We slept in this morning. It never fails, when the bedroom is still dusky because of heavily overcast skies and it's raining buckets who wants to get up out of bed? And then we lingered forever over breakfast because Sunday breakfast gave us a perfect honeydew melon and bananas as sweet as the honeydew. While preparing our breakfast I cut up tiny pieces of French toast and sausages for Jackie and Jillie after they'd had their own morning meal and they just about turned cartwheels in anticipation.

Irving went out for a Toronto Star, mostly for The New York Times insert it carries on Sundays, because the two newspapers we subscribe to don't publish on Sunday and won't publish tomorrow, Thanksgiving Monday, either. We're print-news people primarily, anything we pick up in news through other media just tops things off.

He was busy today cleaning up his workshop. I don't even look in there. It isn't the most orderly workplace in the world by any means though his tools are hung up neatly, everything in its place. It's all the other stuff that surrounds his workbench; he rarely disposes of anything since you never know when it might come in handy. Once, when we were young, living in our first little bungalow, the state of the basement so upset me I hauled all manner of things out to the curb for trash collection.

I was so proud of myself, having cleaned up the mess. That was back in the day when laundry equipment, such as it was -- a wringer washing machine, and no dryer, but lots of lines to hang laundry through the winter months suspended taut from the ceiling -- would be located in the basement and it irked me every time I saw the mess there.

When he got home from work I boasted that we now had a tidy cellar and he was beyond dismayed.
Among other things I disposed of was a century-old carved gilt frame that he had meant at some future date, to house a painting. It took him quite a while to adjust to its loss. Someone had knocked at the front door, asked me if he could take the frame and I was delighted to tell him 'go right ahead!'.

Nothing much has changed in his habits. He is the most inventive, curious, capable person on Earth. There is nothing he won't try to do himself, and competently.  The fly in the ointment is that he also doesn't much care about cleaning up afterward, so things have a habit of piling up. He went after that pile today because he wants things tidy before he tackles the complex job of designing a stained glass insert for the door he's just made.

By the time we were prepared to get out to the ravine with Jackie and Jillie it was getting on in the afternoon. The rain had stopped and the forest was dripping, the trails muddy, the creek running high. And we were glad to be out. Again, day after day the changes in the forest landscape are so dramatic we're intensely aware of them; colours deepening, and new volunteers among the forest trees emerging constantly.

It was fairly quiet, not the type of atmosphere most people choose to enjoy a hike through the forest, but perfect for us. When we were about three-quarters through our trek, a large young yellow lab burst onto the scene. On his own, no one to be seen close by, but that isn't unusual. What was unusual was the intensity of the dog's interest in Jackie and Jillie. Corralling them constantly, pawing them aggressively, not because the dog was angry or nasty but because it was determined to have a playmate. 

Jackie and Jillie are no other dogs' playmates; they just don't take to playing with other dogs, just with one another and they kept trying to evade the monster, without success. Finally they pleaded with us to be picked up to escape the unwanted attentions. We kept trying to shoo the dog away but no luck. Finally we saw in the distance that someone was approaching and we expected that person to take immediate command, call off the dog and leave our poor frantic pups alone.

She called the dog and it failed to respond. A nice looking girl of about 16, holding a good sturdy retractable leash. She reached the dog and it kept circling around our two, nudging them, pawing them, and she couldn't grasp his collar. Finally, I picked Jackie up and Irving prepared to do the same with Jillie. The dog leaped at me and I stumbled backward trying to regain my footing, but kept stumbling off the trail into the trees. I dropped Jackie and felt myself falling backward, hitting a sapling square in the centre down my back, and continued falling until my head snapped back, the back of my head hitting a tree stump. I was grateful it wasn't a rock. 

I was a little stunned and a lot wet. But nothing was truly amiss. The girl rushed over to me, I told her to grab her dog, back after Jackie again. She kept trying, it kept evading her. Finally Irving grabbed the dog's collar, and it took quite an effort. The girl slipped its leash on, and tried to tighten it to haul her dog away, but wasn't able to. Irving lent a hand and barely managed to pull the dog back, away from Jackie. 

I wasn't able to get up from the position I was in unless I rolled over and got on my knees and it was just too sopping, so Irving hauled me straight up to my feet, then turned in angry exasperation to the girl and snapped at her to get going with her dog. He was anxious about my head, my back, but I felt fine. Finally, the girl hauled her dog away, and continued her walk, no doubt heading directly back home, wherever that is. She was clearly upset, possibly more than we were.

Jackie and Jillie were fine. I had picked Jackie up because I was concerned that he not come away with any injuries. We had noticed earlier today that he was missing a plug of hair on his back end. That some interaction yesterday with another unruly dog that its human took immediate action with to take it away from Jackie must have been responsible. Jackie hadn't yelped, given any indication he was hurt, but there was an absence of hair and a bare patch on his skin about the size of a dime. The hair had detached later, at home. I had seen him licking the area last night but thought nothing of it. Today he's fine.