Sam

It has been a week now since we nearly lost our Sam and it still makes
me shiver.
We went for a ride together, with both dogs running along. We moved
at a pretty long trot for a ways down a dirt road and Sam must have
stopped off to roll in something nasty because when we pulled up, he
was not with us any more.
We didnt worry too much, not then, as we still had Pete, we were only
a couple of miles from home, and Sam knows his way home anyway. But
we never saw him again on the ride, even though we passed pretty close
to the way out on the return trip, and I called him a couple of times.
We thought he had just gone home after realizing we were moving
faster than he wanted to.
So Bill got in the Jeep and went back along our route, calling Sam
periodically. Nothing.
He came back and got me, and we went again in the Liberty (Sam's
favorite vehicle) and went again. Finally, when we stopped on a hill
to call, he came blasting across the desert to us as fast as he could
go, from the direction of a group of houses. He wasnt thirsty, but
his front feet were all torn up and wet and dirty and the nails were
raw. He must have had to dig or climb a wire fence to get away from
whoever took him.
Sam is a very friendly dog, and probably the politest dog you will
ever meet. If somebody called him, or asked him to come into a pen,
he would have done it. THEN. I doubt if he will ever do it again.

Arthritis

One of the worst things about having arthritis in my hands is that it
is SO hard to clean my glasses. That movement back and forth, with
the hand folded over the lens, is just excruciating. I hate it. I
had to give up knitting completely because of the pain, but one can
hardly give up cleaning her glasses.

Wine

I worry sometimes, that I will end up an old lush. I find that I
really like my glass of wine in the evening, after many years of
refusing to drink any alcohol at all. I didnt like the way my father
acted, and drank, and drank, and whined about his pain, so I just
didnt drink, not even socially. I say now if I ever find myself
getting maudlin and telling people the same stories over and over, I
will stop drinking again and that will be that.