Gracie Visits Tara, and all we get are these Lousy Icicles! --by Bailey

Ms. Bailey Blue, Preeminent Diva, at your service today, with a report from the Gulag.



It seems that the Anointed One, little Ms. Cutesy-Brown-Eyes, has departed in the company of her Mom for the Great American South. The Confederacy. The place where they talk funny.



The reason? you ask. Mais naturellement, she is to be entered in the Miss Canine America contest!


We've been listening to her incessant practice..."Ah believe in world peace..." She struts, she winks knowingly, she exudes a schadenfreude-laced innocence that can be deadly.



And yes! She is heading South--with her Evil Human--toward the Land of Sun and Mint Julips and Cotillions! Bourbon on the veranda! Gentleman-callers and military schools!




And I--Bailey--like Ishmael, am left behind. Well, not exactly alone...



Bozo-Beard has been summarily exiled with me. What company! Dad offered to take us to Walmart as a special treat!

And while Little Miss Scarlet basks in the tropics with her Mommy and all her gentleman-callers, what do we get?



Advancing glaciers, ominous ice-daggers, aggressive polar-bears, and even more aggressive Red Sox fans! It's enough to scare even a Kerry Blue Terrier!



Occasionally, a giant icicle will fall from the house and impale an unsuspecting pedestrian.


I stand guard, looking for rapacious, hungry creatures, gliding across the ice as the dim sun hugs the horizon...




My dull-witted but easily-amused companion contemplates his green idol. Sometimes he reminds me of Queequeg!



After hours of incessant whining from the Bozo-Beast, I condescend to teach him a few lessons in the proper manipulation of the Sacred Yellow Orb.

But alas, he MISSES HIS MOMMY ! What a wimp! But we know who is the weaker sex. I allow him his hour of weakness.


Buster unleashes a therapeutic howl of mourning.





I reassure him that his Mommy and the little Rebel Turncoat will return from the South-Land before the week's out--with tales of sorority parties and frozen daiquiris beneath moss-covered trees, barbecues and hush-puppies, she-crab soup, and the joys of boo-ing the New York Yankees.


Your faithful correspondent,


Bailey Blue