q i'm declaring victory on several fronts and i'll tell you why. this picture is of nova, a very energetic puppy who now has a new home. that's the first front. she moved up in the world.

she had been dumped on my son's friend by another teenager. at the time he thought he could handle her. he loved her and dutifully fed her, let her out, etc. but he never had the money for shots or even a leash, and finally he got a job and then went back to school, and had to move to do that, in short, he was going through a lot of teenage challenges. one day i had to go into his room to do an electric-box thing and there was that puppy, in a cage her own size, yelping and screaming, standing in three of her own poops. she was dying to get out. so i got her out.

my wife is really excellent with puppies. we had her for ten days. in those ten days my wife found worms and treated them, and the puppy gained weight dramatically. but even more incredible, the puppy did ok with our three surly male dogs who were not so welcoming. the puppy tore around and made it clear she was overjoyed to be out of her cage. my wife also found her home, through AA, a perfect home with a loving family. that puppy is going to be happy.

the boy was ok with it. that's a victory in itself. sometimes 17-year-olds can be stubborn about such things but i think he knew he was over his head. i told him, at one point, this is animal cruelty. i think he heard that. that boy is basically working hard, and trying to go to school, so he has enough on his plate. we did our last mow of this guy's lawn in knoxville and i declared victory there too. he works, he gets paid, he has money in his pocket, that's how it's supposed to work. i'm not going to quibble if that money goes somewhere i don't want it to.

on a day of experiencing two insolent seventeen-year-olds, not that one who was sound asleep, but the two in our house, we also found that two old friends/acquaintances of my wife, had a seventeen-year-old arrested for terroristic threats to a fellow student by social media. the kid in question said something about blowing his globe if he keeps stimmin. well one of two things are possible. either he's a nice kid who just said something incredibly stupid, or he's a closed mass murderer with rage boiling, who accidentally gave away what he was thinking. i lean toward the second and am glad they caught him before he did blow the globe. but most likely he'll be released and he'll still have that rage, only now compounded by everyone's wariness and knowing that he's "a little off." we suspect that partly because we know the parents. sometimes two people don't fit together perfectly. it makes our insolence look a little tame actually.

finally though there is one more victory. a son who has started as a trucker in los angeles is spending days in a motel, unhappy, separated from his woman who is eight months pregnant. on the cliff, almost walked away from the job but. we talked him off the ledge. he's working it out. he's following baseball and calling the woman regularly. victory. keep that job. drive truck, bring up the kid, that's the best way. thank god. the road is narrow but the lines can be seen even in the fog.