I've been un-robbed!!!

Strangely enough, three days after my recycling bin was mysteriously abducted, I came home from work today to find it equally mysteriously returned. I have no idea who borrowed it or why, but it's back. The strange joys of small-town living...

My mother has finally been talked into getting a Mac for her next computer! Of course, that means I'll be her tech support person from now on with no more excuses, but how much tech support will she need? Not like Windows where I'll get those 7am calls about "I hooked up a new printer in place of the one that exploded and now my modem doesn't work and MSN Online won't let me sign in and the computer starts up in safe mode and mysterious penguins keep sneering in at my window! Come out here and poke at the keyboard and pretend you know what to do with the mess!"

I've found a terrific blog, funny and useful. It's called Miss Snark: Literary Agent. A professional New York agent, complete with stiletto heels and mini-poodle, gives advice to writers in her own snarky way! Featuring the Crap-O-Meter, where VERY rarely, Miss Snark will allow writers to submit their novel synopsis so she can tell them how godawful it is. (Or isn't--several have actually got the thumbs-up.) I've got my nerve up to submit to agents again after reading this.
http://misssnark.blogspot.com/

Since I've been rambling about cats, I think I'll give the dogs a little airing out. The earliest dogs in my life were, of course, Other Peoples' Dogs. I don't remember Spot the Dalmatian, one of my grandfather's dogs, but he features in one of those annoying stories parents tell to embarrass their kids. Spot was a snapper and biter, so everyone was amazed to find me-the-toddler happily petting Spot, who sat quietly and agreeably while I did so. On approaching, they realized that Spot was so well-behaved because I had found a convenient 'handle' to hold him by. Ahem. I'll say no more about that. Once my father made some resentful remark that we kids had killed Spot. I don't know what that was about, and don't want to ask.

After that, my grandparents got Lady, a long-haired German Shepherd full of energy. My grandfather died, leaving my dimunitive grandma to handle the pooch. She was a handful, too. I recall trying to walk her on a leash, and being pulled over and dragged. (Lady, not Grandma!)

My grandparents weren't rich, but they did have two homes. They had a house in Oshkosh where they lived and worked, but they kept the old family farm in Marinette, and lived there in the summer when they retired. When I was very young, we lived there for a summer. It was a three-room shack with some crumbling outbuildings. There was no indoor plumbing and we used an outhouse and chamber pots at that time. (This was around 1970.) We could walk half a mile down a dirt road to visit my Great-Uncle Rodney Nettleton and Aunt Jeanette , on the corner of Nettleton Road. My Uncle Leo and his family lived in the former Nettleton Dairy Farm. (I have an old glass milk bottle with the name printed on it somewhere.) It was a peaceful area, where black-eyed Susans grew in sandy soil, and blackberries and wintergreen could be found in the surrounding woods. I can only remember it as being sunny. My grandmother still lives there in summer, but there's plumbing and a little more space in the old house. And there are new homes and families along Deer Trail, and Uncle Rodney and Aunt Jeanette are gone.

But anyway--my parents noticed that I adored dogs, and one spring when we were visiting Grandma, I got a surprise birthday present. They took me to a neighboring farm where there were German Shepherd puppies for sale, and said I could have one. There was only one puppy left, a runt with a long, soft coat and permanently floppy ears which the farmer's kids had named Snuffles. My parents were disappointed, and kept asking if I was SURE I wanted that one. Of COURSE I was sure! It was a PUPPY!! And I was about seven or eight, and had no opinion on what a GSD should look like. And I was old enough to know not to give the parents time to reconsider.

My brother and sister (who had no pets) were understandably jealous. Naturally, I had to be ordered to share. And eventually, Dad laid down the law that it wasn't just my dog, it was the FAMILY dog.

I felt that my birthday present had been stolen, and lost considerable interest in poor Snuffles after that. She grew up to be a sweet, undemanding dog, undersized, and not terribly nice to look at. My parents believed animals belonged outside, and built her a doghouse. Of course, that was another gap between me and the pooch. She got pregnant quite young, too. The father was a whitish dog who looked like he had labrador in him, and the puppies were strange beasts, wooly and colored like little Saint Bernards.

Shortly after the puppies were gotten rid of, Snuffles went into a decline. She smelled awful, and her hair fell out in clumps. My mother took her to the vet, and reported back that she had some sort of incurable skin disease. My parents gave me the whole speech about how she was suffering, and putting her to sleep would end the pain. I had seen enough kiddy TV to know what the expected 'brave' answer was supposed to be. I also knew my parents well enough to know that, though they were pretending to give me a choice, they had already made the decision. I gave the okay to put Snuffles down. I cried a bit afterward, but got over it quickly. Snuffles had never really been my dog.

The problem with dog stories is that they always end sadly. That's enough for tonight, I think.