Smear brought Madison over last night. Madison's her four-year-old niece, and I'd never met her before. Turns out she's devastatingly cute. She's dark, like Smear and, I think, her mother. She likes dogs and cats but is perfectly willing to watch them without going and picking them up or something. And she wholeheartedly supports Sarah in the plan to buy one of the kittens.

I'm reading Elizabeth Peters' mysteries right now. They're very good: style, humour, and romance. I can ignore a little suspense, with all that going for 'em. She does insert a little irritating feminism now and then, but I can live with it, because she's hilarious. She does eccentric older females wonderfully. Most of the one-offs star nice young heroines, but she has three series going: Jacqueline Kirby, a middle-aged ex-librarian from Coldwater College in Nebraska (Peters is very cruel about us); Vicky Bliss, a statuesque young art historian in Munich (with a brother-filled Midwestern farm background: gotta wonder where Peters grew up--or not); and Amelia Peabody, a (I think) middle-aged Egyptologist about whom I don't know much because I haven't read nay of those yet.

We've got half the North Pasture fenced, enough so we don't need to herd, but those ridiculous sheep still come and stand wistfully at the gate around seven p.m. You'd think they liked being herded. Doug says it's 'cause they're masochists. I probably could do a little disorganized herding on my own; I can handle the sheep on my own, it's only when the goats were added that the boys joined in. Actually I had the wethers out last night while the boys were busy. I would have added the big 'uns if they'd come, but they would have taken too much persuasion and the goats were lurking. I refuse to herd goats alone, sheep or no sheep.

Lark is growing apace, and we may almost have the flea problem under control. Gonna have to change my sheets today. She's testing boundaries lately, in the form of the road. Sigh. It was nice when we didn't have to watch her every second. I still can't believe how cute she is.

And Mom's making us write four-page science papers. Doug hasn't chosen a subject yet, but, in a spur-of-the-moment decision made in the library stacks, I'm writing about coyotes. I'm probably going to die, but I won't know of what until I get started.