I’m so excited that Bob is getting an unexpected blast of late spring surf. He took off again after a brief visit home. He worked his ass off while he was here for a few days helping me get some of the bigger, heavier tasks done. Although Chami has been acting a bit puny the last week or so we decided it would be best for her to go with Bob because she just loves going to the ocean on surf trips. She’s been his constant surfing companion for more than 12 years and though she spends most of her time sleeping in the van nowadays, she still runs on the beach, digs endless pits in the sand, and waits patiently for Bob to come in from the water.

 

I’ve only had one day by myself this week as Loren and Sheri came down this afternoon. The three of us had planned a camping/birding/hiking trip to the Warner Valley and Hart Mt. for the weekend but with this crazy heat wave crashing down on us I suggested we table those plans and stay at the ranch with the cool river at our beck and call. They both agreed that basing at the ranch and going on some outings from here would be the best. I’m glad to be staying put and to have a distraction. I’ve spent far too much of this lovely week inside at my desk working on TC business with very little time for writing, photography, or just hanging out. Heck, you would think I had a regular, full-time job. I did manage a few sunbathing/reading sessions on the dock. I am so loving this novel, Shantaram. I’m pretty sure it is going to make it into my Top 10 favorite books of all time. My butt is sunburned so I guess it can’t be all work and no play.

 

Sheri and I took a nice long walk, though it was awfully hot. Loren stayed at the cabin to read the NY Times.  Around 4 PM Loren was kind of complaining about the mosquitoes and I was thinking she was being a bit of a sissy since they weren’t bothering me and they haven’t really been bad this last week. But with the super heated day I concurred that they might get worse as the setting sun created an environment more to their liking so we dug out an old mosquito gazebo, since Bob has yet to put up my big, netted outdoor office. I agreed to the plan of setting it up because it usually only takes about 10 minutes. After an hour of struggling I realized Bob is always the team leader when we’ve erected it in the past, and I’m the grunt. This time we had three, strong-minded pretty capable women happy to take the team leader role. Ironically I backed off right away because figuring out which poles went where seemed like a puzzle and I’m not good at that sort of thing. A half hour into it we were all pretty frustrated and might have given up, though no one voiced the possibility. However, the insects were really starting to flourish and we decided it was rather comical that we couldn’t figure the dang thing out. Eventually, I solved the puzzle and we got it up. I believe it ended up taking an hour but we did spend a lot of time laughing. There was room for Loren’s double-thick foam bed (usually used for our fly fishing camp), and a few lawn chairs. Thank goodness…the mosquitoes were ferocious so we spent the rest of the day, until deep, cool dark, hanging out in the mosquito gazebo eating dinner and talking and reading.

 

I’d been in quite a manic mood most of the afternoon and early evening, somewhat intending to party. But just after dinner Bob called to tell me Chami had gone missing. She’s never done anything like this before and we were both pretty frantic. It was a buzz kill so I was content to spend a quiet evening with the girls. Bob said she walked off sometime during the middle of the night on Thursday. He had spent the entire day walking and driving around looking for her; then he was certain she would come back to his campsite by dinner but she didn’t. Surely she’ll come back to him while he sleeps tonight.