radish walking and rocky raccoon

For a long time I have suspected that raccoons were coming in and eating the dog's food at night. An awful lot of dog food was going through her dish, and she's still a medium-sized dog, and less active than when she was yet a puppy. And frequently at night she'd suddenly wake up from where she sleeps on the foot of my bed and thunder down the stairs, out the dog door, and into the back yard where she would set up a tremendous fierce barking.

Last night I stepped into the back room and saw the tail end of a raccoon leaving through the dog door.

No, I am not thrilled. Where we are, raccoons are not cute little scamps with clever little paws and winsome little faces that we feed like people feed the birds. No. Raccoons are thugs -- old-fashioned biker gangsters --surly, swaggering little garbage bears, and not so little at that. They overthrow garbage cans, raid the fruit trees, and when the fruit is overripe they sit up in the trees having drunken parties all night long, complete with incoherent denunciations of foreign policy, off-key singing, and bleary lovers' quarrels. In short, they are a nuisance in the neighborhood. And they fear nothing. No, I don't propose to shoot the raccoons. But I am not about to cater to them either. So we have to close the dog door at night and risk having to get up and let her out to pee.

Radish walking is my favorite exercise right now. It's only possible in late spring, when the wild radishes and wild oats grow very high. What you do is pick a patch where the plants are up to your armpits or at least your waist and it's legal to walk off the paths, and you wade in and walk through the tall stuff until your leg-lifting muscles ache (it doesn't take long). Today I was having a wonderful time noticing what else grows out there and then I surprised a couple-few blackbirds with nesting materials in their beaks, so I think I'm going to stick to the edges of the field from now on so I don't bother them any more.

As to which blackbirds -- they were clearly female, so I'm unsure whether they were grackles, Brewer blackbirds, redwings, or starlings. They had the yellow yellow beaks, so I should know. I think I'll go google image blackbirds and grackles and figure it out.

edit: they were male starlings.

Lots of writing to do today if I'm going to not be a liar.

not quite a liar (finished Convoy: 800 some words)

So I'll be able to mail this anyway. Now on to the query.

Oh, that was really weird. When I went to click the "update journal" button, it jumped around like a flea.

Okay, it was part of the April Fool's thing. When I did click it, it changed to "processing whining." Hey! I don't whine much!

half a liar

Having now reread Julian's and Nicky's notes on the query, I have to quit. Fooey. I have to do this tomorrow.

Edit: Well, three-fourths of a liar. There is no freaking address for submissions to the Washington Future anthology. I remembered I emailed before about how to submit and got no answer, which I suppose means they don't really want me to submit.

So I'll figure out where else to send it instead. It doesn't need its serial numbers filed or anything, it's a pretty simple adventure story, kind of.

Less than half a liar(sent convoy and dog)

I sent Convoy to the Washington Future address that Brenda Clough sent me. I sent Dog to Quantum Muse.