My mother-in-law said, "We're going to have a yard sale." Emphasis on the 'we'. I don't mind so much except that Saturday is not my day off and that means I have to switch days around. I work at home but I work for a transcription service. They pay me. I have a schedule. I get a regular paycheck. But people get it into their heads that because I work at home, I can take them to pick up their cars from the garage and ferry their kids to school or feed them tea and toast at my house when they're sick, or run packages to the post office. Through the years I've learned that saying no isn't enough. No one hears it. So now I say, "Sure I'll pick up little Johnnie and take him to the soccer field. And afterward I'll come by YOUR office and use the copy machine." This usually works.

But back to the yard sale. I'm not good at it. I'm not good at choosing what to put out on the tables or what price to put on them. I'm not even good at going to other people's yard sales. I never find anything worth carting home that isn't going straight to the deep, dark corner of one of our sheds where it will be home to spiders and apt to ripen with rust. I can't bargain very well, either. Someone offers me $1 for a set of crystal goblets that's worth $100, and I pretty much nod and pack 'em up because I figure they aren't doing anyone any good in bubble wrap...someone ought to enjoy them, and it's $1 I didn't have.

Two years ago when my husband and I were first married, we had enough Christmas items to fill a small shop. Me because I have a tendency to decorate like an elf on a drunk and my husband because he had once collected things for a bed and breakfast he had his heart set on opening. We had a huge yard sale at his sister's house on a busy thoroughfare and between us, his sister and his mom, we drew the crowds in. We sold dozens of strings of lights and artificial trees and glass ornaments, stuffed Santas, neon reindeer, garlands, wreaths, and snow globes. We had boxes of wooden figurines like angels and elves and polar bears. I kept a small box of kiddie ornaments and let each child who got dragged along in the wake of their mom's buying frenzy to choose one item for free. We overheard the secretary at a school for homeless kids make a call on her cell phone to someone, asking how much she could spend of the Christmas budget, and my husband and I made her a deal. We would give her a tree made of white stuffed polar bears and a box of glass ornaments, a collection of nutcrackers, and about 60 feet of hot pink tinsel garland, and she would promise to have the kids send homemade Christmas cards to the sailors where my son was stationed. She made that promise and she kept it, too.

This yard sale I've got a nice white couch, some glassware and dinnerware, books, videos, and the usual generic stuff you're likely to see in most driveways. Nothing to make you want to get up at 6AM and load the truck, drive to your destination, unload the truck, and then sit all day making smalltalk with the natives while they paw through your stuff that all of the sudden you think you've made a mistake putting up for sale because some day that brass camel incense burner could look stunning in the den or your mother might find out you sold the lime green flip-flops with the purple sequins she sent you for your birthday that you wouldn't even wear to water the lawn.

So tomorrow I've got to call my office and switch my schedule around, scrounge through the house for enough items to sell to make it all worthwhile, decide on prices, and pack it all up. I think I'd rather take little Johnnie to his soccer practice.

There's an old tradition that when a beekeeper dies someone must go tell the bees or they will fly away. When my father died, he didn't have bees but he had a long list of people he emailed. Being housebound, he played on his computer for hours and hours every day. He even set up his own web site for welders as he was at one time a master welder himself. On this site he gave out free advice and made a lot of contacts. He also found shoestring relatives in the Midwest, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas. My mother didn't want to see this computer every day after his death so I paid it off and had it packed up and sent to my house and it became my project to contact his Internet friends and tell them of his death. My mother had no idea just how many friends he'd made in cyberspace. I notified each one and thanked them for being part of his life and keeping him company during a time when he was in a lot of pain and home alone while my mother was out working. I couldn't believe the responses I received. Phenomenal, is all I can say to describe it. There was even a young man on the island of Cyprus who wrote to tell me how my father had encouraged him to learn the newest welding techniques and because he went back to school and did just that, he had just gotten a promotion and finally felt good enough about himself to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Attached to this was an invitation to the wedding! Because of this experience with my father's computer friends, I feel a little better about the world, about humanity in general. Sometimes watching the news and hearing people around you talk about the war and racial issues and the environment, you develop a sense of dread like Chicken Little...the sky is falling, the sky is falling! But then something like this happens, people taking time out of their day to tell me how much they enjoyed my father's emails and his web site and how much they'll miss him when they didn't have to bother. It makes me remember the goodness that is out there, that there are still people who care about an old man they don't really even know, who care enough to comment on how special he was to them. Occasionally I still get hits on his email address because I haven't the heart to take it off the computer. I have my own computer which I use for work and for play so I rarely switch over to my father's machine, but when I do there's always something there for him or me regarding him. There were no bees to tell, but there were plenty of friends and it seems that the charm works for people too...tell them, and they won't fly away. They'll send you haiku poems and silly anecdotes and all their best wishes and sympathy. I thank them all.

I can't wait for the first week in November when I'm going to San Diego to meet my son's ship, the USS Nimitz. I haven't seen him in six months. The longest we've ever gone without seeing each other is ten months, but this six months at sea was particularly a difficult stretch of time for me. I guess that's because for the first time in his 23 years I didn't know exactly where he was. I'd get a phone call from a port in Hong Kong or Malaysia or Bahrain, places where I imagined evil things happened to unsuspecting Americans. I'd wonder if he'd meet some perfect woman in Australia and move to Perth, settle down to farm kangaroos and wrestle crocodiles (crikey!) and my future grandchildren would grow up knowing me only via email. I pictured him getting into a taxi in Dubai and being driven off down an alley where he was sold to nomads and forced into wandering the desert taking care of the camel herd. But I just got a call and the ship has left Australia and is headed for home port--San Diego!

So I'm breathing easier and my imagination has turned its fancy to fresh oysters between my teeth and sand between my toes. Growing up around the San Francisco Bay Area, now that I live in the desert, I long for the ocean. It revives me. It calms me. I need to smell the sea and swallow the salt and sift through the tide pools. I can't wait to search for beach glass heaved up by the sea and fill my pockets with bits of shell.

I haven't seen my son in as long as I haven't seen the Pacific, so I consider myself doubly blessed.

I'm having something of a wingding for Thanksgiving with out-of-state relatives flying and driving in (mine) and my mother-in-law and my son and future daughter-in-law and her parents. So I'm attempting to obedience train my doggie and he is attempting to be trained but sometimes he's totally taken by outside forces like kids playing in a schoolyard and the occasional loose dog that found a hole in the fence or a gate left open.

He's a rescue. No history available. Well, no pertinent history. I got him from the Animal Welfare League which is a no-kill shelter. He came to them from the "Humane Society" where he was scheduled to be sent to the other side. Somewhere along the line he sustained a broken leg. When I got him from the shelter I noticed just the tiniest hint of a limp and questioned the caretaker about it and she said, "Oh, yeah, he's got a pin in his leg but he's fine now and it shouldn't bother him at all." She gave me the x-rays, which I took to the vet, who put the x-rays up and, omigod, there's no pin at all. There is, in fact, a metal cage over his entire leg. It's huge and looks like something out of comic book entitled "The Bionic Dog." And my vet said she can't believe they spent that much money on this doggie because she estimated that if I'd had the procedure done privately it'd run somewhere in the area of $3000.00, and normally procedures that costly aren't done. The animal is simply "put down."

I got him last January, a 10-month-old shepherd/Husky mix, only he isn't. The vet says he's Lab/shepherd, which I could have told her as he's got webbing between his toes and is the first one in the water when we go out to the river. And also he just loves to jump up at the trees and scatter the birds out of the branches. When he swims, all you see is his big ears pointing straight up and his tail above the water. Even when we humans are lolling on the beach and having a rest, he's out there swimming like he owns the water rights.

But he's about 65-70 pounds, all muscle, and he's got this thing about being the first one out the door or back in the door to the point where if you aren't centered and braced, you're going down, down, down, as he bursts through the doorway. Now, I took him to obedience training, a 7-week course, and he's a quick study. He sits and lays down on command. He does a default sit before his dinner is set down before him. He stays on command. That is, he does so at home or on the leash. And even when we go out to the river and I let him run loose when we're the only people out there, he comes when called. But if the front gate is open and he happens to charge the door and escapes the house and the yard, he's gone, gone, gone. I can call him until my lungs collapse and my vocal cords strip and the neighbors are looking out their windows wondering if they should call the cops. This has happened twice and I managed to retrieve him both times so we have not actually had to test the ID tags and microchip embedded between his shoulders. He was not in the least ashamed of himself. In fact, his tail was wagging all the way back home in the car. (I have to chase him down in the car because I don't have four legs and he doesn't seem to have any restriction of energy.) Plus he did the happy dance once we got back in the house as if I'd planned his escape myself and wasn't I proud of his tour of the neighborhood. After which he promptly plopped down on the hardwood floor, hyperventilating, and slept for hours.

So, in the advent of a house full of guests who do not know that dogs are also escape artists, I've been door training him this last week. He does really well most of the time, in fact I'd say 9 out of 10 times when I go to the door he will walk over and sit and wait to be given permission to go on outside. So that is going really well. And I found a tennis court (suggestion of another blogger) which is totally fenced in where I can let him off leash and then call him to me and reward him with liver treats and my enthusiastic affection. Still, he just wants to be free. Half the time he comes to me because he can't resist the pull of liver and a big hug and praise from me. The other half it's as if he's gone selectively deaf and is only interested in what smells so good over there in that corner or next to that fence post and to heck with the liver. And me.

I just adore this dog. He's got these incredible gold eyes and a beautiful blond coat with strawberry tips and velvety ears that stand up like a shepherd's and are always aware of the slightest noise or movement in the house, especially if it has something to do with noise in the kitchen like the refrigerator door or a bag of chips. And he does have manners. He doesn't get on the furniture and he doesn't steal food off the table or leave his business in a corner.

When my mom visited last May she said, "Honey, I don't really think he's a house dog." This because he does seem to take up a good part of the floor when he has a snooze and he's quite happy to lean against you while you're at the stove and he loves to body slam you when the spirit overcomes him and when you least expect it. But every morning while I was in my office working, that entire week she was visiting, she and Justice went out on the front porch and he ran around (gate closed) and then settled down next to her so she could brush him. And every night after dinner he would wait to see where she was going to sit in the living room and then he'd go lay his head on her feet and sigh and pretty much look like he was in heaven.

Right now it's raining and I can see out the window that my husband has taken him outside because he (the dog) loves to run in the rain. And this is a dog that my husband said, "All right, you can have a dog but I'm not going to have anything to do with it." This is a dog he sneaks bits of food to even though I have a rule that dogs eat dog food and the occasional doggie treat but no people food. This is a dog he plays tug-of-war with until something breaks or I can't work over the noise and have to spoil their fun by making them both go to bed.

Hopefully by Thanksgiving this will be a dog who won't bound out of doorways, knocking the air out of whoever is unfortunate enough to have a hand on the knob. But even if he isn't, he's still the best dog a girl could have.

I'm slogging through airline sites trying to find tickets from Somewhere In Southern California back home to Phoenix because next month I have to drive my son's truck down to Point Mugu when his ship comes in after six months plying the seas. Then my husband and I will fly back to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport which is a mess right now due to excessive construction and inadequate signage. Airline sites are pretty much the same. Prices are pretty much the same. But it's the actual flight that bothers me. I like tires on the ground and the steering wheel in my hand and the radio on my station. I like being able to shoot through the fast-food window for a soda (a whole cup with lots of ice and not the tiny plastic thing the stewardess gives you with two clumps of ice, accompanied by a minuscule bag of peanuts or salty pretzels that dry your mucous membranes up and make you want to give 30 lashes to the stewardess who never brings that second round of soda you asked for.) I like to stop for bathroom breaks that don't involve trying to walk down aisles meant for tiny Chinese women and sitting on toilets with my knees against the door and hoping that the plane doesn't go down while my pants are around my ankles. I like to have a conversation with my husband that isn't interrupted by the guy who grabbed the window seat and then closed the shutter and makes all kinds of farmyard animal noises because he wants to nap and I'm discussing with my husband which shade of green I'm going to paint the kitchen and how much the stainless steel backsplash I want is going to cost him. I like to know that my luggage is safe in the trunk and not on its way to Paris where even the lowliest porter will turn his nose up at its obviously K-Mart origins and it will eventually be thrown into some bin marked Do Not Resuscitate. I want to rent a car to drive home in, but my husband (who has flown all over the world on very obscure airlines in countries not even on the map in planes with wires hanging down and missing propellers) says why drive for seven hours when we can fly the same distance in one and a half? Why? Well, dear, just read the above.