Stacy Horn

I’m going insane. I feel like I pill Buddy all day long. Poor him, poor me. I also noticed that he eats more if I hang out with him while he eats. Weird, right? So now, twice a day I sit with him while he eats. I’m going nuts making sure I’m doing everything I can for him. I’ve been reading that probiotics help and so I started him on a probiotic, but I don’t know if I’ve bought the “best” one so I’ve been googling all morning, reading reviews. I still don’t know. I’m a crazy lady. But the one I’ve started with is called Ark Naturals Gentle Digest.

Here is the healthy (evil) one. I try to make sure he gets attention too. He’s very good about not eating the Friskies that I feed Buddy. I say “no” and he listens mostly. I have to repeat it every minute or so, but it’s not a battle.

And this is just one block down from one of the pictures I posted earlier. No cute dog walked into my shot, alas. What good are these pictures without a dog in them, I ask you??

Weirdly, to the left of these empty store fronts was another store front that was empty for ages. It was a liquor store and now, many years later, it’s a liquor store again. To me it looks like the same one.

I feel like I’ve been blogging all day. I just updated my blog for The Restless Sleep, and then my blog for Unbelievable. Maybe doing a separate blog for each book was a mistake. Or maybe the mistake is making a big production of each blog post. If I made less of a deal about it, it wouldn’t be so much work.

Here is a picture of Buddy, aka ChemoCat, and of course the screen up on my computer is the WordPress screen for adding a new post.

Please note the daffodils. I love daffodils and was very happy to see they’re now on sale.

Okay, I have to go out and get food and stuff.

A while back I joined an organization called the Daughters of the Union Veterans of the Civil War in order to get some information about my grandmother and great grandmother who were members.

Since then I regularly get these newletters which announce whenever a “real daughter” dies. A real daughter is someone whose father fought in the Civil War.

It blows my mind that there are people alive whose fathers fought in the Civil War.

I quickly realized that the reason this is possible is because they count children born after the war and men can keep having children for a long time. For instance, the two that were announced in the most recent newsletter were born in 1909 and 1919.

Still, the fact that there are people alive who talked to Civil War vets about the war blows my mind. That is if the vets were willing to talk about it. But these women could have heard stories about those battles directly from the horse’s mouth. (What an expression.) I should talk to some of them. Pretty soon all these relatively direct sources will be gone. I wonder what stories they might have? I’m going to contact the organization and see.

That Eva Merwin was quite the looker, wasn’t she? According to the Daughters of the Union Veterans of the Civil War website, Eva and the other founders pictured above were just teenagers when they decided to form this organization (1885). I wish their website had more pictures. If I had skills in that area I would help. They also need a moderator to answer questions and participate in the discussions. An interesting organization though. There’s something odd about keeping it up. Odd is probably not the right word. But it was a civil war, a family fight. It’s the kind of thing where you almost want to say, okay, we fought, it was bad, but lets put it behind us.

First, going out of business is very sad. Even if you’re ready and prepared—you put a lot into starting and growing a business, often everything you have. It’s sad if it fails immediately and it’s sad when it comes to an end later.

Second, you wouldn’t believe all the empty store fronts in my immediate neighborhood. I don’t understand how it’s better for the landlords to charge rents no one can afford and then have the buildings sit empty, often for years. Writing it off is better?

I always hope when a new business finally does rent one of these shops it will be something I can afford or is something useful (a deli or a diner) or something just plain fun (a shop that sells musical instruments). I’m almost always disappointed.

That store below that I indicate was recently something else? As far as I can tell they sell one style glass candle holder, nothing else. Just the one thing in different colors. I must be wrong. I’ll look closer tomorrow.

These places have been empty for at least a decade, I believe.