Well. That escalated a little out of control…

It’s supposed to be hot today and I did not have a good day for work yesterday. Up half the night with my nose running, same thing all through morning chores so I took an antihistamine and spent most of the afternoon impersonating a zombie. Hate when that happens.

So this morning I wanted an early start. I walked around my neighbor’s place calling for that little sheltie – I admit that at this point it was pretty much only so I could honestly say I’d done it, because I’m never going to find that dog. Then I went over to Landlady’s for what was supposed to be the main chore of yesterday afternoon…

…washing off the very grody tops of Landlady’s batteries. And yes, Zelda – in this case I took every practical precaution. Gloves, mask, eyepro, rubber apron…

And lots of ventilation. Splashing battery acid around is a good way to ruin your health, no joke.

I left the door open because now there’s four gallons of water on the floor and it’ll take a while to evaporate. I’ll go back and close it up later this afternoon. Finished that and went to check on the ladies. I’ve been concerned about them because their egg production has really fallen off in the past few days. Oddball Girl, at a minimum, has stopped laying entirely. Yesterday I got one egg all day. They’ll have good days and bad days, but that was a very bad day at the end of a string of not-very-good days. But they had a nice surprise for me…

So that was good. Finishing the designated chores it was time to do something fun before it started to get hot.

There’s a lovely little canyon kind of off the beaten path – it’s technically within my stomping grounds but not obviously easy to get to. I haven’t been there in years but have been thinking about it lately. I won’t say I really expected to find any trace of the little dog there, but that was my excuse to climb down and use that canyon for my morning walkie.

One thing I recalled about that little canyon is that it contains the biggest intact chunk of petrified wood I know of above ground. This place used to be lousy with it but it’s worth money and was picked clean long before I moved here. This chunk has been weathering in this canyon since whenever it fell from the cliff above, and I’m afraid that’s where it’s going to stay. Every time I see it I dream of hauling it out, but I can’t budge it by hand and I can’t get the Jeep anywhere near it. So that’s that.

To this point this had been a pleasant excursion but of course I decided to hike out to the wash, which of course is always farther than I think it will be what with the snaking back and forth and trudging through soft sand. So by the time I reached the wash I’d had about as much fun as I cared for, but then it was time to about-face and do it all again. By the time I got back to where I’d entered the canyon, then climbed out, I was pretty thoroughly in oh-god-where-did-I-leave-the-Jeep mode.

But I’ve been there before. Water’s in the Jeep, so I was feeling much better even before I got back to the Lair and the shade.