Sheila's LiveJournal

I've mentioned before that since I retired from full-time college teaching I've been volunteering three mornings a week at a local hospice. Once morning a week, I take the dogs in too. I love doing this work; the house is a warm, friendly place, full of laughter and music and good talk and two resident cats. I learn a lot in the time I spend there. But this morning, I suddenly realized something that I think is important: Hospice is a place where we get to tell all our stories once again for the last time.

Everybody has a story to tell, but over the course of a lifetime we've probably worn out our listeners – family, close friends – from the repetition.Yet the stories remain important and powerful for us, and we yearn to tell them one more time. Or else there are family tensions that prevent the stories from being received – or received without blame and recrimination. Sometimes, a lonely soul will not have any one who ever wanted to hear the stories, or else everyone who matters has passed on already. What a burden it is to the soul to have life stories that have to go untold!

But in hospice there are loving people taking care of us and listening to us. And above all, there are volunteers whose sole job is to do whatever we need, and if that means listen to stories, they'll listen willingly. One of my favorite hospice patients was a ninety year-old gentleman who frequently said, “Oh, you wouldn't want to hear my boring stories!” But when he was assured I did, he gave me hours of wonderful yarns of growing up on a poor Illinois farm, living in a rooming house with other unmarried young men in Chicago and shyly courting the young ladies at social dances in the Roaring Twenties, running errands for the local Mafia, riding the rails like a hobo out to California to work in the (now non-existent) beanfields of Orange County, serving in the Navy during World War II. He seemed to have a need to put his whole life in perspective one last time, and I was happy to give him the permission, as it were, to do that.

I've heard stories about being a female impersonator in night clubs, a gay prostitute in Hollywood, the first Black, female mathematics teacher in her school district, a collector of semi-precious gems. I've seen photos of beloved pets and heard their stories. I've heard family anecdotes and family traditions, funny and sad. I've heard family ghost stories and strange experiences. Every day, it's something different.

And I see a great peace settle over people when they've had the chance to tell these stories they've been keeping inside their hearts, just one more time, or maybe for the first time ever.

If humans are language making animals, as Lewis Thomas calls us, then I would add that we are story-telling animals before anything else. It's a great privilege for me to share some of the vast stream of human experience through these stories.

The greys and I went down to a DoubleTree Hotel in San Diego this weekend, so they could play “anatomy subjects” for veterinarians who're learning how to do acupuncture on animals. Every year, the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society runs four five-day sessions, each a month apart for up to a hundred vets in various locations around the country, and this year was San Diego's turn again. The vets have course work all day, with practice sessions for three hours each afternoon. That's where the greys come in. The call goes out to the local greyhound rescue organizations for dogs the vets can practice on. At regular intervals, the teachers select a dog and demonstrate actual acupuncture to the assembled students.

Jack and Annie and I have done this before (and before them, my previous grey, Rosie, did her turn). The vets need a large number of dogs able to stand on an examining table for twenty minutes at a time while five or six vets feel and prod them to discover pressure points. There are usually eight to ten “stations” working at a time, each with a teacher guiding the students. Greys are very good for this because they're so patient and they're skinny enough that the students find it easy to identify parts of the anatomy. After a couple of sessions, at most, the dogs change out and get to rest in an X-pen enclosure with other greys, drink water, eat snacks, and get told what good dogs they are.

Annie ended up doing four twenty minute sessions (with breaks between each two, then a longer pause before starting again), but Jack only managed one before exhibiting signs of stress. He's been rather fragile since his illness last year, and I watch him closely to make sure he doesn't overdo it. In fact, I wasn't sure until the moment that he'd be ready to help at all. But he loves people so much, he'd probably have hopped right back up on the table if I'd asked him. In return for all this, the organization makes a hefty donation to greyhound rescue.

It's nice to think that Jack and Annie helped some vets learn how to help other animals in pain. It's wonderful that grey anatomy makes it easy for beginners to learn on. But as I asked one young vet, “How on earth are you going to translate this to a big Saint Bernard or an overweight Lab?” “Darned if I know!” she said.

My middle daughter, who lives out in the country, keeps goats. As far as I can tell, they're just short-tempered pets, eating and doing nothing productive. I keep trying to find respectable occupations for them so they can at least earn their feed.

I read an article about using goats to keep the brush trimmed in forest fire areas and I thought that might be a grand way to occupy these guys. I have some property up in the San Jacinto Mountains, about an hour away from where my daughter lives, and I'm always having to do fire abatement up there if I don't want the next wildfire to destroy my property. Since my cabin is on sloping ground at 6000 feet elevation, raking the brush gets tiresome rather quickly. But it ought to be a snap for goats. The article said they'd used goats successfully in places such as the hillsides of Laguna Beach, and I'd seen goats all over the place in Rwanda, eating everything in sight, tended by little children. So that ought to work, don't you think? Pile them all into the horse trailer and away we go. Alas, my daughter points out that unless someone is prepared to play Little Goatherd (as in Heidi), the herd is likely to wander off and clear other people's brush that is tastier than mine. Not to mention that the local coyotes would probably consider the presence of the goats as an invitation to dine.

So I was pondering this as I browsed my local specialty market, looking for something delectable to take my mind off insoluble problems. I always check out the cheese section, and I usually come home with a nice piece of Stilton or Maytag or Gorgonzola for my lunch. But on this particular day, they seemed to have everything in stock but blue (or green) cheeses. I spotted something new, a rather creamy-looking cheese with a dark border and an ashy stripe through the middle. I'll try anything once if it has the label “cheese” on it, so I purchased a small piece. (I was a little leery of the ashy stripe.)

Oh joy! The poetically named “Humboldt Fog” tastes like a cross between Camembert and English Stilton and is wonderful with olives – of which this particular market has a large variety for sale. And – guess what – it's made from goats' milk. You can imagine the speed with which I looked up the web site for the goat farm that produced it, and how fast I sent the link to my daughter. If her billy and the nannies won't protect my cabin, at least they could supply me with cheese. Alas again. My daughter says that in order for the nannies to produce milk, they have to be or have been pregnant in the recent past. But her billy has had a little date with a snipper. So no cheese.

I'd wondered why there were no cute little kids (other than my grandbabies) frolicking in the horse pasture this spring.

The Greyhound Rescue list sent another of a long line of e-notes about greyhounds needing to be rescued in a hurry from one track or another. This time it's a track in Florida closing for the season. That means about two hundred dogs desperately need to find homes – on top of all the others who come off tracks around the country. And that amounts to about twenty to thirty thousand “retiring” greyhounds a year, I've been told. Of course, there's almost no way any rescue group could keep up with such a flood of canine need, nor would there be homes enough to go around when you consider all the other dogs of every breed who need a family and a home.

But as it happens, not all twenty-thirty thousand greyhounds will be up for adoption. Some owners refuse to deal with the adopting agencies, preferring to dispose of their “livestock” as they see fit. And if you have no idea what that might mean, you can google up an Animal Planet special from a couple of years ago about the ear-less greys found in the desert. (Greys are tattooed at birth; one ear for date of birth, the other for registration number that can be tracked.) On the whole, the greyhound racing industry doesn't present a pretty picture.

Annie and Jack are two of the lucky ones who made it home. But for Jack, the way led through a one-year stint as a canine blood donor first, and though they were kind people who handled him at the blood donor facility, it wasn't the same as having his own soft doggie bed and lots of squeaky toys and long walks with a doting mom.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, ever since the little filly had to be put down after coming in second at the Derby. Do you remember Barbero and the struggle to save him last year? I once complained about the way dogs were treated in the racing industry and my oldest granddaughter, a horse lover since she could walk, asked me why I thought the horse racing industry was any better. I guess she was right. Humans have a lot to answer for about the way we treat animals. Any time gambling enters into the mix, the results are sad.

Luckily for me, the dogs on the most recent list are too far away for me to consider adopting, and some kind souls will come forward to at least foster them until they find permanent homes. So I gave my two an extra cuddle tonight and an extra treat , and I'll keep my fingers crossed for all the rest of the greys whose racing days aren't over yet.


*”Track trash” is what an official of the American Kennel Club called racing greys, deciding that any pup bred from one of them and an AKC greyhound wouldn't qualify for registration. (Never mind the fact that racing greys have yards-long pedigrees of their own!)

I was paranoid last night that I'd oversleep this morning so I set an alarm clock to wake me and made sure the automatic coffee maker would be on the job an hour earlier. Normally, I wake between 6.30 and 7 am, when I hear the sounds of two greyhounds politely stretching and yawning because it's time to get up. They never bark or intrude on my sleep, but once a mother always a mother, I'm programmed by nature to hear the tiniest sound of my “child” in distress – sometimes before it actually occurs. They are usually tolerant enough to allow me to fetch the paper and read it as I drink my coffee before I get up and take them out. But on Sundays, I can't sleep in or read the paper. I need to pick up a lady from the hospice by 9.30 to go to church. (People at the end of their lives, I've found, don't sleep late. They don't want to waste time – a lesson to lazy me.)

So I got up before the dogs this time, which both puzzled and pleased them. I like to see what the weather's going to be like before I'm ready to shower and dress, so I often carry my coffee out of the bedroom into the living room where I stare out the big sliding doors leading to the balcony. My fourth floor condo unit faces due east, and often in winter I'm in time to see the sun rise over the shoulder of Saddleback Mountain down in Orange County. This morning I faced a thick wall of grey fog that had slithered inland overnight. There's something quite mystical about fog that hides the mundane world from our eyes and suggests other realities might be possible. Fog (smog, in London when I was growing up, but still magical) is probably one of the factors that sorts children out from those who are going to grow up to be bricklayers to those who want to design the palace of Ozymandias. I wouldn't want to live somewhere if fog, or at least mist, wasn't available occasionally to rescue my imagination from the ordeals of daily living.

I finished my coffee, leashed the dogs and set out. At ground level, I could see several blocks ahead, the fog bank being several feet off the ground. The cool air energizes us, and we walk for about two miles before returning home. I love this time of day, before the residents of the houses we pass are awake. But their dogs are, barking warning to my dogs not to trespass on their lawns, even if I'm ready to scoop up the evidence in my trusty plastic bag. How do they know a dog is passing by when they're inside? Since dogs don't seem to bark at humans, only other dogs, I've come to the conclusion that good advice to burglars – if I'm ever desperate enough to write a burglary manual – would be:  Leave your pooch at home when you set out with nefarious purposes. Greyhounds, of course, never bother to reply to this vocal harassment.

There's a hierarchy among dog owners and their dogs that we meet on these walks. The greys are condescending to other dogs their size, putting up with the inevitable routines of sniffing – unless they're pitbulls, at which time I avoid the issue and cross the road. They don't like little dogs, chihuahuas and mini whatsits, usually turning to me with expressions that seem to say, “The rabbits we used to chase at the track never yapped at us!” But if we chance to meet another of the neighborhood greyhounds – Oh joy! Annie is desperately in love with a grey named Armstrong; she won't pass his house until she's absolutely certain he's not there and won't come out to greet her. Sometimes this'll take a couple of minutes to persuade her to move on. They know their own breed and prefer their company; whether this comes from the days at the track or not, I couldn't say.

By the time we got back home this morning, the fog was lifting and the sun came poking through. The greys decided to skip breakfast – not unusual behavior for them – and go take a nap. Oh – and I was in time to pick up the lady and get to church before the service started.

On Saturday mornings, I take my two greyhounds down to the hospice where I volunteer to play therapy dogs. They're very good at it, in spite of not having gone through all the training that  “official" therapy dog are supposed to go through. (I looked into it, but it was an expensive proposition to follow the guidelines, and my boss, the administrator at the hospice invited me to just bring mine down one day – so I did. All he required was that I file proof of license and all applicable shots.)

The patients love them! Greyhounds are a good breed for this kind of work because they're calm, they don't jump on people, they *love* to be petted, and they don't bark. Plus they don't shed. They will go straight up to someone – who usually turns out to be very needy at the moment – and get in close to be hugged. The only people I've seen them actually kiss – i.e a quick lick on the neck – have been people who really wanted it; somehow the dogs knew.

One day, we were in the long hallway and at the other end was a Mexican gentleman who I knew loves dogs, so we were heading in his direction. He saw them and spoke to them in Spanish, calling them things like “Mi preciosa!” Their ears suddenly stood at attention and they pulled me down the hall to him. He continued to speak in Spanish for several minutes and their attention never wavered. The only explanation I can give is that they were born, raised and raced on a track in Tucson, Arizona, and I have a suspicion the kennel workers were Mexicans. They hadn't heard Spanish in several years! (They're used to it now, so when he speaks to them they aren't as moved as they were the first time.)

Another day, we had just arrived when a nurse wheeled a gentleman out. He was failing fast and not talking much any more. Again, they knew and pulled me over to him so he could hug them. The poor man burst into tears and told the nurse to go to his room to fetch something. It turned out to be a wooden box with a photo of a dog on the lid, his own precious dog's ashes, the only possession he'd brought to the hospice when he was admitted. Several people (including me) were in tears at that! The end of the story is that he never spoke or got out of bed again and died peacefully a couple of days later.

I never know what's going to happen once we walk through that door. It's amazing what animals can sense, isn't it? They really are great therapists.

Do you believe in ghosts? I saw a lot of little ones tonight, going around begging for candy. But I got to thinking about the phenomenon we call ghosts. Where I come from – England -- everybody has a haunted house story, and it's no big deal. I've often thought about all the pseudoscientific explanations for the why and how of ghosts and apparitions, but I'm not really convinced. I guess you could say I'm an agnostic when it comes to ghosts.

Yet I must admit that I have seen ghosts of pet animals who have passed. The first one was a big yellow dog we named Buddy, a probably three year-old St Bernard/Labrador mix, a stray my daughter brought home to me, starving and exhausted. He was a sweetheart, and in the manner of rescued dogs, he was very grateful for his home. Then, one December about three years after I took him in, he began to develop seizures and was very sick. I took him to the vet where he was hospitalized. There they recommended an MRI when the traveling machine would come to their clinic in a couple of days, and I agreed. The following day, after teaching, I went by the clinic just to see him. I knew when I saw him that his chances of making it through the sedation they'd have to use to scan his brain were rather poor. I sat with him for forty-five minutes, stroking him and talking to him about what a good dog he'd been. And I gave him leave to go if he needed to.

Then I went home and put him out of mind. It was almost Christmas, so I had packages to wrap. I put some carols on and started to work in the kitchen. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him in the kitchen – a big yellow dog. (Note: There is nothing yellow or even light brown in my kitchen.) Of course when I looked full on, he wasn't there. But at that moment the phone rang. The vet was calling to say Buddy had just had another seizure, a very bad one, and they had been giving him external heart massage, but did I want them to do open heart surgery on him? Shocked, I said no; I couldn't put him through that. Then the vet told me in a kind voice, “Well, I had to ask you that, but to tell the truth, Buddy has already gone.” Of course he had! He'd stopped by to say goodbye.

The second story is briefer. My sixteen year-old cat Billy, a black and white tuxedo cat, had finally died a couple of months earlier. One of my daughters and her boy friend were visiting me, and we were standing in the doorway of my condo (they were outside and I was still in) while I looked for the door key so we could go out to eat. All of a sudden, a black flash dashed between us and out the door. Billy, I knew it. My daughter and I exchanged glances – she knew too. But the interesting thing is, the boyfriend who had neither known the cat nor believed in ghosts, exclaimed “What the heck was that!”

I have no explanation for either of those stories. Perhaps Hamlet's words to Horatio have it right, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

Golden Gryphon Press introduced my collection of lingster stories at the NASFIC in St Louis, Missouri, at the beginning of the month. It was very exciting – and also a bit tiring! – to sit with them in the Dealers' Room and sign the boxes of pre-orders as well as the copies sold right there. Of course it's worth it, and I have to admit I loved handling my first hardback. GG did a fantastic job; the paper they used by itself would make the book a handsome addition to anybody's library. Now I have to hope the stories live up to the beauty of this edition in pleasing the reader!

NASFIC was enjoyable, the usual traveling party that cons become for writers and fans, but I, like most participants I spoke with, was poorly scheduled. On Thursday I had seven events (I'd asked for no more than three per day), and four of them were back to back with no time for lunch or bathroom trips. They also had me down for three panels on Sunday after I'd left to return home. I've since had emails from fans about their disappointment when they showed up for the panels and I didn't; I hate to do that to people, but again I had no choice. The con had decided to make changes to the program at the convention not before – and of course, the program was printed up by then. The best panel was a big eight-panelists affair on the topic “Is There a Place for God in Science Fiction.?” Gene Wolfe was on that one, and I moderated. We had opinions that ran the gamut from “Of course!” to “No way!” (from an announced atheist). There was also a productive panel on aliens and communication, so I was satisfied to have taken part in significant discussions on two of my favorite subjects. (“Significant discussion” to me means I wrote notes on what was said – it wasn't all things I already knew or had thought about.)

Before the con actually got going, Elizabeth Moon and I braved the heat and the humidity to visit Cahokia, the largest Native American site in North America.. I'd heard about the mounds, but I had no idea they were the site of such a vast metropolis. The museum does a fine job of presenting the culture and history of the site, and there's an interesting movie you shouldn't miss if you go. What always intrigues me when I visit ancient places all across the world is the repetition of sacred symbols and practices one finds. Our distant ancestors carried more than themselves on their migrations out of Africa; they seem to have carried ideas about the transcendent, and ways to express them. In my own fiction, I often wonder whether we'll find correspondences with other cultures across the galaxy, especially spiritual ones. I don't believe we're alone in the universe, and I don't think we'll turn out to be the only ones who've speculated long and hard about a creator.

Now that I'm home, it's back to work. I've started on a new lingster novel, this one set in the very far future when the center of the Guild is no longer on Earth. I won't say any more than that for fear of jinxing my writing. I had a long period of not writing much and losing confidence in what I did write, so I'm going to keep this one to myself until it's fully hatched. But I will say that this lingster story is going to involve the roots of language and a search for God – but then, don't they all?

[And a postscript:]
My greyhound is doing better; the specialists have discontinued the meds, all except prednisone which we're tapering down. But we aren't out of the woods yet. Yesterday, the vet phoned me to say Jack's exit blood test showed his white cell count was low, so we need to monitor it for a couple of weeks. It could be a side-effect of the extreme antibiotics he was taking, but then again it might be a sign that the bug hasn't completely given up. The specialists determined it was a tick-borne disease, but which one still eludes them. It's none of the usual suspects, nor is it a couple of the exotics. Keep your fingers crossed for Jack, please.

Life with a sick dog seems to have gotten away from me lately. Jack has been sick since the end of May and we still haven't identified the cause. It's most likely a tick-borne disease, but not any of the most obvious ones: lyme, rocky mountain spotted, and so on. We have a daily regimen of pills that take time to crush, add to food, persuade reluctant dog to ingest, discourage eager other dog from sampling, and this we do twice a day. On top of that, he is supposed to be eating two cans per day of super-duper high protein food bought at great expense from the vet – in addition to his regular food. He is so skinny! Greyhounds are naturally the poster children for anorexia , but Jack went down to a walking anatomy lesson where you could count every rib and see the sharp angles of his pelvis and shoulder blades.
                                                                                               
For a while, I had to feed him through a feeding tube because he had no appetite and the lymph glands in his neck were swollen so badly it hurt him to swallow. At least it was easy to get the meds in that way.  He was taking prednisone as well as heavy duty antibiotics to keep the inflammation down. Any effort to decrease the dose of pred made his temperature shoot up and the lymphs swell again. But he progressed beyond that to eating by himself and the specialist actually discussed taking the tube out. He decided to wait a little longer till Jack had put some of the lost weight back on. Jack had other ideas. One evening he cut the tube in half with his teeth, necessitating a quick trip to the emergency hospital. “You'd better take the rest of it out,” I told the specialist, “before he does.” But the vet hesitated – just in case we might need it later. Well, last week, Jack decided “later” had come as far as he was concerned. He not only pulled the whole thing out, he proceeded to chew it up to make sure the vet didn't put it back. Another night trip to the emergency hospital. (Can you hear the cash register ringing in the background here?)
                                                                                               
This time he had an over night stay, x-rays, barium feeds, and another biopsy of the lymphs. The latest samples go to North Carolina State University veterinary school where one of the foremost experts in tick-borne diseases works. (Previous samples went to places in Colorado and Arizona.) This time, the experts have apparently conferred by phone (guess who will be picking up the long-distance tabs?) and think there's a chance it's a rare disease, hardly ever seen on the west coast. In veterinary matters, “rare” translates into “expensive, new-fangled antibiotics which may or may not work.” Jack's primary vet did some research and called me to say that coyotes might be the vector for transmission of this disease. We certainly do visit coyote country fairly regularly, and I've even seen coyotes right here in Long Beach, in the flood channels along the interstates. So it's entirely possible that's what's making him so sick.
                                                                                             
I've given up tracking how much this is costing me. Any time you take an animal to the vet, you know it's going to cost at least as much as one of your own visits to the doctor. And any time your pet visits a facility where “specialists” are listed, you might as well just close your eyes and hand over your credit card. Yes, I have pet insurance (VPI, for those of you who know), but I doubt it will pay back anywhere near what I've spent so far. And to think that an official of the AKC once called ex-racing greyhounds “track trash” and warned that any breeding between them and the kind the AKC sanctions would disqualify the offspring from registration. Jack is one gold-plated piece of trash, is all I can say!

I haven't managed to get very much of anything done lately, let alone writing, because one of my greyhounds, Jack, fell ill. It started with an "accident" sometime in the wee hours of Monday night, followed by a minor bout of diarrhea the next day, nothing spectacular. Then he stopped eating. The next day, the lymph glands in his neck were enlarged, so off we went to see the vet. Initial blood tests and fluid aspirated from the swollen lymphs were inconclusive. The vet put him on an all-purpose antibiotic, and I tried feeding him chicken broth from a squeeze bottle. Saturday he stopped drinking the broth and plain water and ran a temperature of 105 F. So this time it was off to the Critical Care Veterinary Hospital.

Dozens of tests, and literally thousands of dollars, later, we're still not sure what it is. Prime suspect is a tick-borne disease, although we haven't been in tick-infested country in months and I use Frontline on both dogs. We're still waiting for the results of a tissue biopsy which was sent off to a lab in Colorado. If you have an emergency that happens over a three-day weekend, you're just out of luck. After four days, they got him stabilized and allowed him to come home, but he has a feeding tube in his stomach because he's still not eating enough by himself to keep a very small mouse alive, and he has a big cocktail of drugs to take every day. Greyhounds are skinny dogs to start with, so by now Jack looks like a survivor from a Nazi internment camp. I've spent a lot of time on the phone talking to my vet and to the specialists, and also online reading up on tick diseases and their treatment. Which, of course, it may not turn out to be.

So we're playing Animal Hospital here, and I'm apparently preparing for my second career in pet nursing. (Well, I retired from my first career and I certainly can't be allowed to sit around on my hands all day!)

And to add to the general mess, the other grey, Annie, is now acting jealous of the attention Jack's getting. When he was in the hospital, she moped around the house. They let me bring her with me for visits, and she was happy to sniff him and know he was all right. But now that he's home it's another story. She steals the morsels of food I put out to tempt him, and sneaks into his bed the minute he leaves it and has to be chased off.

My greys are rescues, both from a track in Tucson, Arizona, and Jack also put in a year as a canine blood-donor before I adopted him. They work as therapy dogs, visiting patients in a local hospice once a week (they're very good at it as, like all greyhounds, they're very calm and love to be petted). When I took Annie in all by herself last week, people who themselves are terminal with horrible diseases like cancer and AIDS still took the time to express their sadness over Jack.

I don't know if there's a lesson to be learned in all of this, or even if there needs to be one at all, but I know that when we take a pet into our homes we become responsible for their well-being in ways we could never have imagined. A dog is not a human child, obviously, but cherishing the one doesn't mean we can ignore the needs of the other. But it would be nice if my blood pressure would go down and my anxieties lessen to the point that I could finish a story I'm writing! After all, I'm going to need the money to pay the vet bills.

Murphy has been very active around my place lately. I've run into one problem after another trying to get the first two-thirds of BIRDS up and running on my website. Sigh. Still trying!

Meanwhile, this is Gay Pride weekend in Long Beach, with the parade tomorrow. Members of my Episcopal church will march in the parade and so will I. I've been volunteering at a local hospice which has mostly AIDS patients, so I feel strongly about showing some support. Actually, the church whose parish I live in (just around the corner from my home) left the Episcopal Church over the issue of ordaining a gay bishop, so I've gone back to the one downtown where I used to go when the kids were little. (In fact, my youngest daughter was christened there. And ironically, my oldest granddaughter was christened in the one that left.) 

I considered taking my two greyhounds along because they'd enjoy it; they love people and regularly visit the hospice. But the prospect of having to clean up after their "accidents" -- and hoping marchers don't step in it before I'm done -- seemed like too much to handle, so they're staying home this time.  Just gotta hope my feet don't give out before the parade ends!