I saw a skunk walking down the sidewalk a few weeks ago. Cute! But then the dog decided to lunge at him so we got the hell out of there before it got uncute.

At least I feel a lot better about my neighbor and a worker in the restaurant next door seeing a "giant rat" in the alley. An opossum is a much likelier (and less worrying) explanation than an oversized sewer rat big enough to ward off the cat population.

She was transferred from the children's hospital to a psychiatric facility for a few days. Not sure how effective that will be, but there's not really any choice in the matter.

Well, counseling is to be expected in this situation, and I'm hoping it's helpful.

So glad she's physically fine.

Brenda, a guy at work had that situation a couple of weeks ago and it didn't go so well for him.

Random item of the evening... checking email I discovered that someone recently faved a story I posted four years ago. I didn't even remember what I wrote so I read it again and had to laugh when I discovered that it ends with the new Clinton slogan, "Stronger Together". Do I get some kind of credit for that?

Continuing to keep your family in my thoughts, Gud. I hope that the psychiatric facility is helpful for all of you to go forward.

Mixed morning. On the good side I am in Otter Lake where the trees are showing off their most brilliant colors. My nephew brought over a couple space heaters which are doing a lovely job of keeping us toasty and I have a pot of veggie chili on the stovetop. On the discouraging side my mom is stuck in rehab for a while longer because she still has pneumonia, which is not so much a surprise, but it has been really persistent over the last year and I don't know what the options are to get rid of it since what they have been doing clearly isn't doing the job.

Stronger Together! I am going to believe Hillary read that story and went for it. You can't convince me otherwise.

It's 64 degrees outside! It'll be in the mid-80s eventually, but still!

Random item of the evening... checking email I discovered that someone recently faved a story I posted four years ago. I didn't even remember what I wrote so I read it again and had to laugh when I discovered that it ends with the new Clinton slogan, "Stronger Together". Do I get some kind of credit for that?

Absolutely!

Your poor mom, Laura. She's up there, right?

I am having an unprecedented experience in my professional life. I have to put a bunch of stuff into an online form, with strict word counts. The online form has exactly the same word counts as we do in Word! I swear to god, this has never happened before. I was basically planning on spending my day trying to find ten words that would be OK to cut from each section.

That's spooky Jesse.

I mean, it's great, but yes, spooky!

Anyway, my day is now going to be much more pleasant than I thought it would be, and I might be able to finagle my way into a work trip to Mexico!

Hopefully, Em will be back by Sunday. For the time being I'm working hard on some of the other fallout. The house was messy with EMTs and Police responded to the 911 call, so we'll have an inspection coming up. So whenever I'm not going to appointments or visiting Em, I'm cleaning. That hasn't amounted to much time yet, but this weekend that can be almost my sole activity (aside from visiting Em of course). My wife needs to finish a paper Monday so if I'm lucky she won't help much. Sometimes I feel like when my wife and I work on cleaning together we're able to get half as much done as I would by myself. She's kind of ADHD while I have the Autistic superpower of being super focused on the task.