“I have bad news,” I told my friend earlier this week, “news that sounds bad but is really good, and actual good news. Which do you want to hear first?”

“I’ll take the bad news first,” she said. “Let’s get it over with.”

So I told her about Jitterbug. I didn’t cry, but I did find myself saying “I’m not going to cry,” several times. After several searches through the house, including heavy furniture in rooms that haven’t been used in months, I’m convinced she managed to get under the fence. There’s a hole in the far corner of the fence, a hole I’ve plugged with large chunks of broken concrete.  The woods hosts many animals, dogs and cats and snakes and squirrels, and the dog likes to hold rather aggressive conversations with them.  She prefers that they don’t enter her territory, but she’s not above digging through to theirs.  Thus the rocks.

The wild thing, the gray, nearly tailless squatter, however, likes to push the rock through the bottom of the fence. She, who has been a climber since she was a wee thing, climbing the playpen in less than three minutes when I first brought her home, prefers to go under the fence when she returns from her adventures. She climbs to go wandering; she goes under to return.

I’m sure there’s a message there.

I didn’t think that Jitterbug could fit through the hole, but I noticed that, not only was the rocks missing, but that a bit of dirt had been dug out as well.

Plus, day five and no discernible smell in the house.  So, there’s that.

Continue reading Fabulous Friday: The Bad, the Bad but Really Good, and the Really Good Friday →