I’m trying out a new word processor now. So far, I like how it has a lot of colors to choose from and a built-in text reader, but it has several flaws.

I freed my last male mouse and now all the ladies are living together. I have about a dozen in all till the babies are born.

Decided to do some wall art, after all this time, but only in the retreat. All it is is a music room/storeroom. As soon as the sun comes up and I have better lighting, I’ll attempt some outlines. If those are a success, then we’ll get some markers. I was thinking I’d do floral decorations. Maybe a Bugs Bunny too, like I had on the bedroom wall in Phoenix.

Yesterday morning, just before 7:00, I heard two dogs barking outside the window in front. When I looked out, they were barking at something on the front steps, though at first I couldn’t see what it was. My yanking the blinds up so I could see better scared the dogs back a few feet. Then I saw next door’s big black cat. It jumped off the stairs, then the dogs chased it down toward where it lives. When I glanced out the side door, I thought I saw it lying dead about 80 feet away, but since the sun wasn’t fully up yet, I couldn’t see that it was really a dead cactus slumped over. The cat escaped by climbing up a tree.

The ruckus woke Tom up, but fortunately not too long before he was going to get up, anyway. I’m pretty sick of dogs on our property. These are always huge dogs, too. Never any little poodles or anything like that. So I’m hoping we can do the entire exterior fencing this year. Even though they’d be too big to squeeze through the barbed wire, we talked about stringing a low-voltage wire around the perimeter.

I’m going to try to stay up as late as I can, but I don’t expect I’ll sleep well tomorrow or the next day with them booming away up there. It’ll depend on the time they do it.

When we saw Scot Friday, I told him I decided I didn’t have enough dolls and so I decided to get more. He then said, “Oh, just what the old man needs. I’ll bet he’s thrilled. But there are worse things to collect.” That’s when he told us about people collecting barf bags from planes. Unused, of course.