I go up the street from my house, toward the park. On the block nearest the park, but on the other side of the road, is where I left my dogs, at the house of someone who was taking care of them for just a few minutes while I was out doing something else.

I get to the house, and Bella is outside, jumping at the outside of the wooden screen door. Sydney is inside, standing there passively and looking out. I wasn't expecting Bella to be outside. She sees me and greets me excitedly as I call out to the woman inside that I am here to pick up my dogs, and she says that's fine, giving me some reason why Bella was outside, and telling me to take a look because she's losing some fur.

I look her over, and indeed she is about half bald, in large patches, where her fur has completely come off, leaving just pale white skin.

Then I'm down by my house, and my mom is doing something with my car. She's trying to back it out and down the road, but she's really drunk, too much so to back up the car, and she runs into the curb, backward on the opposite side of the road. I think I'd better take over the driving, but when I go down there to help, dad has already taken the driver's seat and seems to have the situation under control.

So I cross the road and start walking back up toward my house, and Bella goes into one of the yards and poops under a tree. Somebody asks me if I should pick up the poop, but I take a couple steps up to where I can see the house, and it is all abandoned and rotten, so I say that no, it doesn't look like anybody cares if there's poop there.

Between the next house and mine is a fairly deep ravine, and I go down there. There is a stream curving under an overhead bridge. It's a beautiful private place, right in this bend in the creek, and I remark that it's a shame nobody goes down there, like I just discovered it. It seems to be Natasha to whom I am speaking, but I didn't notice her until she slips in the mud and falls full into the muddy river, yelling at me about how horrible it is, and I shouldn't have brought her down here.

Then I'm back up in my living room, near the fireplace. Vera is asleep in a laundry basket just to the left of the door (she isn't particularly small, nor the basket particularly large, but she is somehow sprawled in it, sound asleep). To somebody I remark how cute she is when she's sleeping, but we shouldn't wake her up because she has been sick and needs the rest (true to life, she is home with a probable flu).