Once More With Feeling

Today's supposedly the day that we really, finally, actually go to the farm. It's been one thing after another for about two months, now, but this is it. Poor Porque Choppe; she's going to have to co-exist with Leroy who torments her to a fury. It will be good for her; she's much too fussy and prissy and catered to. Both dogs have at least one flea at all times. I declare; the south; it's a vast insect conspiracy. I quite resemble a monkey mother, sitting several times/day with Porque Choppe on my lap toiling through her little short hair looking for fleas. The Front Line does no good at all and the other anti-flea precaution I bought makes Porque shed all her hair and look like a bald chihuahua, so I don't bother. I just play monkey. I sort of hope that once we get up north, this outrage will cease. When I was a kid we never had house dogs, but our outdoors dogs almost never got fleas. This I attribute just generally to the virtuousness of the good old north where bugs get frozen in the winter and therefore fail to run amuck as they do here in the south. The vet here in Norfolk told Lydia that if she wore white socks when she took Leroy for a walk, she'd come home with fleas visible on her ankles EVERY TIME SHE WENT OUT. Just awful. So anyway today's the day. We're going north. Chased by fleas, mosquitoes, ants, spiders....

I have a bad feeling that when we get back my flowers will all be dead. In this heat I've had to water them every day. Without that assistance, they'll likely kaboom. Oh, well. There's a price tag for everything. Run away from the heat and bugs and go north, but lose the flowers.