The Rest of the Story

Continued from yesterday's post.

I heard nothing further from Dolores or Harry until late that night, when Tim answered the bell and found the two of them standing, muddy and rumpled, on the doorstep.

"You must be Dolores," said Tim.

"And you must be a master of deductive reasoning to figure that out, " said Dolores. "Do we get to come in, Sherlock Holmes, or would you prefer that we sleep outside so our frozen bodies can be nibbled by rabbits?"

"Or cows," said Harry. "You don't have cows in St. Paul, do you?"

"For the last time, you little drama queen," said Dolores, "she was just being affectionate."

"She ate my ball band!" Harry said to Tim. "I had to come all the rest of the way naked! And it's cold out there! I hate cows! You don't have any cows, right? I'm not staying here if you have cows!"

Tim just looked from them to me, and back to them, and back to me, and didn't say anything.

"Go back to bed," I said. "I'll sort these two out."

You've never seen a man move so fast.

While Dolores huffed around in the bathroom repairing the day's damages to her toilette, Harry sipped a restorative mug of cocoa and filled me in on the trip.

"Well I would have been done for except it turns out Dolores speaks Cow. She told Bonnie Belle–that was her name–to knock it off and take us to the closest road gong north. We had to walk through this huge field and whenever Dolores wasn't looking the stupid cow kept trying to bite me. I hate cows!"

"We've established that," I said. "Why didn't you guys call and tell me what was going on?"

"Well we were going to," he said. "But when we got to the road Dolores said she wasn't doing anything else until she had a martini. And then she spilled her vodka flask into her purse and it got all over the phone and we couldn't make it do anything but play her Thong Song ring tone."

"And then?"



"Well we sat there for a long time and she was real grumpy and then we saw headlights, and she stood up and started shouting and waving. And then it turned out it was this bus full of students from the 4-H Club going to Minneapolis for a big meeting, so when Dolores said can we please get on board they were totally cool about it! They even let me have some of their cookies!"

"Lucky break, that."

"I know! The cookies were really good! So anyway, the best part is tomorrow they said we can come with them to their big meeting, because this one kid said he has been working with livestock since he was just little and he never, ever saw a sheep like Dolores before. And guess what? They asked her to come up on stage for the presentation on sheep breeding and you know how she loves to be in front of people."

I don't need to tell you the rest, of course. You've doubtless seen the headlines everywhere regarding the riot that broke out at the regional 4-H conference, and the exhibit that was cited for disturbing the peace, public lewdness, indecent exposure, and corrupting 300 minors.

After much finagling and pleading she's managed to avoid the possibility of jail time. But if we get out of this without a humiliating appearance on the "Today" show I shall be very surprised indeed.

Tomorrow I'll tell you how my weekend in St. Paul went, in case anybody cares.

Help a Friend?

I have a good friend, Leigh Witchel, who lives in New York City and is hoping to catch a ride out to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania for the 1,000 Knitters shoot this Saturday at Wool Gathering. I know that's one heck of a trip, but on the off chance that anybody's either going out from the city or able to provide (for example) a lift from the train in Philadelphia, would you kindly be in touch with him? (If his name seems familiar, maybe it's because he's a regular contributor of features to Vogue Knitting and Knit 1. Also, he's clean and polite and a good conversationalist and cute.) His email is leigh (at) leighwitchel.com.