An excellent weekend!

Well, the landlady's on her way home, and I hope she doesn't hit too much holiday traffic on the way. We had a great, very productive weekend making the barn less of a clutter collection and more of a ... er ... barn. That was great. Hung a bunch of cabinets, threw away a bunch of crap, sorted a bunch of tools and parts. Books are starting to gravitate toward shelves and out of boxes. Pretty cool.

The boys are taking a more proactive approach to living with Little Bear. He's generally a well-mannered puppy, but still a puppy and as such his favorite means of demonstrating affection is to, you know, bite you. Being dogs themselves, they find this behavior acceptable within reason, but he can exceed reasonable limits. Magnus, for example, is very large and not neutered. He is possessed of impressive - and to a puppy, apparently tempting - swingy bits. Saturday evening, while Magnus was distracted trying to get his full portion of attention from Mom, Little Bear closed in from the rear, and...

And Magnus demonstrated that while he may be an old dog, saggier and slower than he used to be, he is still a very impressive predator, rightful ruler of the pack, and not lightly to be bitten in the balls. He emitted a window-rattling roar, turned instantly on his own axis, and suddenly all there was to see of Little Bear was his spatula-size paws waving frantically in the air as he squealed and yipped for mercy. Magnus had him on his back, jaws at his throat, explaining in easily understandable terms exactly why this was not acceptable behavior. Earlier my landlady had asked me why I didn't discipline Little Bear when he made the other boys mad. I said I have my rules, and they have theirs. I'll stop him from chewing on the furniture or tugging on the blankets, but if they want him to stop biting them on the ass, they're big boys and perfectly capable of imparting that information. Seems to me that's what being part of a pack is all about, and I wouldn't really believe that they've accepted him into the pack until I see them start doing it. When Magnus had laid Little Bear down and administered his rough discipline, and it was clear he had no intention of actually harming him in the process, my landlady laughed and said, "Well, you were an infant but now you're a toddler. Suck it up."

In meteorological news, it appears that the Monsoon has come early this year. It started raining last Monday and hasn't missed a day since. A little spring rain isn't unusual, but normally it doesn't do this until late summer. This is only my third full year in this part of the desert, and of course there are variations I haven't seen yet. But everybody agrees this has been a weird year, weather-wise. First winter went on like it never planned to stop. Then it gave all that boring spring stuff a miss and went right into summer for a couple of weeks. Suddenly it's cool and wet. This morning, for the first time in a week, day broke cloud-free and gorgeous. Now it's nearly noon and very threatening clouds have rolled in; it's clearly planning to rain all afternoon. Saturday, right after my landlady arrived, we got a helluva downpour. The canyons finished filling and spilled into the wash. I've never seen the wash run in May, but like I say this is only my third year. Now I hear preliminary drops on the scriptorium's roof and a few bursts of wind, and it's time to decide whether I want to spend the rest of the day here or in the lair. No more workies today.