I don't know why it's taking me so long to choose the new platform for this blog. Well, that's not entirely true. I get overwhelmed by the choices, am admittedly picky about what I think qualifies as an elegant interface, and then there's the fact that it feels like the time for blogs has come and gone. And yet here I am again, updating, and also platform shopping,

Meanwhile, here's a girl and her horse, more than a few years ago. As I recall, unlike this blog hunt, it took less than a day to decide to buy him. It left me too broke to afford a saddle, and he and I rode without one for the next few months. He didn't seem to mind.

This morning a ranger gave me a $380 ticket for having Walter off the leash for 15 seconds so he could take a poop. He also gave me a ticket for $180 because I didn't want to tell him my real name. He said I was being detained, and I said no, we were going to finish our walk first. He said fine, then assured me he had nothing better to do and would stay all day just to cite me.

While we were walking, he called in two additional rangers. From where we sat in the shade, trying to calm down, I could see them driving the roads looking for us and radioing to each other. Can you imagine? And to make sure I understood I was a criminal, he recorded me on his body cam. A 10-year-old dog is taking a poop off the leash and it escalated to that.

This afternoon, I interviewed a doctor who does heart transplants in tiny babies. She told me about a little girl, only two months old, who received a heart the size of a strawberry. Everything about that, the doctor who trained for a decade to do this work, the sick baby and her frightened family, and the parents of the donor baby, in the midst of unimaginable grief already trying to help someone else, was humbling.

The afternoon erased the morning.

Your unreliable blogger hangs her head in shame at letting so much time elapse (again) since the last post. There is no excuse, really, beyond inertia. Some of the other Things I Have Not Done:

* Replaced and repotted plants displaced by the mudslide
* Replaced and repaired the outdoor twinkle lights destroyed by the mudslide
* Uploaded the photos languishing in my phone and camera
* Wrestled with blog platforms in search of a new home
* Rescued the growing pile of toys I know the puppy is hiding under the bed

Meanwhile, here's Teddy, who goes all round and squishy when she sleeps.

Throwback Thursday: Paradise Cove on Jan. 27, 2013

Not many storms made it to our part of the coast this winter, but the rain that did arrive came hard and fast. That wasn't good news for Casa de LOUD!, which dates back to the early 1950s. It's a classic little beach bungalow that sits on land carved from the bluff. Not a lot of safety ordinances back then.

The building site certainly wouldn't pass plan check as it is today. So while the first few days of rain are pretty much OK, anything more than that soaks the hillside and, just like in the news, landslide. Or rather, mudslide, literally tons of it, right into the back courtyard.

Here's the courtyard before the slide:

And here it is after:

We heard it happen in the night, a series of wet thumps that shook the house a little bit. It took a crew of six burly guys with shovels, a bobcat, and two huge dumps trucks to dig out and cart the mud -- and the buried plants -- away. The good news is that the Christmas tree survived. So did a few of the larger potted plants that got pushed rather than buried. In recovery mode now, building up a new collection of potted plants. Photos, as usual, to come.

I never realized, until watching this video, that egrets do a quick arabesque with each step as they wade through the water.

A search of my flickr account for photos labeled 'cove' got 646 results. This one was shot on Aug. 19, 2008.

Hard to say who was more surprised, the hawk or your intrepid photographer.

The little Labrador will wait when you fall behind on a hike, but her ears let you know how she really feels.