Hot & sticky.

And I have worked outside all week in 90+ degree heat and drenching humidity. My main living is painting houses; something I've done for many years. I did the trim on a house in Flint, stained a deck in Grand Blanc and gave three estimates. By the time I get home at night and get done with nighttime things - covered a Thursday meeting for EVM, dog class, go out for Mexican food with friends, yard work and so on - I've run out of steam for writing a damn thing.
So far my writing tasks acheived this week:
Set up interview with Ken, owner of Good Beans Cafe.
Finished a total of 63 reviews for insiderpages.
Called around, found out who to talk to about picking up road kill (Genesee County Road Commission.)
Wrote up the Thursday meeting, a whopping 637 words.
So - not a stellar writing week! Oh well. Hot & sticky is my excuse.

I've written a rather successful little book about how to hand pieces of dead animals to your dogs and why it is better than feeding them pellets. Woohoo, ranking is under 10000 this morning. Anyone who's read it, feel free to add a review.
I have two Betta fish and what have I been feeding them - pellets. Now it is summer and there are zillions of skeeter larvae in my little back yard pond. What was I thinking? Duh. Bettas are carnivorous little fish, surely they can eat skeeter larvae? According to my fishie expert friend Martha, yes they can and it's a complete diet too.
So for the last couple of weeks Achmed and Pierre have been hunting skeeter larvae in their two gallon bowls. I have never seen them so animated and happy! They flare up and wave at me hopefully every time I walk past. They get to zip around hunting baby skeeters, stalking them around the leaves and rocks. When they're completely stuffed they take a little rest (do fish fart?) and eye their nervous prey (can larvae get nervous?)
For some reason I find this all very satisfying and primal.
I scoop the larvae up with bowls and run them through a coffee filter.
I am catching the larvae in two forms. Little shrimpy looking things that wiggle very fast, sideways. The other stage looks like black commas and float on the surface looking like wee black seeds until startled. Then they zoom at warp speed to the bottom of the pond and pretend to be seeds again. I am not sure which stage is which but I suspect the commas precede the wigglers.
So this morning the dogs had raw chicken, the fish had baby skeeters, and I'm having coffee and cigarettes.
Birds are twittering insanely and I'm going to walk in the Humane Society dog walk later. Friends are putting on agility demonstrations there so I'm going to hang out and perhaps embarass myself running Cooper. "This is what agility looks like when you and your dog are still learning."