Bridget wakes up with a yelp this morning.
A quick exam reveals she’s developed a muscle cramp or something. She’s sensitive to being handled and is obviously lame. “Well, sorry Spike, no long walk for us this morning. Bridget needs to take it easy.”
I set up my lounge chair on the sunny side of the BLT.
Bridget always stays close by me. My thinking is I’ll sit in the sun and read, and Bridget will lie down near me. Her muscles will be warmed by the sun. Maybe the heat will help her feel better. I bury a baby aspirin in cheese and she takes it. Of course, Spike has to have some cheese, too!
Spike soaks in his pond and walks in the mud, unfortunately in that order.
I gather up papers, cardboard, dog food bags and such and burn them in the fire ring. It’s handy having the pond for water to douse the fire. I always use my shovel to bury the fire as well.
My Amazon order is messed up again.
Spike’s Pond is shrinking.
I wasted an hour on the phone re-explaining to the Amazon person that a general delivery address means the U.S. post office, and United Parcel will not deliver to the post office.
So if an address is General Delivery, it doesn’t make sense to assign the shipment to United Parcel.
At one point I’m so frustrated I say, “It’s like a shipping address is the United States and Amazon sends the order to Mexico. It doesn’t make any sense!”
This elicits a chuckle out of the customer representative.
She’s very understanding and calls UPS to get it “from the horse’s mouth.”
“UPS says they will deliver to the post office, but some of their drivers don’t know what General Delivery is or where the post office is located.” I’m not going to get into the complete discussion here because I’m sick of a situation that is so simple, and yet seemingly impossible, to fix. I tell her to cancel my order.
Gail comes over in the afternoon.
“Spike! You’re a mess!”
She wants me to phone her when I get to my next camp to let her know how the roads are. We exchange phone numbers and email addresses.
I set our chairs on the sunny side of the BLT. Gail says she has the same problem with Amazon.
I tell Gail I’m a bit concerned about the prediction of rain at a time when I’m planning to find a new camp at a higher elevation.
“Oh that road across from Sunset Crater is a good road. You won’t have any problem,” she reassures me. However, one thought lingers. If she’s confident the road is good, why does she want me to phone her to let her know if it’s good?
I like Gail.
She’s intelligent, well-educated, perceptive, and projects no pretenses. We cover a wide range of topics. “Remember the guy who camped over there with all the stuff, the one with the outstanding fine?” I tell her I do. He left a few days ago. His campsite was a construction of tarps and drapes making an outside room around his pick-up camper.
“Well, he really was an interesting guy. I never did get to talk to him much. One day he came over to my campsite with his arms full of books!” Gail leans forward for emphasis. “Who would’ve thought!”
I look over at the empty spot where this man camped and regret not meeting him.
“I glance at the books and they’re all different topics, really good books,” Gail continues. “Then I find a textbook on beginning Latin! So I ask him, ‘What are you doing with a Latin book?’ and he tells me, ‘I thought it would be fun to learn some Latin. I read it three times.’ “
Clouds move across the sun and the breeze turns cold, so Gail leaves.
We promise to keep in touch. I take the crew inside and give them their kibble with a few pieces of chicken. I turn on the television and scan for channels. Five channels are found, two are fuzzy, two are Spanish, and one is Brian Williams and his twitching eyebrows talking about explosives in underwear or something.
By bedtime Bridget seems in better shape.
Well, let me rephrase that. She’s not lame as before. Several times in the night she sits up and shakes her head. Her ear is bothering her. This is a recurring problem for Bridget. I don’t want to point fingers, but if she didn’t have a certain SOMEONE licking her ears all the time . . . .
rvsue
rvsue and her canine crew 