Odds and Ends and Fish

Remember that problem I had with the stray dog that lives down the street? Well, she (it is a she) scared my kids half to death today as we were getting in the car to take Zee to school. I got her out of our driveway and yard by yelling, "Go HOME!", but she hung out in my neighbor's yard and barked and barked at us. It's a good thing my adrenalin was running because that normally would have scared me half to death.

So I started the car, closed all the doors, and ran inside for the telephone to call Animal Control. This time the dispatcher was able to help, calling out the Animal Control officer to our area.

He just called me with good news and bad news. The good news is, yay! He found the dog running loose and gave the owners a ticket. And yay! He didn't tell who had called it in. (I'm a coward, I really am.) But, yikes! It's a pit bull. A momma pit bull. Who is nursing babies right now, apparently.

(And the scary dog on my street when I was child was scariest when she had babies. She was a mean, mean momma German Shepherd. The only thing that kept her in her yard was a 3-foot-tall fence. That she could jump over when she felt like it.)

Now, why in the world should her breed make a difference? Pit bulls have a bad reputation, but not all pit bulls are scary. I was brave enough to run the dog off several times before I knew her breed. But...her owners don't exactly strike me as the most conscientious dog-owners in the world, if they're letting their dog run around unleashed. So maybe they haven't trained her all the way, and maybe she is a scary dog.

Hopefully the ticket will encourage her owners to stop letting her roam around and terrorize my children.

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Today's art lesson with Em was so fun. We got out the paints, and while she painted a self-portrait (that I drew), I painted a ceramic figurine I've had for years. We both had a marvelous time, talking about color and fairies and Em's brothers and whatever else came to mind. She calls me "Miss Mom" and I call her "Miss [one of her nicknames that is too close to her real name to put here]" She is such a careful painter, staying in the lines and trying not to mix colors. I love this job!----------------------
And about the fish: I've never cooked a lot of fish, but in the last year I've tried to branch out. Bradley hasn't been the biggest fan of my fish in the past (it's pretty boring), but on Saturday evening I tried again. And it was SO YUMMY. The secret wasn't in the preparing (just flour, salt, and pepper on the tilapia fillets, and then fry in a bit of olive oil), but in the SAUCE. I made a really simple butter-lemon sauce, using this recipe but without the shallots: Three tablespoons of butter melted in a saucepan. Add the zest from one lemon. Stir constantly for 1.5 minutes. Add the juice of one lemon. Stir constantly for 2 minutes. DIVINE.

We had fish with the lemon sauce, couscous (which was really good with the sauce, too), fresh spinach, fresh pineapple, and homemade buttermilk biscuits. It was really yummy. And I felt very domestic. (It's a rare enough feeling that I have to enjoy it while it lasts.)