Monday

Papers, tests, papers, quizzes, papers, reading guides, papers, vocab sheets, and papers. That is what my school life has been like these past few days. I'm swamped. So posts will be infrequent.

*****

On my way home from the honors banquet on Thursday evening, I hit a deer. Rather, it hit me. I was about three miles from town and hurrying to the elementary school to try and catch KoKo's last elementary school choir concert.

Then out of nowhere, two deer were right next to me. I swerved, but one still slammed into my front fender. It careened off and then hit my rear fender. By the time I stopped, the deer was lying in the road. I didn't know what to do. As a Virgo, I'm an official tree-hugger and animal lover. I even take the Lady Bugs out of our dogs' water dish before I fill it up.

So wounding a deer was a catastrophic event. I did the only thing I thought I could do to end the poor things suffering. I ran it over again. Unfortunately this left it flopping on the road hurt even worse. I could have vomited. Maybe it wasn't hurt as bad as I originally thought and now I doomed it. So I turned around and ran it over yet again. This time, or so I thought, I killed it.

Shaken, I drove to the elementary school and caught KoKo's concert.

After we drove back and couldn't find it. I was disgusted with myself. What happened it if wasn't killed and crawled away. Then we saw a form in the opposite ditch. It had to have been the deer. Hopefully, someone pulled it out of the lane and into the ditch (this too never occurred to me).

In hindsight, I should have called the sheriff's office to kill the poor thing, but I never thought of that.


*****

Kristie, her mother, and I spent Saturday shopping in Fargo. After about eight hours of shopping, the Kristie called to check on the kids. Casey said they couldn't find Misha.

He searched the whole house, and she was nowhere to be found. This left only one alternative - she must have snuck out. Kristie and I are diligent about watching that she doesn't sneak out - for she doesn't know her way around yet and she has a tendency to just run and run and run - oblivious to her surroundings. So we were alarmed. She must have snuck out either when we left or when one of the kids were letting out the dogs.

So when we finally got home - around 11 or so. Kristie and I were out with our flashlights. Unfortunately, Misha never meows. She just squeaks. So if she were stuck in a tree, we'd have no way of hearing her. To make matters worse, it was storming. Reluctantly, we had to call off the search.

It was more of the same yesterday. I got up early and walked around the neighborhood, but I didn't have much luck. I did, though, meet a young gentleman, roughly five or six, who was out on his bike. We struck up a good conversation. Since I figured he had a greater knowledge of the stress than I, I enlisted his aid in my search for Misha, and he was only too glad to help.

Finally, at the end of the day, as I was about to give up all hope - after another hour biking around the neighborhood - our neighbor came over with Misha cradled in her arms.

Apparently when she and her husband got home, they found her huddled on their porch. Never mind I had just biked past their calling her name. Misha walked right into their house, took a drink of water from the dog's dish, and made out like the place was all hers. Luckily, our neighbor recognized her from our window and brought her over.