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Negotiations.

When I came back from Esky, I found a little rectangular trap sitting on top of my garbage can. Yesterday, neighbor kid came over to explain it. It's for the raccoon that keeps getting into my garbage.

"Just put a little piece of banana in there," he said.

"I don't have any bananas," I told him.

"Any fruit will do."

"I have frozen raspberries?"

"You should go to the grocery store," he said.

True that.

"But," I worried, "won't the cats get caught in it?"

He said, "Naw, it's too small for the cats."

"Then how will a raccoon fit in there?"

"It'll scrunch up."

"Won't the cats scrunch up?"

Oh, we went back and forth.

I also asked him what to do with a raccoon if I caught it. He said to drive it over to the woods behind Vandenboom and let it go. Drive it over! I said no way. If I caught a raccoon, I was coming over to his house to get him so he could take care of it.

And then, the weirdest thing. He said he had to leave. Never, ever is he the first one to disengage. I almost felt sad.

An army of frogs, a knot of toads.

I'm being stalked by a frog! He's outside on the door jamb right now, waiting for me to open it so he can launch himself onto my foot. I just know it.

Cosmo brought him in the window and threw him on a blanket. A blanket I made, thanks very much. Part of me wanted just to run away at that point (I *hate* when they bring in frogs!), maybe hope the mailman would come by or something, but I picked up the whole blanket and threw it out on the front porch. To make sure the frog went with it, and because I didn't know if it was injured or not, I uncovered him, and fuck if he didn't run right after me toward the door. He did. I slammed it behind me, but he was close enough that I worried I actually got him caught in it. So I slowly cracked open the door, and there he was sitting inches away. I slammed it shut and jumped around and tried to calm down. He'll leave. He's not really after me. The cats are in here; why would he want to come in? But I peeked again. He wasn't where he was, whew. But then my eyes moved. He was closer! He'd moved right toward the edge of the door where it opens. I think he's still there.

I'll put on my big boots and go out the back door later, if I have to.

We’re walking, we’re walking.

Okay, I know normally I'm all "the neighbor kid came over" and "I wondered who was going to finish my closet," but Friday, I did something different. I narrated the voiceover for a short video. I spent almost five hours in a recording studio, reading over and over into a big mic lines like this: "By the eighteen thirties, explorers, awed by the shape and shade of the Cambrian sandstone cliffs, called this two-hundred foot wall Pictured Rocks."

When I talked to the video guy who was given my name (he was looking for someone with an "upbeat voice"), I was pretty up front that this wasn't something I was sure I could be good at. I mean, I can read, and I talk, and it sounded fun, but if it required any level of acting, I worried I'd be too self-conscious. But honestly, I didn't know just how bad I would be at it for the first couple of hours. Honestly, it's harder than you think. Just getting the words out correctly and clearly is hard enough, but that wasn't even so much my problem. It was trying to sound natural, and friendly, without lapsing into some caricature of a tour guide that stumped me. "Just pretend you're talking to your daughter," he kept saying. And I'm all, "Why would I say this to my daughter: 'Seclusion…'?"

Because those were the hard parts, the dot-dot-dot phrases just hung there over some picture I'm sure was beautiful but I couldn't see. Actual sentences were okay ("Store food in your vehicle or on food poles in the backcountry."), but the mood-words, or whatever ("Stone and sand… forests and wildlife…)... yikes, I was awkward. I have total sympathy for all those Top Models doing their Cover Girl ads.

But I totally got into it. It was kind of a rush, to tell you all the truth, getting past the hard part and relaxing into it. For a while, I just kept thinking, why did I say yes to this, and wondering if there was a back door, and hearing my voice, it still didn't sound like I think I sound. But I walked out feeling all proud of myself for doing something so completely outside my comfort zone (which really only encompasses watching The Bachelorette and heating up soup).

It'll be playing on a continuous loop at the Munising Welcome Center in the near future, if anybody wants to go see it.

Amber tortoise.

I messed up my hair. I inadvertently dyed it orange. It matches the fat cat.

Well, most of the hair looks kind of cool – coppery brown. But the two inches of roots and my bangs, that's where the orange is. What on earth happened? I actually think that my new grey hair is taking the color differently than the old hair; there's definite borderline. And how do you cover just the very top of your head until you figure out how to fix such a thing? Right now I've got a thick headband, which hides the worst of it, and maybe I can hope it just looks like the sun's shining hard on the tippy top of my head. Not that it's sunny. I wish I had more summer hats. I actually wore a chook yesterday when I ran some errands, but it was also like 50 degrees out, so I think I got away with it.

Thankfully, tonight I'm going to a mandolin/accordion concert with my dad, so 1) he won't care, and 2) it'll be dark in there.

Nary a drop.

I always thought seltzer and club soda were the same thing. Whenever Sparky orders seltzer and the bartender looks confused, she says, "club soda" and then he gets it. Maybe, I figured, it was a regional thing, like subs and hoagies, soda and pop, because I only see club soda in the stores, never seltzer. I'm really big on Mendota lemon-flavored "sparkling water," which I guessed was the same stuff too. But today at the grocery store, I found Super Chill brand one-liter bottles of seltzer and club soda next to each other on the shelf, and I bought one of each so I can perform a taste test. Do you think they'll be different? The ingredients of the seltzer: carbonated water. The ingredients on the club soda: carbonated water, potassium bicarbonate, potassium citrate. What will that mean in terms of taste?

But it seems like a silly thing to do alone. I want somebody else here I can blindfold and hand a Dixie cup of one then the next. I want it to be formal.

Little inventor.

My nights are quiet, since Neighbor Kid goes to bed at 8:30, but oh the mornings. Today, he announced that a raccoon had gotten into my garbage. Indeed it had, and made a mess. Maybe, possibly, it was because there was a dead bird in there? Ugh. So we rebagged everything (no dead bird to be found). I was going to come back in, but he seemed ready for more, so after we washed our hands, I asked him if he could help me fix my other garbage can, the one with a top to keep raccoons out. The wheels had popped out, and I couldn't get them back in. This was fine when there was snow out, since I could just wedge it in a snowbank. But since spring, it just falls over. So he requested some duct tape and did his junior engineering thing. Like last week, when he wanted a tennis ball and some yarn so he could make a cat toy, and I said that wouldn't work, and he came back the next day with the tennis ball, tiny holes drilled in it, attached to a fishing pole. Not that the cats loved it even after all his work.

And so I'm working on a manuscript today, and I told him that after the garbage can adventure, but he just came to the door again anyway. He wanted to know when Cosmo last had his rabies shot. He's all up to date, I told him, and he said good. I thought he was telling me Cos got bit by that raccoon or something, and jumped up to find out. Turns out the cat bit the Neighbor Kid. Oh. And he showed me, although I would actually call the wound a scratch. Yup, you're good, I told him. No rabies for you. But maybe the cats wouldn't be so fussy if he'd stop whacking them with a tennis ball on a string.

My cats’ personal assistant, I guess.

Neighbor kid came to the door this morning before I'd even had my coffee to give me a dead bird. Seriously: "I found this in your yard." I wasn't sure what my role was exactly, since my yard seemed like a fine enough place for a dead bird and didn't know why I needed to be involved in moving it somewhere else. But he wanted a plastic bag, so I gave him one. He put the bird in the bag and handed the whole shebang back to me, so I put the bird in the trash. Which is not where I would have preferred it. Then he asked for hand sanitizer. What a way to wake up.

Guilty pleasures.

It's true: I made LS attend an organ recital. We also went to a musical – Nunsense – and tonight we're going to see a string quartet with Grandpa. It's all meant to balance out letting her watch low-culture Harper's Island with me.

And she's so right when she says, "I can't believe John Wakefield isn't dead." Because they billed this stupid show as a kind of Ten Little Indians. A bunch of people on an island with a scary history getting picked off one by one. We were supposed to be able to figure it out: which one of them was the killer? And so it was going along until Saturday, when they brought back to life the guy who made the island scary in the first place, years ago. Kind of not fair. Sure, I'm sure he's got a modern-day accomplice or whatever, but still – cheap.

By Little Sweet

On Friday I was forced to endure an organ concert. I thought it would about organs (body parts), so I was extremely annoyed and disappointed. Just in case, I had brought my book, so I was extremely lucky.

Today we went to Hotplate. We painted dented cups. My mom kept trying to persuade me to paint mine certain ways, like put a smile on mine. Then I told her to paint the top stripe on her cup, because it looked extremely bad. I ended up not doing the smile, and she the top stripe.

Harper's Island is a cool show that I just started watching. If you haven't seen the latest episode, skip this paragraph. I think Henry is the killer. Did you know that this other show, Ugly Betty, has the same actor with the same name? I can't believe that John Wakefield isn't dead.

The many faces of G.