New Car

Well, the top vote was for black and guess what?

Black it is.

Tan interior.

Happy camper.

I don't have it yet, but soon, soon. Then all will be well. I imagine I'll get it right before the farmer calls me to transport my 1/3 of a cow she is in the process of butchering. Nothing takes away new car smell like a 1/3 of a cow in the trunk.

Are you talking to me?

The ice is out at the lake, hurrah! Time to go get the dock in before the black flies come out and attack. I get terrible, awful, bang-my-head-on-the-wall-I'm-so-itchy reaction from black fly bites. I don't even feel them nibbling at the time, but within hours my face swells up in lumps and bumps and stays that way for days. I come home looking like Quasimodo.

Even with the special camouflage mosquito netting hat that makes me look like a deranged commando beekeeper, those pesky flies have a way of wiggling their way underneath and into my eyes and ears and hair. And I can't take photos as long as they're out because they swarm the lens. Ugh. It's the price we pay for paradise. Luckily they only last a few weeks. Then they're replaced with mosquitoes. And deer flies. Mosquitoes don't bother me and where we are on the lake, they're few and far between. And they feed the bats, and I like bats. But deer flies, oh they are nasty. Though they take vicious bites, they are slow enough to smack easily and flick into the lake to feed the fish, or I sometimes catch on the back of my baseball cap if I put double-sided stickie tape across it. It's what we do. We're Canadian. Bugs are part of our culture.

And if Buddy is close by, he'll eat them, snapping them out of the air.

It's the real reason I have a dog.