Saturday, August 7, 2004

I wake to a sunny cool Saturday morning. Yesterday was fraught with weirdness. I had such plans. First, a drive to Alturas to fill up on gas and catch up my car registration. Then to the Davis Creek P.O. On the way home I stopped where my fencebuilder beau was at work attaching peeled rails to posts at the corner of some ranch. We distracted one another briefly. Next, there was to be a final run to the old farm to cart debris to the dump. Instead, my brother bit into his lunch apple and tried to swallow the big piece whole. It became lodged in his throat. We spent the rest of the afternoon on an ER gurney, waiting for various muscle relaxants to kick in and help the chunk slide down. At one point a dead heart attack victim was wheeled past on a gurney, covered in a purple velvet shroud embroidered "KEN" in gold script. On the other side of the ER curtain, a nursing intern tried repeatedly to catheterize an elderly, incoherent woman who babbled and gurgled fearfully during the whole discouraging procedure. I must not end up in this hospital. I'd planned an evening out with Norris at a local Italian restaurant. Instead I stayed home with my abashed (and by now very relaxed) brother. While he watched old Star Trek episodes upstairs, I watched Carrington downstairs, and snacked, and kept the computer on the phone line trying to upstream yesterday's photo installment, as I had off and on all morning. (I left it online last night when I went to bed at 10:30, but nothing upstreamed, apparently, until 1:38.) Coyotes are very near these days. I heard them yesterday in broad daylight yipping and yelping and crying just over the hill. Then last night around 9:30 I heard a cat screech outside. The dogs went on alert and I released them. They raged forward into the darkness barking hysterically, and then there was a sudden yipe, and they ran quietly back in. So I was sure that a coyote had got to Yoda, who insists on being out and who's so white he glows in the dark. I was awakened at 4:30 by a coyote barking near the house, and I heard the llamas' whinny-braying alarm from the pasture. But when I called for Yoda later this morning, in he ran. Soaking wet (a fall in the pond?), but alive. Picking up where yesterday's errands left off, I go now to make the last dump-run from the old farm. Maybe tonight we'll actually make it to that Italian restaurant... 10:54:57 AM    comment []