So, Sugar Cookie has this kind of ball she really likes. It’s those super-chewy rubber Chuck-it balls. They come in two varieties — floaty and non-floaty. They also cost like eighteen dollars each, which makes losing one of them a minor fiscal tragedy. And she has this particular game she likes to play with them. She perches herself on a hill above the river, drops the ball at the top, and chases it as it bounces crazily down. She considers it a bonus if the ball lands in the river because then she can have a splashdown, which to her is a gay old time. Anyway. Today she was playing this game with one of the non-floaty balls on the banks of the Clackamas River, and one thing led to another, and the ball bounced out too far and sank to the bottom. Are you with me so far?

Now, the Clackamas River is an exceptionally clear river, and it has a nice smooth sandy-gravelly bottom, so it was easy to see where the ball was. It didn’t look like it was too far out. And I just did NOT want to lose another eighteen dollar ball. Which led me to the bad decision that kicked off the Cascading Fail of Suck … “I’ll just wade in and get it!”

I carefully remove my coat and my fleece vest — wouldn’t want those getting wet! — and my boots and socks. I roll up my jeans (which should demonstrate my ridiculous and ill-founded level of optimism) and proceed to wade into the Clackamas River in early March. It is cold. Motherf–ing cold, to be brutally precise. Meltoff from Mt. Hood, you see. It’s also running along at a pretty good clip. But hey, I’m just wading out a few feet, right?

I’ve got the ball in my sights. I reach down with the Chuck-it to try to dislodge it from the river bed. I nudge it, but I can’t quite get it. I take a step forward to get a little closer, and suddenly I’m in the Clackamas up to my neck. Lovely! You see, I’d forgotten all about the part where the Clackamas River is shallow for about two feet before there’s a dropoff into the Marianas Trench.

And once I’m in the river up to my neck, I realize, “Gee. There’s rather a bit of current out here. Getting swept away by the raging Clackamas River to retrieve a dog ball wasn’t on my agenda for today.”

So that was that for the ball. I climbed out of the river, feeling like the Prize Moron of the World, and started gathering up my nice dry things. All the things I’d so carefully taken the time to make sure stayed dry. All the fabric items which, had they gotten wet, it wouldn’t have been a tragedy, necessarily, but it would have meant additional discomfort to the already uncomfortable situation.

Now, you think you know where I’m going with this. You’re thinking, “Oh, the dog sat on her clothes and got them all wet” or something like that. Well, HAH! I fooled you. That’s not it at all. What really happened is that after all that care to keep my stupid fleece vest dry, I realized that I’d waded into the Clackamas River WITH MY CELL PHONE IN MY BACK POCKET.

Oy vey.

I pulled it out and made some desperate attempts at drying it off, but when you see water sloshing around behind the screen, you know you’ve got troubles. Big troubles.

So, to sum up. I not only lost my eighteen dollar ball (which actually cost about $3, which makes my attempts to save it all the more pathetic), I destroyed my Blackberry, almost caught hypothermia (well, OK, probably not, thanks to my Walrus-like physique) and almost drowned (well, OK, probably not because I’m a good swimmer and I was within four feet of the shore, but I could easily have ended up a half-mile down the river, had to walk back barefoot along the rocky bank, stepped on a rusty fishing hook and died of tetanus.)

But at least the dog had a good time.

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It’s not much to look at most of the year, but for about two weeks in the spring, it’s magnficent; fragrant, beautiful, everything a tree should be. More important than just the appearance of the tree, to me, is its symbology. No matter what’s going on in my life, in sickness or health, richer or poorer, that tree keeps up its schedule. It’s a very long clock that chimes once every year, making me think about where I was last year when the plum tree was in bloom. Kind of like my own little personal made-up holiday that has nothing to do with the actual calendar, and everything to do with time.

Anyway, here are some pictures of my plum tree, the view from my back porch, and of course, Sugar Cookie.

[View with PicLens]

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There’s a hose there, which is nice, but even after rinsing her off really good, she still smells like a dog toilet when I get her into the car.

So I think I’m done with Mary S. Young. I don’t know why we keep going back there anyway. It’s in West Linn (I have decided to make the whole city of West Linn my archenemy so whenever I say “West Linn” from now on, you have to imagine me squinting and frowning and waving my clenched fist) and there is apparently some cop who hangs around there who likes to hand out fines if you take your dog anywhere in the park except the off-leash area. And when it comes right down to it, Sugar doesn’t even like to play with other dogs, which is the whole point of a dog park. She just wants to chase her ball. She hardly even knows the other dogs exist.

So today, after a nauseating slog through Mary S. Young, we went to our usual park by the Clackamas River so I could swim her a bit and clean her off  (later, when we got home, I gave her a supplemental shampoo bath. Belt with suspenders, and all that.) Anyway, at THAT park, I ended up talking with a couple of ladies, one of whom had a small dog on one of those thin cord leashes that are about as thick as piano wire, and the little mutt wrapped that leash around my bare leg then took off after a squirrel, giving me a leash burn that stings like hell. Silly me, wearing capris in this lovely spring weather.

Well I’m safely home now, the dog is shampooed and sweet smelling. All the unsatisfactory dog adventures are done … for today. To be replaced by unsatisfactory adventures in TV watching, apparently, as my husband is currently watching the truly execrable 1995 film “Virtuosity.” I think I need to go upstairs and take a nap.

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Today I was faced with a PSD file with dozens upon dozens of layers. Each layer needed to be saved for the Web. The thought of clicking each layer, doing the “Save for Web” command, going through all those clicks … ugh. Impossible.

It turns out there’s an easier way! It’s  File>Scripts>Export Layers to File. What a delightful time saver. I wish I’d gone looking for this sooner, because it turns out that the “Scripts” menu is full of lots of other useful things as well. Like Layer Comps to Files. That one’s hella handy! I used it just as soon as I found it.

Of course, all you Photoshop geniuses out there already knew about these tricks. So never mind me. I’m just an old dog learning new tricks. In Photoshop.

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