Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Rescued

December 10, 2004, was the first time I set foot in the state of Louisiana. K and I had spent a series of months dating in fits and starts, mostly with disasterous results, but had come to a place where we were going to have to either saddle up and ride or hang up our spurs. At just about the time we were coming to the place where we each get over ourselves and say, “O.k., I like you. Let’s call this dating, and see where it goes,” K left for Louisiana for a two-week time out.

She drove by herself, house-sat, worked, and held a workshop across those weeks. After we had spent nearly the entire car ride from Kansas to Louisiana on the phone together, we each independently had the idea that she shouldn’t have to drive home alone.

I flew down after work on a Friday evening.

On Sunday afternoon, the friends she was house-sitting for arrived home from their cruise. I was inspected, interrogated and inquisitioned. And amazingly, just as I was falling in love with K, I fell in love with these friends of hers, their wonderful home and family, their friends, and their “place,” being Southern Louisiana.

Two years ago yesterday, we had our routine Sunday morning phone call with these friends. We were admonished that a big storm was coming, and we were not to call. We would be called after the “all clear.” As the next day unfolded, we watched in horror as Katrina unleashed her fury against the Southern Louisiana coast. After it had subsided, we waited for the call.

On Tuesday, the levees breached and the rain continued. The Weather Channel had their correspondent reporting from Covington, a community only a stone’s throw from our friends. The order of the day was devastation and destruction. We waited for the call.

Before we finally got the call (there is some disagreement whether the call came on Wednesday or Thursday), I had violated the commandment of our Southern Belle and began calling, but of course the phone lines were all down, as was the electricity and the roads. When they called, they were able to report that they all were fine. Their house had sustained some significant damage and their property was a wasteland of trees and debris. All of the people and the animals who had gone inland to our friends’ magical place to seek refuge had survived and returned to their homes to survey the damage and begin putting the pieces back together.

When we went down a month later, the roads were mostly clear on the North Shore. Gas and groceries were still in short supply. Our friends still did not have electricity. It was several weeks after we left from this trip that they finally had their electricity restored.

So what do you do two years after a loving God puts his arms around you and the rescuees you have taken in to hold you safe through the storm? Well, if you are two amazing women in South Louisiana, you open your loving arms and rescue again.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

When the Cure is Worse than the Disease

Well, I have done it.

Mindful of my reputation for over-treating the sundry ills and mis-fortunes of the krewe, I have tried to exercise restraint with Emmett’s tail situation. When we brought Emmett home, he was so sick from a urinary tract infection, he had blood in his urine. His midriff was hot, inflamed and tender to the touch, yet he didn’t even raise an eyebrow when poked or prodded. He underwent two simultaneous series of antibiotics and by about the fifth day here his tail, which had been tucked under his belly since I first laid eyes on him, had relocated to what we thought was a better location, up and wagging.

We were thrilled. Obviously, so was he, as he began the process of wagging his tail so enthusiastically, he was beating it into hamburger. I would leave for work in the morning having fastidiously cleaned, treated and bandaged his tail, only to come home to find the bandage laying on the floor somewhere and to be greeted by wags that, if they were not actively bleeding when I arrived home, soon became that way.

And now, a break for a corporate endorsement: Zout is a laundresses’ best friend. I myself do not do laundry, or rather I do laundry inartfully. Thankfully, K attacks laundry with the same dogged commitment and zeal that I bring to trimming toenails, medicating, weed-whipping, hoeing in the garden, painting, canning, walking . . .

Witness the blood splatter on this pair of khaki pants. Note the state of dried-ness, indicating two fundamental reasons I am not in charge of the laundry: 1) I tend not to observe things on the back of pant legs in need of immediate attention; and, 2) I tend not to care so much if there are markings such as these on my clothing – I have taken the line from a PoiDog Pondering song that goes, “you should wear with pride the scars on your skin/they’re a map of the adventures and the places you’ve been” to its full, illogical conclusion: scars, stains, whatever.

Our Dane-diva and non-resident knower of all things Dane, Aunty Kathleen, had commended to me a plan, easily referenced at my second favorite place on the planet, the Internet, for restraining an enthusiastic tail to allow it time to heal.

http://www.dogstuff.info/tail_healing_method_arndt.html


K thought it was a joke. Aunty Kathleen assured me that it was not. Ordinarily, I would have moved quickly and decisively. But in this case, the cure involved both breaking out the aforementioned running tights for another bandaging situation, and then securing Emmett’s tail back underneath his body, the place we were so elated to see it leave a few short months ago.

After much commiserating, I downloaded the plan for tail securement this morning, obtained the necessary accessories, and put my own notion of Emmett’s happiness aside for the sake of his well-being.

And so Emmett’s tail-joy goes on sabbatical:

Sunday, August 19, 2007

We Can't Have Anything Nice

I am a Spongebob fanatic. I guess “fanatic” is a bit of an overstatement, since I don’t have antannae, satellite, cable, or any other means to capture the signal that would allow me to watch the actual television cartoon, and since I haven’t even seen the movie.

In a brilliant stroke of foreshadowing, my grandmother, Elsa, told me the story of how she came to collect miniature statues of mice the first time I ever visited her home in Hawa’ii. It seems that one of her children brought her a miniature mouse statue home once, and someone got it in their mind that she liked little statues of mice. So he or she (she either really couldn't remember or just didn't want to stigmatize the culprit) just kept giving them to her. And as these manias run in families, the misconception spread to others and the rest joined in on the gifting. Year after year, holiday after holiday, she was the beneficiary of some mistaken family myth about what she liked.

She, of course, did not tell the story thusly. She was very kind and loving and generous notwithstanding having received hundreds of statues of mice to dust through the course of her adulthood.

And of course, my Spongebob situation is not nearly as bleak or overwhelming as the decades-long accumulation of little mice. I like Spongebob. He is cerebral but goofy, willing to learn from his boneheaded mistakes and call others on theirs, generally good-natured and occasionally intense. Not that I can even begin to compare with the ceramic mouse collection, but I do have Spongebob underwear, t-shirts, slinkies, interchangeable dolls, notecubes (three of these, actually), address books, pool toys, towels, shower curtains, and the list goes on. . .

Having put all this thought into the why’s of my Spongebob affectation, you can imagine how horrified I was to come upon this in my living room this morning:


Until some time last week, I had a soft-sided Spongebob lunch pail. His body was the “pail” part, and he had these now disembodied and disemboweled plastic arms sticking off the side, and pants and legs stuck onto the bottom. I had contemplated using duct tape to perform cosmetic repairs and just have my Spongebob be the amputee Spongebob, but decided that others may not take it in the spirit it was intended.

The dogs choose the most random and unpredictable things to pick off of the high parts of the countertop and destroy. All I can say is that it’s a good thing I still have my “Charlie’s Angels” lunch pail or I would have been seriously ticked.

We just can’t have anything nice, now can we?!?!?

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Lessons from Grandmother Joey


Growing up, I had the benefit of a multiply “blended” family. The chief benefit of this arrangement for those of us with extraordinary ego strength which, thanks to my mother and many others, I posses, is the exposure to many magical people who you can embrace as “yours.”

One such person was my grandmother Joey (pronounced, a lá her second husband, “Joy”), the mother of the man who adopted me and therefore became both legally and truly my dad. My grandmother Joey was a magical, amazing, light, positive being. She was a student of spirituality and mysticism, and an aficionado of all people without any regard for status or condition. She once took in a wayward young man who had come to Sedona and seemed to need a quiet space for a time; as it turned out, this “nice young man” was a nice young man known popularly as Yanni. My grandmother Joey took tremendous delight in wine-and-cheese picnics, loved hiking the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon, prepared and ate the most horrifying macrobiotic foods, and believed in the existence of fairies, placing treats outside for them alongside the offerings left for quail, squirrels, cardinals and chipmunks.

One of my grandmother Joey’s special talents was taming the wild thing that was me as a talkative, rambunctious, obnoxious child. She had a mesmerizing way of rubbing my back that could stop me dead in my tracks, and hold me still and quiet for as long as the moment would last.

Whatever it was that she did in those magical moments, some of it must have stuck. Absent-mindedly, almost the same way she seemed to do it, I found myself stroking Azure this evening. As I tuned into the moment, I realized that the savage beast had been quieted and Azure stood motionless, my fingertips rubbing back and forth across her back in the same way my grandmother Joey had done for me all those years ago.

And then, just as it happened for me as a wild child, the trance was broken, and Azure was off again like a shot, reading Mercy the riot act, seeking the relinquishment of a much-desired cow hoof, attempting to jump in K’s lap as she sat on the toilet, and bouncing in and out of the rocking recliners in the living room.

My Gift from MisFit Farm

Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, opined that we are all but selfish creatures who, without a social contract, would live by the law of tooth and nail, motivated by self-interest. Social contracts are our agreement to concede the unencumbered freedom of a life without laws for the security afforded in communal living arrangements, where members trade rights and responsibilities.

Some days, I am inclined to believe in this absolutist, i.e. irrational, mean, survivalist description of true human nature. Some days, I struggle with the social contract and whether it really is adequate to hold the negatives at bay.

I recognize the over-simplification and tremendous injustice I serve to Mr. Hobbes, but on these days, I am searching, and it seems good enough to pick that particular philosophical precept as any other. I think any other political philosophy would serve me just as well, Hobbes’ being in some form or fashion a fundamental enough precept that others flow from it.

On these days, I go so far as to wonder if I have served the social contract in my own small world well, or whether I prove out Hobbes’ theory of absolutist human nature.

The truth of the matter is that, for all the pats on the back, all the accolades, all the attention that we receive for offering our place to others who don’t fit in elsewhere or who just need a place to belong, be safe, be happy, and be healed, I need them. This is probably not a tremendous revelation to anyone outside of me; it is, however, a truism.

I have bad days. I have days when the world just doesn’t seem to want to act right. I have days when I feel like I can’t do enough, can’t be good enough, can’t – for all the screaming and yelling and fit-throwing (metaphorical, of course) – make the world right, Just or fair.

Here at MisFit Farm, that all doesn’t matter. When I walk in the door, there are five, six or sometimes seven enthusiastic faces to greet me. There are hugs, and kisses, and tail wags so emphatic, they bleed. There are reminders that there are things I can fix, and things I cannot, but I am still loved regardless. I cannot get away with curling up in a little ball and wishing it all away, because there are wet noses that push into my dark spaces, and paws that pull my hands out from over my eyes, and trip-trapping hooves dancing back and forth on a bridge too sunshiny and too happy for any trolls to inhabit.

And even on days when I accomplish nothing or I rage in futility against the machine, the only score that is kept is whether enough pats were dispensed, enough kisses were distributed, enough time was spent in the sunshine, enough stars were counted, enough snuggles were shared, and enough love was absorbed, to get up and face the world again.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Azure vs. Marley

I recently shared an e-mail exchange with a wonderful woman and fellow bibliophile about the book Marley and Me. I read the book earlier this summer and I absolutely adored it – I laughed, I cried, I held my head in commiseration.

I am compelled to point out that I did start keeping the blog long before I knew about this book. Being a general recluse, I do not have a lot of exposure to popular media and associated cultural capital. Let’s just say that the latest recommendations from Oprah’s Book Club make it to our reading list only by accident or by some other circuitous route.

We were having this virtual conversation about the blog and about the book, when the issue was proposed that “The only unanswered question for me is why they kept the puppy through all of that -- so much damage.” Ironically enough, I myself had this question as I read the book.

And then I began to make a checklist of Azure’s transgressions, and once compiled, I had to laugh out loud. By the time Azure was brought into the fold of MisFit Farm, she had:

♥ Destroyed the bedroom of one of the Dane train people - completely threw the sheets, cover and pillows off of the bed.
♥ Ran across a Dane train person's coffee table.
♥ Broke through the glass of a french door.
♥ Terrorized her potential adoptive mother into handing over an entire box of treats.
♥ Attempted to express dominance over at least two other Danes and countless cats.
♥ Attacked the windshield wipers of at least three cars.
♥ Tore an empty fast food bag living on the floorboard of my car to shreds, including the empty cup.
♥ Ate mulitple water bottles, chew toys, books (almost an unforgivable) and bones.
♥ Spent the night in a humane society shelter as a place of refuge for a Dane train person's home.
♥ Annihilated two heavy-duty, colossal crate dog beds.
♥ Been medicated with acepromazine repeatedly.

In terms of destruction wrought in a concentrated period of time, I now maintain that Azure makes Marley look like Mr. Rogers.

Hug-O-War


A glimpse into this evening’s conversation:

We are sitting at the table, finishing dinner. We are discussing the possibility of enticing our amazing friends from Minnesota to meet us at some halfway point for a “Great Dane escape” weekend and perusing potential locations on the Internet.

Clearly bored with this conversation, and sensing that she will be excluded from the festivities, Azure begins bumping my arm with a slobbery object. Checking the object for “appropriate play” status, I observe that it is the mostly intact remnants of a previous shoe sacrifice. I grab a hold of a spot which gives me adequate grip, give a little jerk, and the game commences. Azure and I are intently staring each other down, an integral part of the game.

K: She never plays that way with me.

A: Hmmm. . . I wonder why that is. . .

K: I don’t play that way with her.

A: Well, that probably explains it.

Azure is tugging as I continue to hold on. She tries a “jerk lose” move. I cling to my end of the shoe. I gently pull towards me, dragging her along the floor. She jerks and I let go as she careens backwards.

Before I can awake the computer from sleep mode, Azure is back at my arm, nudging me with the slobbery shoe. The game recommences.

K: What kind of floors do you think will withstand this?

A: Concrete.

K: No seriously.

A: I am serious. We can paint the concrete floors at the new house. We can do parquet or hardwood patterns, tile, creek bottoms, name it.

K: (pretending to pout) But I don’t want concrete floors in the new house!

A: Hmmmm. . .

Azure is trying to exert authority by subtly pulling backwards. I am holding my ground, but the effort is dislodging the tablecloth and pulling my beer and the computer precariously close to the table’s edge. Because she loves me, K. moves my beer to safer ground.

This time, I try to the “jerk lose” move. Azure holds on but thinking she may have the upper hand, vigorously tugs backwards at which point I let go and she careens backwards.

Azure gains her footing and returns to nudge my arm with the slobbery shoe again.

K: I guess she must want to play.

A: Hmmm. . . I guess so. . .

K: Why does she want to play the tug game with you and not me?

A: Must be saving herself for your snuggles later.

K: Yeah, I’m a lover, not a fighter.

A: Pretty much, yeah.

Monday, August 13, 2007

MisFit Farms True Foundation

While I can’t compete with the stories told by A, I thought I would give a shot at describing the wonderful world we live in here at MisFit Farms due in large part to A. A is the eldest of three, this is apparent in her ability to mother and care for everyone here. A is our foundation, chef extraordinaire, maintenance person, gardener, yard person, and the chief nurse/doctor; a neurotic, obsessive compulsive care giver, not a scrape is missed with antibiotic ointment or as in Emmett’s case, a happy tail not bandaged before turning in for the night. Medicine is dispensed with vengeance in order keep allergies at bay, sore joints moving, and thunderstorms from causing a number of maladies. Without A we would be lost.

A has little quirks such as:

A can only write blogs on A’s laptop (my laptop has all the keys, I guess this throws A’s creative thoughts off.)

As much as A dislikes birds or some would categorize A’s response to birds as “terrified of birds”, A is determined to raise chickens so we can be safe knowing the eggs we consume will not be affected with any weird feed disease.

A tries to convince me and others that Azure is psychotic and a pain (okay, I admit Azure is not for the faint of heart human companion). There is no way A will convince me she isn’t in love with Azure as much as I am. (I have caught Azure receiving kisses from A on many occasions even though A denies it.)

A also has special talents:

A is a photo bug, no one is safe from her incessant picture taking. Flash bulbs will burst at the most innocent of feats. (Mercy is still disgruntled from the one snapped of her napping with the record 12 inch drool hanging from her bottom lip while she slept sitting up in a chair). Mercy is after all a model, she is the resident Diva, Mercy is the calendar girl for December 2007 in the 2007/2008 Great Dane of the Ozarks Rescue Calendar.

A will try anything to repair a scrape, cut, gouge, or bleeding tail. As Skeeter discovered with the maxi pad bandage held in place with a section of 1980’s running pants. (She is still recovering from that humiliation.)

What I find most interesting is that it seems the dogs must have secret meetings. For example, While Emmett was not a member of the MisFit Farm menagerie when Skeeter was outfitted in what our neighbor Steve referred to as a “speedo” Emmett has been suspicious of any bag we bring home from the store. A was sent the directions of how to make a garter belt style tail holder for Emmett’s tail. The purpose is to hold his tail under his belly until it can heal. Emmett obviously overheard us talk about the contraption and even though he was not here for the whole maxi pad running pant outfit, seems concerned about what might be in store for him. I am still holding on to the band-aid and tail wrap treatment that does not involve a swivel hook and a clasp hook. We will see who wins out.

One of my favorite talents of A’s is the teaching techniques used for newcomers to MisFit Farms on the use of the doggy door. I have always heard a good teacher uses verbal, visual, and hands on approaches to make sure the student gets the message in the best way suited for their individual learning needs. A covers all bases as documented in this photo.


Living here at MisFit Farms is the greatest blessing I could have ever received. I am surrounded with love, laughter, and the wonderful antics that A comes up with in an attempt to keep us all safe and healthy. A’s renditions of what goes on here at the Farm only scrap the surface of what we experience every day. We recently met a new friend while at a conference in San Francisco, A was retelling some of the high points here at MisFit Farms, her comment was “you have to be making this stuff up, no one could have all this happen” The truth is each and every day is an adventure and another page in the Adventure of MisFit Farms. I have never laughed or loved so much in all my life. I am truly blessed to be a part of this incredible Krewe with A. A has turned my life upside down and I am enjoying every second of it!

Just Another Service



Living with these wonderful crazy dogs with disabilities has given us a new appreciation for many things.

Every time I try to pivot in the kitchen in an effort to execute some amazing culinary move and find that my foot is pinned under Skeeter, instead of getting frustrated, I remind myself of the short time we have together, and that some day I will miss not tripping and falling over her as I move across the room.

As we crawl around with a Clorox wipe-up and try to erase the blood splatter from Emmett’s tail off the appliances, newly discovered Pepto-Bismol shrapnel from the walls, or crusty drool from anywhere and everywhere, I think of all the messes and laughter we will share in the next weeks and months, and hope for years.

Mercy, in particular, has given us a sense of urgency and appreciation. When we adopted her, we had not realized that her prognosis was so glum. At our last visit, our Vet announced that she has outlived his prognosis by a good six months, and appears to be going strong. Aside from being the one who made me fall irretrievably in love with Danes, Mercy is the one who our Vet crouched in front of and proclaimed, “I can tell now, you are going to break my heart.” And she will. All of ours. And to be clear, I would do it a million times over for her.

In the meantime, she muddles on, seemingly nonplussed by her repetitive sit-and-spins, spills and shenanigans. When she decides it is time to get from point A to point B, there is nothing that is going to stop her, not these gangly, unworkable back legs, not solid objects in her pathway, and definitely not embankments. Through the amazing work of her original foster family, Mercy was essentially taught to walk, because she does not have the neurology to make it happen otherwise. Since coming here, she has developed some other adaptations, including the moves we refer to as the “sit-and-spin,” the “fishtail,” and the “bunny hop.”

When she comes careening down the path, her ability to control and most importantly, to stop, is nonexistent. Thankfully, the adage that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks turns out to be patently false, as we have been able to teach Coffee and Skeeter the commands for “run!” “watch out!” and “get out of the way!” since Mercy’s arrival.

So really it can be said that Mercy has made us much more appreciative of our neurological functioning in general. More specifically, however, Mercy has taught us of one other terrible consequence of not being able to feel or really to control the parts of our bodies below our torso.

Mercy is a world-class, unannounced, uninhibited flatulence machine. We are beyond being offended. We are beyond thinking that it is the food, or nerves, or barometric pressure. She can’t feel her hind end, and so anything goes, and since she is holding nothing back, it goes quite loudly.

I wish I could quit giggling each time she does it, but it always serves as a reminder of another thing we will miss when she is gone. I have thought about that line from the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where they say that each time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. I wonder if there is a similar deal for Mercy’s eruptions. I would like to think that each time Mercy farts, a Dane finds a forever family. Somehow I doubt there is that robust an adoption market.

Random, flatulence-induced giggles, just another service we provide.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Azure Gone Wild (the video)

Here at MisFit Farm, we are big fans of two comedic staples: irony and sarcasm.

After my previous post and the various and sundry others demonizing our poor, sweet Azure, I took a step away from hyperbole to realistically assess her behavior. We know that there are at least four other folks out there who can appreciate the antics of this little dervish, and we would not want to mis-represent her or them.

It occurred to me that the best instrument available to express what a day in the life of Azure is like was sitting at my fingertips. So this afternoon, we picked up our trusty digital camcorder and set about to document what life is like living with Azure the crazy, out-of-control, psycho puppy.

Buckle up kids, and keep the antacid tablets handy. What you are about to see will shock and amaze you.

It did us.

The Care and Feeding of Azure



The house sitter was not entrusted with the care and feeding of Azure.

Azure is a special case. Since she is Deaf and we do not have all of the Farm fenced off, she joins in on our walks and outings on a leash. Although she has earned the privilege of overnight furloughs from her crate, when we leave the house for more than an hour, she is crated. She goes into the crate quite happily, with the sign-command for “home” – which we prefer to the sign-command for “jail,” although it may be a more appropriate location for our little delinquent. Sometimes, she expresses her consternation with being crated by giving the door a good lunge. So far, the door always wins. The combination of restricted freedoms and foreign language for communication, along with an overall high-strung-ness results in her time away from us being spent at a kennel.

When I retrieved Azure from the kennel, I had Coffee-dog with me. The heat here has been unrelenting, and even with the car running, I did not want to leave him outside waiting for me as I completed paperwork, wrote out checks and waited for the kennel people to gather Azure and her belongings. I snapped a leash on Coffee, just for looks, and in we went. There were other people in the waiting area as I was finishing up the paperwork and payment portion of our visit, so I asked if I could go to the back to collect Azure. Giving me a knowing look, the kennel tech agreed.

I could see through the window in the door as the kennel tech was jerked around the corner and began hurtling down the hall towards us, a white bag with Azure’s puzzle ball, Charlie Bear treats, and the only other remaining chew we sent along, a cow hoof, flailing around in the air. They burst through the door, and when Azure saw me, she started jumping and twisting and jerking the young woman around like a rag doll. With her hair flying in all directions, the woman looked me in the eye and promptly let go of Azure’s leash.

I dropped Coffee’s needless leash, and placed my hands all over Azure, working to calm her, get her attention, and focus her so she would look at me and begin the process of taking commands. By the time I was able to render some sanity to the area, the leashes were a tangled mess, but Azure was following her “sit” command, and I was knelt on the floor holding her in what may look to uninformed third parties like a head-lock, rubbing her head and chest. Now, my hair was flying in all directions and I was lathered into a nice sweat. Glad to have his one true love back, Coffee was sitting with his hip pressed to hers, wagging his tail maniacally with his tongue lolling out from the effort of trying to stay above the fray.

The kennel tech continued to look stunned. I apologized and explained that she gets a little hyper. She responded with a derisive laugh which sounded a lot like the air being squeezed out of a chew-toy, “When I brought her out and she saw you, that was actually the calmest she has been all week. I had no idea she was capable of this.”

Oh yeah, she is capable of plenty. In between naps, that is.












Thursday, August 09, 2007

Neurotic

Does it seem excessive to feel compelled to impose a three-page limit for the kritter instructions for the house/pet sitter who will be left in charge as K and I take a weeklong sojourn for education and world exposure purposes?

The page limit was not so much a spoken restriction as something that I must have held in my subconscious as I was re-formatting the instructions for clarity, precision, comprehensiveness and readability. My internal editor was saying, “Oh, if you eliminate that carriage return, it won’t take up as much space.” I thought to myself, "Hmmm. . . I wonder what the margins are set at?" And then it dawned on me just exactly what I was doing – trying NOT to look as neurotic about the care and feeding of the krewe as I AM.

After we met with the house-sitter last week and walked her through the “routine,” I stood and held my breath, expecting she would run screaming from the trailer. She giggled and asked if we would mind if she used the washer and dryer, which of course we don’t. She could open a laundry business here at thetrailer for all we care, just so long as the krewe are well-attended.

Here is another random and unnecessary confession: until K moved into the trailer, I didn’t own a washer or a dryer. I would leave my dirty clothes in a basket on a chair inside the door, and a laundry fairy would come to the house, pick up the basket, and return it a few days later with clean, folded clothes inside. I know good and well I was old enough to do my own laundry. Then again, I was also probably old enough that I should have known Scooby Doo was a Great Dane.

The final page count: four.

Single spaced.

In my defense, the carriage returns were re-inserted, and margins were left at the standard one inch.