Me: "Okay."

"If there is a bench, you can sit and watch it."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I want to play."

"Well, I want to play, too."

"But I don't want it to get stealed." (Yeah, I'm sure he meant stolen.)

"Well, I want to play, too. I don't want to sit around watching your stuff while you play. That's not fair."

"Oh."

Long pause.

"I guess I don't want to take it."

My thought? "Damn straight."

"I don't go to Walmart."

Sam looks at me incredulously. "Why don't you go to Walmart?"

"Because Walmart contributes heavily to the destruction of the American manufacturing industry."

"Huh?"

"You know how Walmart always has 'the lowest prices'?"

He eyes me suspiciously.

"Yeah?"

"Well, they do that by forcing American manufacturers to provide them with lower prices that they "can pass along to the consumer," while still maintaining their own profits. The manufacturer is forced to cut costs to the point of profit loss for themselves, thereby then forcing them to look overseas for manufacturing, causing lost jobs and lower wages for Americans. WalMart also forces the manufacturers that stay with them to use non-standard accounting and inventory practices that they develop for their internal systems, causing the small manufacturer additional costs to comply with the behemoth's requests. And, they also fail to provide living wages, employee benefits or equal opportunity.

Oh, and the quality of merchandise is poor."

Long pause.

"I guess we'll have to go to the mall."

Die!

Die!

Die! Die! Die!

Die, evil doer!

Die!

Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!

Kris: That's an awful lot of death for someone so young.

Me: Yeah.

Okay, so, for the record, any woman that says she wants a child is clearly uninformed.

And any woman who claims to be informed and still wants a child is clearly insane.

Day two of Sam-a-rooni's visit has been progressing nominally okay. I did have to call Mom today, though, in order to get myself out of a jam with Sam that I had, well, in all honesty, gotten myself into in the first place.

This morning we made waffles for breakfast. When Sam woke up at 7:40 this morning (glory, hallelujah, he slept in past 6:30 am!), he leaned over to wake me up. How that kid slept through Bella's barking, Kris' tripping over the folding chairs in the hallway, my hushing the dogs, and my neighbors carousing outside his window, I'll never know.

We went to purchase buttermilk for the waffles at the Safeway.

Twice.

Turns out, Safeway's buttermilk is packaged in medium green packaging. The low-fat milk is also packaged in green, but a slightly lighter green. The Safeway employees have a habit of misplacing the low-fat milk with the buttermilk. Worse, they stack them on the buttermilk. So, when I find the buttermilk and reach for the one on top, I grab the mis-shelved low-fat milk. I've done this twice now, and it annoys me.

Time for a letter to Safeway and Lucerne.

Anyway, after going to Safeway twice, and finally stirring up the waffle batter and making waffles, we finally had breakfast.

While I was cleaning up after breakfast, I heard Sam ask, "What is she doing?"

Puzzled, I walked out to the living room from the kitchen to discover Annie humping Sam's leg.

Well, not really his leg, as Annie is almost as tall as Sam when she stands on her hind legs. I'd say more like, Annie was humping Sam's back.

Not a good sight.

After I knocked Annie off, and sent her to her crate, I had to explain to Sam the reason "Why was she doing that?"

Starting with the pack mentality (which I had explained earlier when Sam had asked why Annie and Bella were in the bed with Uncle Kris, and where did I sleep, and why were they in my bed (come to think of it, why are they in my bed?)), I explained pecking order and top-dog/bottom-dog and animal's desires to dominate each other. Then I explained that since Annie hadn't met him before, she wanted to make him the bottom dog by dominating him.

He seemed to understand, because later he made some comment about Annie being the bottom dog. He then commented, "I like Bella now."

Heh.

Kris and I disappear, separately mind you, not to be heard from, for one, sometimes two days at a time.

For Kris, the first disappearance happened in 2000, when he vanished for about 10 days straight. Couldn't find him anywhere.

Subsequent disappearances have been followed up with unusual withdrawal symptoms, funny smiles and animated gestures of wand waving and spell casting.

I'll see him again in two days.

When he's finished reading the latest Harry Potter.

Then I'll get to disappear.

But not before I finish up some projects. One in particular needs finishing up sooner than later (hi, Bharat!). My reward for finishing up that one will be reading about Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts.

How's that for motivation?