in the trail, staring back at them. Ella and Billie dropped their hands and ran toward the boys as fast as they could, “Fox!!!!!” They screeched.
Gran glanced over his shoulder: the fox was gone. He elbowed Dish, “It’s gone!” They exchanged a look and took off running toward the others. They skidded to a halt just in front of the rest, their noses pointing upward, above Horace’s head.
Horace’s eyes got larger. “It’s behind me, isn’t it?”

Slowly, everyone turned around. The fox was sitting on its haunches, grinning. “Right. Now that I have all of you together, can we move off of this trail before those miserable cretins come around on their little bikes? This way.” It motioned with its nose. “You lead. I will tell you when to stop.”
Meekly, everyone turned and began moving deeper into the gloom of fir forest. Horace hopped alongside, making no move to try to fly away. They made their way quietly through sword ferns and fading bracken, around chanterelles, and over little rises and up little dips. They came to a small rivulet surrounded by twisting old rhododendrons, shaded from the towering firs.
“Stop. Here, we can talk. Turn around, all of you.” The fox sat on its haunches and continued to grin.
“Well?” Gran tried to sound brave, but he sounded more like a teenage boy trying to bluster his way past the coach.
“A well is a deep hole in the ground that sometimes holds water, Gran. There, I used your ‘Christian’ name. No need to be so formal, now that we are away from the trail. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am Kitsune. I am Zenko, or a good fox. A shape-shifter. A true shape-shifter, not one who needs to use a magic wand to change shapes.” He looked pointedly at Twerp.
“I stopped you because you are attracting a lot of attention to yourselves with your reckless antics, and you needed to be stopped. Read: every time you summon magic, you ping back to the owner of the wands you are carrying. It won‘t be long before those you seek to avoid figure out where you are, and come hunting.”
They looked at each other. “But I used Ella’s dad’s wands and that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?” Gran pulled the wands out of his pocket.
“Are you certain they belong to the party you borrowed them from, or do you suppose he had another reason for keeping those in the attic? Perhaps they belonged to someone who should not possess a wand, but did at one time?” The fox let the question hang in the air.
“So, if you’re Kitsune, like in Animé, aren’t you, like, someone we know in real life?” Twerp changed the subject. I mean, a shape-shifter and all…”
“I can take human form, Deacon, yes. That is all academic. I sense that I need to explain to you what a grave danger you are in, and the danger the wizarding community as a whole is in.”
“I think we know that,” Dish muttered.
“Yeah,” Aric said.
The fox shook its head. “You do, perhaps, understand something of the gravity of the situation, but not all of it. You see, young people,” the fox sounded like old Mr. Nagato, the retired librarian, “someone in a very high place of government is suddenly missing a powerful talisman. This person who is missing this prized possession has determined that someone within the magic community is in possession of said item, and she will do everything she can to not only retrieve the wand, but cripple the community.”
But why, Mr. Nagato?” Ella overcame her fear of the fox.
The fox tipped its head and grinned even more. “Very good, Ella. Yes, sometimes, I masquerade as Mr. Nagato. You have always been a very observant young woman. As for your question, I cannot answer that. You must understand that from here on, you should not practice any frivolous magic.”
“Can we change back to ourselves first?”
“You are safer in your present form, especially as your hunters will be looking for you. You should, however, distance yourself from your natural predator here, one Horace.”
“But – we were trying to get to my folks’ cabin, and then regroup and make a plan. How can we do that as mice?”
“Intelligent musing, Dustin, but foolish. You should never divulge your plan to anyone you do not fully trust. Now, I can assure you that I will not betray you, but I could very well be someone you shouldn’t trust. The woods have ears – many of them. I will answer you: follow this stream. It will take you where you need to go. Horace can fly where he wills, and I advise him to stay to the deep woods and night flying.”
“You’re not coming with us?”
Kitsune laughed. “A fox traveling with mice? What did I say about not traveling with your enemy?”
“Wait,” Aric lifted a paw. “You said not to trust just anyone. So we might meet more talking animals. How will we know if we can trust them or not?”
“Your sister, Aric. Ella has powers she has not yet tapped into. She will be your bellwether.”

11619 words

Everyone looked at Gran. Gran sank low in the grass and put his head in his paws. Billie sat beside him, her paw on his shoulder. Dish gently let Twerp down before he, too, sat down. Twerp curled up into the fetal position and started snoring softly. Ella and Aric sat together, trying to see over the grass.
“One good thing,” Aric whispered, “is if we can’t see them very well, they sure can’t see us.”
“Who are they?”
Somewhere, in the trees above, an owl hooted.
Gran groaned, head still in his hands. “Now we’ve got owls to worry about, and dead-weight back there is snoring,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.
“Shhh,” Dish hissed back. Swainson has about a zillion cats, too.”
Everyone looked nervously back toward the yard with the chain link fence. Ella shivered.
There was a sound near the van. Aric stood, parted the grass a bit and stared: the window closest to his home had been rolled down, and it looked like the barrel of a gun was pointing out. He followed the muzzle toward the apple tree, where a crow was settling down to roost. There was a popping sound, and the crow squawked once before it fell out of the tree, wings spread as if to fly. Aric ducked back down.
“They’re shooting birds!” He almost forgot to whisper.
“Familiars,” Dish replied, unhappily. “They’re hunting familiars.”
“It was just an old crow,” Aric hissed back. “Who uses a crow as a familiar?”
The popping sound happened again, and an owl dropped out of the sky, landing mere feet from the teenagers. Everyone fell silent.

The van finally rolled forward, and past where the young mice were hiding in the grass. The smell of its exhaust filled the October air. The windows were rolled up, and the mice could hear the faint sounds of a popular Country song playing on its radio. The tires crunched along the dirt alleyway until the brakes squeaked. It turned right onto the paved street and motored away.
Aric peeked out, again. He could see quite well in the darkness, a novelty he wasn’t expecting. The lights were off in his house now, and the pit bull had curled up on its back porch. Mrs. Swainson’s house had every light on, but Bob Freeman’s house sat dark. A few feet away, he could smell the owl: it smelled of feathers, old blood, and fresh blood. A breeze wafted the feathers, making it appear alive for just a moment, and Aric ducked down in fear.
Gran had finally taken his head out of his hands. He spoke aloud for the first time, “If they’re shooting familiars, maybe someone warned Mrs. Swainson, so she’d keep her cats inside. That’s a good thing, right?”
“Someone could’ve warned me,” replied a grumpy old man’s voice. There was a stirring in the grass, and something larger than a mouse moved toward the teenagers. “Whoooo is hiding there? And why wasn’t I warned?”
Ella squeaked when the round head of a barred owl peered down at them. It’s eyes were yellow, large, and she thought – angry.
“Well?” It repeated.
“We didn’t know,” Dish squeaked. “At least, not until they shot the crow.”
“What crow?”
“The one over in our yard,” Aric pointed.
The owl turned its head nearly backwards, then whipped it back. “I’d go look, but, as you can see, I have been shot. In the wing. I can’t fly. I don’t know any crow that hangs around here. Don’t like them, especially. They don’t like me.”
“Um, who are you?” Billie found her voice.
The owl’s eyes found her. “I expect introductions are in order. I am the honorable, wise, and fortunate Horace. Fortunate, because that thing that hit me in the wing didn’t kill me.”
“Bullet. They had a silencer,” Aric said. “I’m Aric.”
“How do we know we can trust him?” Hissed Gran’s voice. “He’s an owl. Owls eat mice.”
Horace stood up straighter. “Why would I eat mice wearing clothing? The shoes alone would do a number on my digestion.”
“Owls swallow mice whole,” Ella said. She didn’t know why she was telling the apparently offended bird this. “You know, bones and everything. I don’t think shoes or glasses would be any more of a problem than bones. But, on the other hand, you’re a talking owl. Do all owls talk?”
The owl blinked three times, “Well, yesss… but not in this language. Owls communicate mostly by simple sounds that locate, warn, entice mates, and such. I have never met talking mice before, either. Most of the mice I have – er, met – er, have squeaked, but not much else. You are the first talking mice I have ever encountered.”
They stared at each other.
“I’m Ella.”
“Dustin, but noone calls me that. I go by ‘Dish’.”
“Billie.”
“Gran.”
“What about the little one? Did he get shot, too?” The owl leaned in very close and sniffed above Twerp. Twerp stirred in his sleep and mumbled. Both Dish and Ella started to stand up to protect the little guy from the large predator when the bird backed off.
“That’s Twerp,” they said in unison.
“Deke, his real name is Deke, but we’ve called him ‘twerp’ for so long, that’s become his name,” Ella explained. “He probably wouldn’t want to wake up with your face so close.”
“Of course.” Horace took a long look around. “I don’t suppose you were going to stay here all night, were you? It looks quite uncomfortable. I feel exposed.”
“No, we were going to -” Aric started.
“Cross through that yard.” Gran stood up and pointed. “We’re going that direction.”
“May I come along?” Horace blinked. “My wing is quite painful, and I jolly don’t like the idea of staying here, by the cat yard.”

They roused Twerp and started off across the hard-packed alley, and into the unkept yard between them and freedom – or so they hoped, it would lead them to freedom. Twerp was groggy, but he was steadier than he had been, and he didn’t question the lumbering bird of prey that hopped along through the grass off to the right.
The world looked decidedly strange from their mouse-sized perspective. Ella found herself half-jogging to keep up with Dish. She was having trouble making out things, and by the occasional grunts and curses from everyone else, she wasn’t the only one. She could hear exceptionally well. The strangest thing was the way the whiskers on her face were reacting to what they passed by: in the crawl space, and the short jaunt across the yards, she hadn’t paid much attention to those whiskers, primarily because she could see. Now, the world was in several shades of grey and black, and her whiskers seemed to have come alive.
“They’re, like, electric,” She said out loud.
“What’s electric?”
“Whiskers. They feel everything.”
“Oof!” Gran stumbled into something and fell backward. “I feel like a blind dude.”
Billie helped him up. “Yeah, I thought this would be easier. Where are we now?”
The group came to a halt and looked around. Noses twitched.
“I smell food.” Twerp said.
“What kind of food?” Several voices whispered back.
Ella lifted her own nose and breathed in. Her nose did a dance of its own: sunflower seeds. The aroma was almost overwhelming now that Twerp had mentioned it. Her stomach growled loudly. “We must be in the front of Mr. Freeman’s house. He feeds the birds.”
Twerp bumped into her, “Just follow our noses. We’ll be in food heaven.” He happily pushed through, working his nose.
The rest of the group hesitated, before Gran sighed out, “Why not? We need to eat.”
Following her nose was much easier than trying to see where she was going, Ella decided. Horace didn’t say much, but hopped along beside them until they were under the hanging bird feeders. He muttered something about keeping watch while the teenagers stuffed themselves silly.
Twerp was rooting around in the dirt, picking things up and putting them in his mouth greedily. Aric made his way over and followed suit. Billie picked gingerly at a pile of broken sunflower hulls. “Birds have been…”
“I think we have to,” Gran replied. He found a whole seed. “I’m so hungry…”
They ate and ate, moving little piles of discards hulls and, more often than not, whole shells with seeds still inside them. Raw sunflowers, Ella thought, not the nice roasted and salted ones she liked to buy at the convenience store, but somehow these seeds tasted more wonderful than a big, juicy, hamburger sounded. And she was so very, very hungry.
“Guys,” Gran said after a while, “I think we should get moving. I don’t know how much night we have left, and I want to be as close to the BMX trails as possible by morning.”
“What then?”
“Maybe Twerp will have recovered enough to make us normal.”
“Make you normal?” Everyone had forgotten about Horace, and his question caused them all to jump. “What is normal?”
“Don’t worry about it, Horace.”
“I feel like you keep leaving me out of things,” the owl said sulkily.
Look, we just haven’t decided how much we can trust you, OK? You’re still an owl to us, and that’s scary enough.”
“I promised I wouldn’t eat you.”
“Guys!” Billie stood up and put her arms out between Gran and Horace. “We just need to go. We can sort out everything else when we’re in a safer place.”
They crossed the street in a hurry, their shadows made unrealistically long by a street lamp. Ella stifled a giggle at their shadow-selves, and hurried after Dish. Soon, they would be in the unfamiliar maze of scotch broom, brambles, and wild plants that filled the empty plot of land between their neighborhood, the looming forest that they couldn’t see, and the wide series of hills and ruts that made up the illegal BMX bike track on the edge of town. Already, Ella could smell the spicy aroma of the brambles, and the burnt-smell of the scotch broom. She wondered how they would mange to keep from getting lost in there.
Horace stopped at the edge of the overgrown maze. “Mousies. Friends. I can’t crawl in there.”
Twerp suddenly seemed to notice the big bird. “Holy shit! Where’d we pick you up at?”
Horace looked offended. Aric put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “He got shot back in the alley behind out house. You were asleep. His name is Horace, and he’s a familiar, and he wants to stay with us for some reason.”
“Well, of course he does. He’s my dad’s owl.” Twerp stepped forward, “I’m Deacon, Horace. How bad were you shot?”
Horace leaned forward and looked closely into the face of Twerp, who didn’t flinch. “Deacon? You certainly have his glasses on. It’s my wing. It hurts a little, but not as much as it did when that thing hit me in the air and knocked me down.” The owl stretched his wing out and looked curiously at it.
“You can’t fly at all?”
“I haven’t tried. I met these mice, and they… er, I followed you all. It didn’t seem polite to fly off, if I could.”
“Well, try. If you can fly just a little bit, you can maybe keep us going the right way.” This was Gran, who had stepped closer. “Like, you could hoot to us, so we know which way to go. You know where the BMX trail is?”
“Where I ride my bike,” Deacon explained. “I’ve seen you roosting in there.”
Horace straightened. He turned away from the mice, made a coule little hops and stretched his wings. He gained air, and circled over their heads. “I can fly!” One more circle overhead and then he said, “I’ll stop halfway.”
“Hoot about every fifteen minutes.” But Horace was already gone.

8658 Words

This is my favorite photo of him: pure English Setter, clean and brushed. He was hard to keep clean and brushed: all the angora-bunny-sort fur and the long feathers in his tail and between his toes! he was a big boy, too, nearly twice the size of the average English Setter standard. He was at the top end of the standard in both height and weight (well, OK, he was overweight. He was a pig. He was a lazy pig).

He lived a wonderful life in the 8 years and four months that he lived with us, but we’re fairly certain his first year (or so) was not so carefree. I’ve read up on some English Setter rescues, and our experience with Harvey would indicate that he was like so many of them: isolated as a pup, not socialized properly, alone for many hours at a time, possibly kept on a rope or in a small kennel, and very little training. He was probably field bred, but he wasn’t the smartest light on the Christmas tree.

Harvey had a nose unlike any other. He could out-hunt Murphy with his nose, but since we never bothered to train Harvey to hunt, that remains up to debate. Hunting was Murphy’s job. Companion was Harvey’s job. He was the best companion.

He became sick sometime at the end of the last year. I noticed it in January, after I returned home from vacation: cough-cough-cough-haaack! X-rays showed fluid on the lungs, a normal heart, and nothing else. Blood tests pointed to a thyroid issue, but that could have been due to his hacking cough. We ran through three rounds of different antibiotics, with no improvement.

I made the cold-hearted decision to withhold any more research into his illness and to let him live out his days as best as he could, and as happily as he could. It was a financial decision as much as a practical one: how much money do you pour into a dog? I won’t judge someone who pours a lot of money into their dog(s) and I hope you won’t judge me from pulling back. We didn’t even know what was causing him to cough, we only knew what was not: heartworm, heart disease, thyroid disease, something stuck in his throat. Further tests would have been invasive and added to his dread of the vet.

Choosing to not pour money into him paid off when we had to put Murphy down, and we had the money to invite a vet into our back yard to do it. It was far more expensive than our vet, but Murphy died where he lived and loved: under the sun, in the arms of his master.

Harvey slowly declined. He had good days, mostly, but soon he couldn’t manage a mile walk or even a half mile walk. We cut down to walking around the block. He was huffing and puffing by the time we came home. He reminded me of when I have an asthma attack, but I sensed this was deeper than asthma. I feared cancer. His belly began to distend.

I almost put him down in August, but he rebounded. Then Murphy died. Harvey lived. How is that fair? Harvey eased my husband through the early stages of his grief: he was there to talk to, even if he was mostly deaf. He had cataracts, but he could see motions and shapes.

I said that he wasn’t smart. that isn’t entirely true. Harvey learned new tricks. He learned how to “speak” for treats and how to use it to manipulate the treat jar. he loved puzzles, such as when I’d put a treat under one of three paper cups and he’d have to guess – and flip the cup over to retrieve the treat. I could set a biscuit on his nose and he learned to flip it off (but not catch it). He loved sign language. I didn’t have to speak to him. but could just point, and he knew what I wanted or where to go.

He developed seborrhea (a dandruff like condition that mimics hot spots). No matter how often I bathed him (not often, as you can imagine with a 90# dog that hated water), he continued to develop scaly spots and lose flakes of skin.

His last month was the hardest: I blocked him from the stairs to my studio because I caught him collapsing on them and I had to help him down. He no longer had Murphy to pester him. We got a new bed, and while he could figure out how to climb onto it (it’s taller than the old bed), getting off was a chore. I banned him from the bed.

His last week was up and down. One day, he’d eat nothing, not move, not go outside until I came home from work and hauled him out there. The next day, he was fine. Another day, down. Up when I came home and took him out, sat with him on the hardwoods in the hall, and hugged. Harvey loved to hug.

He had a congenital spinal column disorder, where his spine narrowed over his hips and pinched his spinal column. It appears like hip dysplasia, but isn’t. I discovered it when he was around 5 years old, and we treated it with anti-inflammatory drugs and pain meds. Usually, he recovered quickly. Sunday, when he refused to get out of bed and I helped him up, he couldn’t keep his back legs under him. His back was out, plain and simple. I helped him out to pee and poop. He quit eating unless it was under his nose.

I dosed him heavily with pain killers. I made the decision, and made the phone calls to cover myself at work.

Harvey knew. He balked at getting into the car, but that was because of the pain it caused him. He entered the vet’s waiting room like the gentleman he always was, never threatening any of the other waiting dogs. He refused to relax and lay down, but, instead, hid his face in my armpit, hyperventilating. I sat on the floor with him. A poodle puppy tried to make friends with him, but he barely gave it a glance as it sniffed around his feet. He hugged me, over and over and over again.

Dogs hug by rubbing their heads against you and butting you. Harvey’s tail occasionally wagged as we sat there, him with his head against me and me petting him. He smelled like the seborrhea.

He weighed 86#. We were led to an examine room, and Harvey collapsed. He’d been standing for far too long, and he was just done. He was no longer hyperventilating. He allowed me to pull him over to me, and lay his head on my lap. He knew. He didn’t look up at the vet when she came into the room, but simply snuggled closer as she gave him a sedative. He relaxed into dreams with a hearty snore.

One of the things that stands out to me is that the vet commented on how distended Harvey’s belly was. He’d been sick since January. I suspected cancer of the lungs. I never followed up on x-rays, because – what’s the point? Chemo? Radiation? Money out the door, and the dog is uncomfortable throughout the process? The part of my mind that makes practical decisions kicked in. No. No tests, no invasive procedures, nothing that would ruin his last days on earth.

He passed peacefully. I believe he passed knowing what was happening. I believe he made the choice. I think a broken heart played into his decision: who could have had a better brother-from-another-mother than Harvey had in Murphy (or visa-versa)? He was nine-ish. He’d had a really good life with us. He was loved. He loved.

I threw out the dog beds the same day. I’m still crying when I look at his picture on the Internet. I haven’t taken down his Facebook page. Don is collecting photos of Murphy. We are both grieving. It means a lot to look on Facebook and see all the comments, likes, and more. I can’t begin to check the little “like” box next to them all for fear I will miss one. But I have read every single one. I appreciate every single one. Some of you don’t even like dogs. Thank you.

Harvey taught me how to trust dogs. Murphy taught me how to love dogs. It’s been a rough summer’s end.

I kind of fell off the Accountability Chart this weekend, but I got back on tonight and actually figured out how to add products to my “shop” on my website. Woot! I think I have four items up, and that’s a fraction of what needs to be put up, but with a little copy and paste and a lot of patience, I will have my online shop open by the first of November.

I’ll be honest with you: this whole process has been a bit of a headache, mostly because I was starting with an already existing website, and most instructions assume you are doing this from the beginning. They obviously don’t know me. I’m a jump in and do it sort of person, and then I figure out how to problem solve later. Yes, it causes a lot of headaches, but it’s how those of us who are kinesthetic/visual learners learn. I’m not good at following verbal instructions, but give me a screen shot manual, or let me get in and play with things, and I learn.

So I had this existing website and theme which I had to take down, basically, and start up with a new theme that is compatible with the online shopping program I uploaded to my site. The shopping program is only compatible with select Word Press themes, most of which I don’t like. I uploaded their basic site, but when I went in tonight to work on things, I saw how poorly that was going to integrate with what I am selling (my own artwork). UGH. So I had to go search for and upload a new theme that was compatible with my image. There goes half an hour!

Uploading my inventory was a challenge, too: I don’t have excel or a csv program on my computer (hey, in my defense, I didn’t know I would ever need it). Manually entering the product is the only option, and – at first – that seemed daunting. But I did a test, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I learned quickly to ignore the SEO alerts. I can deal with those down the road as I expand my website. I managed to upload about four items to my shop and I think I have it down now. I think I will prefer to manually enter my inventory – for now.

I didn’t get everything done within the 31 day challenge I was on, but my shop/website will be ready by November 1, in time for seasonal shopping. I also have my Etsy shop open. I am retaining rights to the images so I can prepare giclée images and add them to my website.I’m pretty proud of what I have gotten done. I’m not as technologically handicapped as I thought I was.

Dang.  I feel capable tonight. Never doubt yourself. You CAN do this!!

I have no “prompt” for tonight; I am merely going to recount my day. I am going to take a few days off from the nightly post (wait for NaNoWriMo, when I will type out my 50,000 words here on my blog, open to your real-time review, beginning November 1st!).

Today was a wonderfully typical Autumn (Winter or Spring) day here in the Pacific Northwest: it rained. Non-stop. They’re predicting 3″ by the end of this particular trough of storms passes through, which – while it isn’t entirely normal, is not, by any means, not normal. This is the weather where people from out of state carry umbrellas; Oregonians (and Washingtonians) merely put up their hoods or don hats, and slosh out into it.

I wore my dressy blue rain boots over my jeans. Rain boots are fun nowadays, not those simple black (and practical) boots you buy at the local feed store, rain boots are something you buy off the shoe shelves of the local Target, WalMart, K-Mart, Fred Meyer, or whatever. They come in arrays of designs and colors. You can still get ducky yellow, but paisley blue is more my style, and that is what I have.

My girlfriends picked me up around 10:30 and we took the backroads to the Old Aurora Colony, more commonly referred to as simply, Aurora, Oregon. There was a quilt show in the Aurora Museum. The girls are into quilting; I barely uncover my sewing machine to repair things. My great aunts and most of my cousins on the Scots’ side of the family have all quilted (or still quilt). It is a sewing gene that skipped me (I have made a couple of quilts, but they were simple things, and I never felt the desire to get artsy with fabric in that way).

I like to look at quilts. I like to pick out the hand-quilted vs. the machine-quilted. I love the patterns. The textures. I may not sew much, but fabric still lures me in. There were a lot of nice quilts, and a handful of them were hand-quilted with exacting precision.

There was also an herb garden and store where I got lost in the heavenly aromas of lavender and sage. My friends walked off on me at this point, less interested in the herbs and plants than I am, but I lingered long enough to inhale deep breaths and to rub an aromatic salve into my hands. I may look into joining the Willamette Herb Society.

I have lived in this area since 1983, and I stopped in and walked around Aurora a handful of times. I’m sure I’ve been to the museum at some point, but it may have been in the 30-years ago range. I’d forgotten about the long barn with horse implements and grist stones. Of course, it may not have been open like it is now when I was last in the museum.

The last building was the original log cabin, full of people’s discarded sewing notions, quilting squares, knick-knacks, and vintage patterns still in the original envelopes. A waft of nostalgia blew over me here: my mother could sketch like the artists who designed those 1950’s and 1960’s pattern envelopes. The 1970’s patterns reminded me of my mother. The sewing, in general, reminded me of mom, and of her oldest sister, who just passed last week at the age of 89. I felt their presence with me as I scanned old buttons, binding tape, and sequin pins. I could see them: Mary Lou and Phyllis.

I know where to donate all my sewing notions that I will probably never use, but which I could not leave in the house in Ely when Mom died.

We left the museum and made our way across Highway 99E to a hole-in-the-wall diner my friends knew about. Mom & Pop kind of deli, only 4 or 5 tables, and a ton of paintings of varying degrees of age from floor to ceiling. The best corn chowder I have ever had. Personal service. Christa’s Café and Antiques.

The rain never let up, and we sloshed back out into it. The debate: to wander around to all of Aurora’s many antique shops, or duck into the Main Street Mercantile? We opted for the latter, and it turned out to be a three-story antique mall, not a “mercantile” at all. How did I never know this was there? I thought I’d been to all the antique stores in Aurora as recently as 2015, and – yet – here was this hidden treasure of an antique mall so jam-packed with other people’s junk that you couldn’t turn around?

My feet were cramping by the time we decided our eyes were getting bleary and all the vintage and antique items were beginning to blur into one. The smells that overwhelmed me when I first entered – old spices, dust, old books, age – were now all blended into one scent, and I needed the rain to wash it away from me, along with the wish to spend money I don’t need to spend (because, dammit, I found the perfect buffet/hutch for my house and it was marked down to $315).

And there was this.

I don’t know what the hell that is, but I want it. I don’t care how ratty it is, how faded the little marble eyes are, or that the antlers are broke: I want this. The earless grizzmoo or Moogrizz or whatever bizarre cryptid this is (maybe it’s a Bigfoot? I’ve never seen one. Have you?), I need this in my life.

Sadly, I didn’t think there was room in my friend’s car for it, and I wasn’t sure where I would hang it in my house that a dog wouldn’t be able to reach it to chew on its nose (even Harvey, with his cataracts, would be able to locate this and find it – um, interesting). No one visits us anyway, so I wouldn’t be losing any Good Housekeeping points that I haven’t lost already. I’d freaking have THIS.

But I left it behind.

We hydro-planed north to Canby, where we stopped and had coffee to round out our day together. Then my friends dropped me off.

Don and I rounded out the evening with dinner at Feckin’ . We ran into friends and enjoyed our favorites with them. Came home and topped the evening with a Jackie Chan movie that is more “China meets Bollywood” than anything else: Kung Fu Yoga. I highly recommend it (if you are a Jackie Chan fan, which I am).

Now I am heading to bed. I’ll post before I start NaNoWriMo (my user name is jacidawn,  so if you want, we can pal up and write our novels together). And I promise to open my closed little self off by posting my daily writings right here, on this blog. (Go to the NaNoWriMo link to read more).