Thursday, August 6, 1998: St. Paul, Minnesota
11:36 AM
Having the girls gone to California just isn't working out like I thought it would. Is that any surprise? Not really, I guess...
Sometime around dawn this morning, I was joined in bed by two warm, fuzzy bodies, Navar (75 pound collie) and Puppie (smallish mutt). At first, Navar laid partially on me, and that was somewhat uncomfortable, but he moved so he was laying alongside me, with me stuck between him and the wall. I didn't mind too much, though I was a little cramped, as a collie and a human in a twin bed just don't mix, even if said human is small, and I drifted back to sleep for a while.
Around 6:30, Mulder (the other collie) came in and started scratching at the rug, apparently his way of waking me up, Navar was keeping him from poking me with his cold, wet nose. I managed to get Navar off the bed and out of my way, grabbed my glasses and went downstairs to let them out in the yard. They didn't take long, and after they came back inside, I thought I could come upstairs and go back to sleep. Not so. Ten minutes later, they were 'playing' and barking at the tops of their lungs. I went down and got them to shut up after a few minutes, and since it was about time for Jev to be getting into work, I tried giving him a call. No answer, so I came back upstairs and went back to bed.
I guess the dogs stayed quiet long enough, because the next thing I remembered was hearing Deanna in the bathroom with the hair dryer, and the phone ringing. I figured Deanna couldn't hear it, and I was just feeling too lazy to get up again and go find a phone (there isn't one in my room), so I let the answering machine get it. After Deanna finished her hair, she came in and saw I was up and asked me if I was going to take a look at her computer again today. I told her yes, and went downstairs and talked to her while she finished getting ready, and got the message on the machine: Michelle, calling to let us know where they were staying in San Fran, and what their plans were for the day.
Deanna eventually headed off to school, and I tried giving Jev a call again, but still no answer, so I went up and drew a bath. It was a little too warm, but I climbed in anyway, and within a minute or two, the dogs started fighting downstairs again. I tried to ignore it... honest, I did, but it went on at least five minutes, and it was annoying me, and so I climbed out of the tub (figuring I really needed to let the water cool anyway), pulled on my clothes, and went to go downstairs.
I got to the top of the stairs, and they stopped barking. I almost turned back to the bathroom again, but then one of them started up again, so I went down and grabbed Navar by the collar and dragged him to the landing above the basement stairs and shut him out there for a few minutes. Immediately, the other two quit barking and looked at me like "what did he do?" but he's usually the prime suspect and the least well behaved, so I figured putting him out would do the trick, and it did.
I didn't leave him there long, and when I let him back in, they all behaved for a minute or two, then started up again. I made them all lay down and stay (except Puppie, who doesn't seem to be trained at all in that respect) and then let them up and gave them a treat afterward.
On a whim, I decided to call Jev again, and he answered on the first ring. Of course, he was busy and really couldn't talk, except to tell me that I'd done the wrong thing in giving the dogs rewards once they'd stayed put for a few minutes, so I let him get back to work, and sat down and cried for a few minutes. At that point, all I wanted to do was go home and get away from the stupid dogs and Deanna's stupid computer and everything else that's gone wrong since I got here.
Of course, I knew I was overreacting, and so I got it out of my system, then came back upstairs to finish my bath. The water was more to my liking, and after I was done, I came and hopped online to get my mail. Somehow yesterday, I managed to totally screw up Internet Explorer on Delina's computer, and now Eudora's not happy because it uses that to open HTML formatted messages, so I went to download that, and it's at 33% now. Hopefully it will be done sometime in the next hour or so (her 33.6 modem only connects at 26.4), and I can get that fixed, if nothing else.
I still have to tackle Deanna's computer and see if I can't get Wordperfect 6.1 working on it again. I have no idea why it suddenly quit working, just because I was tinkering with modem and com port settings, and now even after reinstalling both Win95 and WP 6.1, it's not happy. I'm so frustrated, I just want to throw something through a wall. I think these two machines just have it in for me... I'm good with computers.... usually, anyway.
Okay, enough whining and complaining... my day isn't totally bad. After half a week of rainy and overcast weather, the sun is out again a bit today, and maybe, if I ever get half the things done I'm supposed to, I'll go out on the porch and enjoy it or something. I want to read, but I just don't feel like I want to read the other book I brought (Rose Red, Snow White or whatever it is). All Delina has are romance novels, and I have enough romance in my life, thank you very much. I could cross stitch, but right now that doesn't sound terribly relaxing.
On a subject I've meant to ramble about since I've been here in Minnesota, I must say that on sunny days, this state has the most beautiful cloudscapes... they always look like they belong in paintings or on postcards. If I could just find some sort of skyline besides skyscrapers, electrical wires, or warehouses, I'd take a few pictures myself. But even when we went out to the fair last weekend (Washington county), there were poles with wires along the road. There was a great barn that I would have loved to get a shot of, but I missed it when we were on our way home, when I would have been on the right side to take it.
1 PM
I know this is really rambly and not a very good entry, but at this point I'm stressed and I figure something is better than nothing and it will get me on the road to putting my site back together. So far, I've got the Zip drive working, MSIE downloaded and reinstalled (which fixed the problem), and Frontier up and running so I can put these entries together the right way. I have a lot more updating to do on the journal, but I feel like I should try tackling Deanna's computer again first. I can work on the journal and what have you while she's home. Once I update the index page and the journal index too, I'll get this all uploaded and go back to what I should be doing.
Type to you later...
-- Lis
