Saluki

Saluki is a breed of dog. It was also the answer to a clue in the cryptic crossword puzzle yesterday. The clue was, "Dog Sarah and I take around Britain." OK, finally after much thought, I figured out that Britain might be UK and the word might end with "i." I knew it had to be a breed of dog so I looked up a list of breeds. This was not easy given that there are 493 recognized dog breeds and Heinz 57 isn't one of them. I narrowed my searches to the list beginning with "s." Somehow Sarah had to figure into it. I found "Saluki," however, I still can't figure out how "Sal" is related to "Sarah." Any help would be much appreciated.

Well, Saluki, you're a winner, because I had almost given up and declared myself brain dead!! I didn't post on Sunday or Monday. I'm not sure why. I was very busy both days, however, I was busy cleaning. Now this was/is, I'm not done yet, serious cleaning. This was purging. It was filling bins with old videos that we kept on shelves, even though we haven't had a working player in years. It was throwing out old birthday cards and Christmas cards, type of cleaning. It was also going through old photographs and throwing out all the duplicates, all the red-eyed, all the "who are these people anyway?" shots. I was ruthless.

New breed - Balloon Dog :)

Now I haven't actually "thrown" these out. I have put them in bins and taken them to a locker we rent. This is how "junk" costs money. Actually we rented a small locker to store our son's canvasses from Art college. I added some of the residue from squeezing my business into two rooms from five. And now I am adding a lot of bric-a-brac from the house, because I live with people who cannot part with, or at least cannot make a decision to part with, a post card or two from the '90s, as an example. Sigh!

Cleaning, though, must somehow bother the writing muse. Tidy drawers and bare shelves may suck the life out of a spirit whose main purpose in life is to stir up memories, find a story in a discarded letter or create whole novels from odd photographs or their negatives. Well it took a breed of Afghan hound, Saluki, to clutter up my life again and bring the elusive muse back. I wonder, if I don't make the beds today, will she hang around enough for a post tomorrow?

Have an amusing day!!