I bought the house in Valpo for a sense of community. I felt I had lost that in California, but moving back to Indiana meant I'd be close to Dad, and the sense of community with that.

Hanging out with Andy this past weekend has given me a lot of that sense of community. Just heading over, working on his house, walking to Jamba Juice afterward was fun, relaxing, full of a sense of belonging to a group that I've been craving for a while now, pretty much since Mike and Kate moved, I think. I feel it when I'm spending time with Mom. I felt it this weekend.

I must be confusing "community" with "close neighbors," now that I think about it. We're not close to any of our neighbors where we are now.

Even if the neighbor community consisted of four dogs and only one other person.

Those dogs can be pretty cuddly when they want to be.

Kris sent me a message via email today. He was looking online at various deals, and found one from Amazon that he was very interested in. I looked at the deal he found, and mentioned that two days delivery might be too long, and the vendor wasn't going to give us a discount with the Amazon Prime, as it wasn't Amazon selling the product.

I offered, instead, to walk down to the shop just down the street from work afer I picked up Liza and Kathleen (her grandmother) from the airport, and see if I could find something that would work. I found a couple that would, indeed, work, and several others that were beyond the $200 budget Kris and I had agreed upon. Erwin tried to upsell me a couple times, but I resisted. I had a budget I was going to stick to, and the upsells weren't in that budget.

I wasn't sure about the color, but Kris didn't seem to mind what I purchased. As a matter of fact, he seemed to be mighty pleased.

Me? I'm excited about this new hobby.

Growing up, I hated to clean. I hated to clean up my room. I hated helping clean up the family room. I particularly hated to wash the dishes, but that's to be expected. Who doesn't hate to wash dishes?

Kris taught me the trick to minding washing dishes less: use rubber gloves.

Learned that lesson 20 years too late.

There was one exception to the cleaning-hate rule, though, an odd one that. I didn't mind helping clean up over at the Kleins.

I wish I could say the "not-minding" extended to all of my friends. I wish I could say I wasn't such a rotten child about cleaning up. But I can't, because I was, and I'm mostly embarrassed about it these days. I'm sure eventually I'll forgive myself about being a horrible child, but not. quite. yet.

Yesterday morning, I managed to finish all of my A-tasks: the tasks I have to finish over the weekend, or I'll just explode come Monday morning. You know, the really important tasks like, oh, I don't know, watering the plants, and folding the laundry, and eating all the sugar in the house.

Since I was done, and didn't really want to start on any of my other tasks, I called up Andy and asked him if he wanted help with his tasks around the house. He said sure, and off we went, the girls and I, to Casa Crews to help with the outdoor plumbing and the patio.

We glued together the pipes for an irrigation system extension for the wisteria on the side of his house. We dug up some of the patio area, narrowly missing Shadow as he ran under the pickax as I dug. We rewarded ourselves with a walk over to the nearest Jamba Juice for a smoothie, and discovered Jamba Juice had been bought out by Nike.

Right. Like that's a connection I should have made: they totally fit together.

As I left before dinner to head home with the girls, I couldn't help but wonder why working on someone else's chores and projects is so much easier than working on my own chores and projects. Maybe it's because I can walk away from others' chores even if I'm not done. Can't really walk away from mine: they're still there when I return.

Went to Ft. Funston (Fun Town!) with the Andy and the dogs yesterday. Andy already had already had a full day, so we ended up leaving late in the afternoon. Having never been except in the morning, I was curious how the experience would change.

Well, it was foggy. Does that count?

I, surprising everyone but me, didn't take my camera along for any part other than the drive over. Managed a lot of lovely photos of the dogs in the truck, but that conveys not much.

The dogs listen to Kris, they don't listen much to me. They may react slightly to my voice, and their names, but, for the most part, all they hear is "BLAH! BLAH BLAH BLAH!"

Kris, however, is in Colorado this weekend, so Andy and I played zone defense with the dogs, one on two. On the hike around Ft. Funston, we went the opposite way the three of us normally go, several people commented, "Wow, have enough dogs?" My thoughts, "Only four? Nah!"

At one point, Annie decided to run ahead of us. Since we were walking in the opposite direction, the first part of the run was close to the highway. The first part of the walk - you know, the part where Annie has boundless energy, and wants to fo run run running. The highway seemed like just as good of a place as any direction.

Silly dog.

After yelling at her every time she wandered toward the highway, I'd run along in front of her to show her where I wanted her to run. She'd run along next to me, then pass me ("I'm the alpha dog! I need to be in front!"), running somewhat along the path, but not quite.

At one point, Annie ran ahead, towards the cliff. Rather than stopping at the edge, she ran up and over. Full sprint.

Images of the warning sign of the "Aroo?" dog falling off the cliff in my head, I started to run after her. Andy, being a bit more rational at the moment, called to me, "this way!" and starting running down the path which lead along the top of the sand cliffs and down to the beach. Full sprint I ran, trying to keep up with him, as he ran along and down.

Eventually, I rounded the corner of the cliff and sprinted back down the beach towards Annie, worrying about her, wondering how far she fell down the cliff. As I rounded one of the corner, I found her, munching happily on a dead seagull.

Stupid dog.

Someone needs to use the spell checker on his advertisements.

Or maybe start with the incantations of spells from the Gods of Grammar?