Annie’s at it again. Fresh, hot homemade bagels. I’m buying locally cold-smoked lox here in Seattle today. Back in Walla Walla tonight. Lox and bagels for breakfast tomorrow morning. Does it get any better than that?

Annie’s taking the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge. She’s baking 43 different breads—a couple of new ones every week.

It’s doing more for my figure than I’d like. But these breads are good…really good.

What a great excuse to eat more butter!

Well, we thought BIG was a Great Pyrenees puppy when we bought him. That’s the way he was advertised. That’s what the folks said when we picked him up. That’s what he looked like for the next month.

At five months of age, BIG’s true colors started showing.

Great Pyrenees are fearless in the face of danger—even the puppies. But confronted with a threat—like a skunk nosing around the chicken coop—BIG would cower at the door and bark furiously as if to say,” There’s something really scary out here and you humans need to come out and deal with it while I hide under your bed.”

Great Pyrenees have cotton-like coats that shun dirt. BIG’s coat was not cotton-like. Most of the time, he looked a lot like stuffed animal that had been drug though the dirt.

Great Pyrenees patrol fence perimeters all night long. BIG slept on the old sofa out in the barn. Patrolling wasn’t his thing.

Now don’t get me wrong. BIG is a sweet dog and we do love the BIG coward, but we’d gone for a guard dog and come back with a lap dog. So, Annie went in search of another Great Pyrenees puppy.

Here he is. His name’s Bear. At four months he stands at the fence in the middle of the night and growls at unseen intruders. He patrols the fence line constantly. He’s a BIG comfort to BIG. And his coat is cotton-like.

My mother can’t believe I write books and tell stories. “Where did that come from?” she’s always asking and then answering her own question, “Aunt Tilde! Gracious me, that woman could talk the ears off Mickey Mouse.”

“Thanks,” I say.

Aunt Tilde’s a non-stop storyteller. That’s the nice way to describe her. She’s in a storytelling class of her own—not a class you’d necessarily want to join. She rarely mentions a person’s name without offering up a family tree, complete medical history, and a long list of public humiliations. Her storylines are so well hidden under the human deadfall that Aunt Tilde herself can’t find them.

She called me day before yesterday and left a message saying we needed to talk. Somebody must have died, I thought. Aunt Tilde doesn’t call long distance unless somebody died. I called her right back.

“Sam,” she said, “I’ve been tryin’ to get a hold of you, boy.”

“I know, Aunt Tilde. What’s…”

“I got news, son. Next time you come this way, you gotta meet Carrie. The girl just wrote a book.”

“Oh,” I said. “What’s…”

Aunt Tilde didn’t slow down, “You remember Becky who married Dwight? I know you met ‘em when Grandma Rose had her 90^th birthday out at the old folks’ home. Becky was the one had to sit all afternoon because of her female problem.”

“Aunt Tilde, I don’t need to know…”

“I wasn’t gonna say but I reckon everybody already knows. She had genuine uterine tumors, doc said.”

“I think you mean benign…” I started.

“One the size of a grapefruit if you can believe it. Poor girl. Anyway, Becky’s okay now. She’s my old friend who flunked first grade. Twice, I’m telling you. Folks thought she was slow, you know. Her parents worried themselves sick. Flunking first grade twice. Her dear mother had to take Valdirum.”

“Valium,” I offered.

“But it turned out to be Becky just needed glasses. Think of that. So farsighted the girl couldn’t hardly see anything within arm’s reach.”

“Aunt…” I tried.

“Anyway, Becky introduced me to Carrie. The girl lives over in Snope’s Lake. Couldn’t be a mile from here. And she’s a real interesting person. Or seems to be. Lives in a big house over there. Used to be the Gilbert place. Cousin Peel says you two are peas in a pod. She bein’ a writer and all.”

“Well…” I tried to squeeze in.

“Turns out she married Butch Drinkard, the fella you used to play with when you was just a little thing and came to visit, when we lived over on Highland Drive. He just took a new job over near Madison Hill after he lost his job over at the cannery. Woodworking of some sort. Nice fella but has a bad drinking problem. Almost recovered from his bladder cancer.”

“Bladder cancer…”

“The boy’s not hardly 60 years old and already dealing with bladder cancer. Could come back anytime, doc says. Even in his liver—a death sentence sure as we’re talkin’. Doc said it was probably from smokin’, which he doesn’t do anymore but used to smoke like a chimney, or so says Harley. Must be hard living with that worry…”

“But…”

“Folks say Carrie’s a dear. How she can keep that big house and all them dogs and deal with her husband’s drinking and cancer and all. You young people got so much energy. More than I ever had. Of course, Carrie don’t have to get up at the crack a dawn and milk a cow like I did. Or feed a bunch of randy hens and snatch eggs from under ‘em while they’re trying to peck your eyes out. And cook three meals a day for your Uncle Buck’s farm crew like I did, back when we had the farm. You remember…”

“Aunt Tilde,” I yelled into the phone.

There was a blessed short silence.

“Well, excuse your bad manners, Sam McLeod,” she said. “You don’t need to yell. I can hear just fine. I got my new hearing aids in. I know I used to be hard of hearing, but now…”

“Aunt Tilde,” I said, not yelling this time.

Another rare bit of silence.

“What’s the name of Carrie’s book?” I asked.

“Book?” she said. “What book?”

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been on “hiatus.” I’m told this is the hip word for a modern-day vacation. The word “hiatus” suggests a vacation full of learning and do-gooding.  I didn’t actually do the learning and do-gooding parts, but I’d like folks to think I did, so I’m telling everybody I was on hiatus.

I took my hiatus in Montana and Wyoming where I spent a good bit of time fly-fishing and even more time sitting on a stream bank untangling my line. From a hiatus perspective, I was communing with nature.

One thing I noticed: There weren’t many people in Montana or Wyoming.

The people who were there were mostly 50-something men riding their Harleys out on the open road (I-90). They wore knotted kerchiefs over their bald heads, tromped around in their leathers, and revved their engines like teenaged hoodlums. From a hiatus perspective, they were getting in touch with their inner children and freeing their spirits and that sort of thing.

“Maybe that’s why there aren’t many people in Montana or Wyoming,” I thought.

From my desk I have a window-framed view of Main Street here in Walla Walla. While I gaze out the window looking for inspiration, I watch folks come and go through the double glass doors at Bright’s Candies.

A young mother in skimpy black marathoner shorts, wrap-around sunglasses, and a hot pink sports bra parks her doublewide stroller in front of Bright’s. She’s talking on her cell phone, wrestling one of the blonde-haired kids back into his stroller seat, and wagging her finger at a long-eared Bassett Hound puppy leashed to the stroller frame.

Deep-based rap music blasts from a sleek-black Mercedes stopped at the Second Street light. My window rattles to the beat. I think, “If Hollywood does a remake of The Graduate, the old guy should whisper ‘audiology’ instead of ‘plastics’…”

The Mercedes rolls through the intersection followed by a trolley bus.

About twenty kids, several moms, and a dad stroll the sidewalk in front of Bright’s. They’re all playing violins, except the dad. He’s capturing the event on a video camera. I open my window. The music is beautiful.

An elderly gentleman emerges from Bright’s. He’s wearing white Nikes, neatly creased khakis, a blue cotton shirt, and a pork-pie hat. He dodges the young mother still talking on her cell phone, the stroller, and the floppy-eared puppy. He sits on a wood-slat chair under the metal awning, eating a scoop of vanilla ice cream perched atop a brown cone.

Now he’s talking to the young mother who’s still talking on her cell phone.

He nods.

The young mother disappears through the doors.

A few minutes later she returns with ice cream cones for the stroller-bound kids. She’s still talking on her cell phone. One of the toddlers extends his cone to the Bassett Hound puppy. The ice cream disappears. I hear the toddler scream.

The old guy watches.

I close my window.

The young mother, still talking on her cell phone, wags her finger at the puppy.

I wonder, “Does she ever talk to her kids?”

Three gray-haired ladies toting Macy’s shopping bags stop in front of Bright’s and huddle up, occasionally turning toward the plate-glass window where Paul is making fudge. One of the ladies—a short, round woman in a green sundress and lime-green heels starts toward the doors motioning the others to follow.

They don’t.

The green-sun-dress lady, shaking her head, returns to the huddle. The ladies talk some more and stroll left out of my window-frame.

A few minutes later, they’re back. The green-sun-dress lady is leading again. There’s no hesitation this time. They go in. I don’t see them come out.

A maroon Toyota Corolla parks in front of Bright’s. It bears California license plates. There’s a Whitman College sticker in the rear window. A balding man wearing a white shirt gets out and hikes up his dark gray slacks.

The remnants of a fast food meal lie in the street at his feet-a brown paper bag, a flattened big-gulp cup, burger wrappers, bun fragments and a few fries, a handful of tiny napkins. It’s a ketchup-splattered mess.

The California man looks down at the mess and steps over it, then stands on the sidewalk looking my way for a moment, turns and walks right out of my window-frame.

The air-conditioner in my office comes on. A soft whoosh fills the air. I write a check to the power company and put it in the return envelope. Gotta pay the bills.

The California guy is back. He has a Starbucks cup in hand. He steps off the curb to get back into his car. The fast-food mess is still there.

He sets his coffee cup on the hood of his car and picks up the mess. He deposits the mess in the trash can on the sidewalk, wipes his hands on his slacks, picks up his coffee cup, gets into his car, backs out of his parking spot, and drives left—out of my window-frame.