My neighbor's golden retriever was killed boy coyotes a few days ago. She called to warn me, although i never let my cat outdoors. The dog was with her German shepherd. She let them out, as customary, at 6:15 am, before going to work. The shepherd came back alone, very agitated and the hair standing up on its back. she went looking for the dog with the other one, and they found it not 15 feet from the house.

She called the police, the state DEP and no one really wanted to do anything about it. (It's illegal to discharge a firearm anywhere in the borough, which is the center and most densely populated part of my town.)

My neighbor also has 2 cats. One wetn missing quite some time ago and was never found. We all know coyotes are in the area and i have heard them barking at night. Unbelievably, she didn't sound sound like they were going to start keeping the other cat inside. Her husband, she said, felt it was "cruel" to do so. Not as cruel as allowing your pet to be mauled to death!!! Geez. I just don't get it.

So tonight around dusk i heard a single shotgun blast. I'm sure it was my neighbor's husband, taking matters into his own hands. It would've been easy enough to throw a piece of meat out in a certain spot and then wait for them to show up and kaboom.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, i'd be super upset, as she was, if something like happened to a pet of mine. On the other hand, they choose to live in a heavily wooded interior lot. Can you reasonably expect to shoot and kill every wild creature. I don't know. Maybe they'd do better in a condo. Of course, that's how my sister views things. When a woodchuck threatens her garden, she gets her shotgun. My sister can be inhuman at times.

My garden may also be destroyed by a woodchuck here. So far, nothing's happened, but the fencing is flimsy, to say the least. I'm in the prcess of reinforcing it and since my mother trimmed my hair yesterday, i kept the clippings, cut up an onion mesh bag and tied up 5 small satchets of human hair en onion bag. I hope essence of me will keep them at bay, tho no use putting it out yet as tomorrow they're calling for rain.

I cherish my time off and this weekend was great. Worked myself ragged, i must say. I still have Lyme, and since headaches are still with me on and off every other day, or every day as the case may be, doc gave me an additional 10 days of antibiotics on top of the 3 weeks i've already completed.

I'm getting concerned that this is still lingering. It's not a great thing to be on antibiotics long-term. Now i've had to start dosing myself with acidopholus and cranberry juice to avoid getting a UTI, something my doc (of course) forgot to tell me and something i suddenly remembered just when i thought i was getting one.

Had my mom over for lunch yesterday. She brought a yummy chicken salad and BROWNIES. I contributed a green salad and a garden in bloom, which she thoroughly enjoyed. My baby bluebirds have hatched inside the box. You can hear them go nuts when one of the parents brings them a nice juicy grub, a cup of which i conveniently put on top of the nestbox (with velcro) after a bike trip to the bait and tackle shop. My mother had kept complaining that never in her life had she seen a bluebird. Well, i kept looking for them all afternoon while she was here. Finally, from my upstairs office window she sat there and with the binoculars i kept saying look there! No, look there! On the birch tree. Look, in the pine. Finally, she saw them, oohs and ahs all the way around.

I'm still planning a trip to the Asian botanical gardens soon.

Our summer hours at work start tomorrow, so that means i get up a 1/2 hour earlier each day, cut my lunch hour in half and in return i'll get every other Friday off through end of August. It's so worth it. Even on those Fridays i do work, i'm told i can cut out around 2 or 3 as long as no one needs a writer....

speaking of writing, did a bit of freelance today. I was glad to finally do it as i'd been procastinating. I'm not officially doing any more freelance, but this was a brochure i'd written last year, there were delays in the condo project and now it's on and they needed some adjustments in the copy.

I partially fenced in my strawberry patch, which is now in bloom. I don't think it will stop either birds or chipmunks, of which i have plenty, but perhaps the woodchuck, since there's so much else to eat around here (anything green is on his palate) so why work for your supper if you don't have to?

My tiny veggie garden is bursting with little growing things. Peas are furthest ahead thus far, but haven't yet bloomed. Also in there are garlic, peppers, tomatoes, beans, zucchini, cukes and i think that's it.

I completed some fencing reinforcements on just 1 of the 4 sides of the already fenced garden. It's a wire mesh fence, 3 feet high but one foot is buried and the bottom 6 inches are turned in an L shape outward, to deter digging woodchucks. I hear they like peas and beans. It's an awful lot of work to not just dig 6 inches down, but then 6 inches outward. But i can't imagine losing it all, in a single night, after all the work i've put into it. Anyone who's dealt with a woodchuck knows what i'm talking about.

My friend R. has prostate cancer at 60. He had abunch of tests last week and will learn probably tomorrow if it has spread. Not good. He is being very stoic about it and outwardly calm but it has to be nerve-wracking. He is a somewhat fatalistic person, partly becus he's going thru a divorce now and is very unhappy about it.

I calculate that at about $125 a month, i will be spending (based on today's prices, which obviously won't remain at this level) nearly $1500 a year on gas, and that's strictly for commuting.

I have looked into:
* Trains: no train station in my town and a 15-minute ride makes this somewhat inconvenient, plus i hear there's a 1-year wait list for parking at the station. Obviously, our infrastructure is lacking, always had.

* Metropool and nuride.com: matches you up with fellow carpoolers, but those i called either were already taking the train or were no longer working at former job. The chances of finding somehwat with the same hours as me and who lives near enough that i don't have to go way out of my way to share a ride are like looking for a needle in a haystack

* New car? Doesn't make sense; i only have 90,000 miles on my current 9-year old honda; with my roof rack, i'm guessing i get about 32 mpg, not fantastic, but paing $21K for a new Prius wouldn't make sense. (I hear that by 2010, 2 years from now, 3 car makers will have plug-in hybrids that get 100 mpg. You can go about 40 miles on a charge, and then if you have to further, the gas kicks in but even then it's not costing you much becus the gas is used to recharge the battery.) THIS is what i'm holding out for.

* Vespa scooter. These were tempting; they get 70 mmpg but 1) you can only use them part of the year 2) not good in rain 3)i'd have helmet hair and 4) they're dangerous with crazy drivers out there

* the only other option left is to once again ask my boss to work at home1-2 days a week at my 6 month review in july. He said no when i interviewed for the job. But times have changed. Though his commute is even longer than mine, so perhaps he has no sympathy. I ran the idea by someone else in my group who greatly doubted he would go for it, which annoyed me to hear him say that, but i'm not sure if it's his natural pessism or if he's speaking from experience.

Oh, yes, the yardwork. I never, ever realized how INVASIVE forsythia can be. It's on the west side of my house and branching out into a narrow grass walkway and needed to be cut back. It had spread from a huge area of it and i realized it had all but killed a nice mountain laurel by covering it with arching branches. I cut and hacked and cut and hacked, hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow (at least 6 trips) of clippings to behind the toolshed. My god, the work. But it looks so much better. I dug up maybe 5 rooted clumps but there wes 1 i was afraid to go after cus it was too close to the mountain laurel. The mountain laurel has maybe 6 sets of green leaves on it. With the added sunlight, i hope it will sprout more and return to the land of the living.