What was the last thing you did for play or fun?

I suppose the last fun thing I did was rock painting and interacting with other people who were also painting rocks. While they painted on their rocks, they each told stories about why they were painting.

I also shared the reason why I was painting a raccoon on my rock. My story took them back to the last week of July at 4:00 a.m. when I let my two dogs out to go potty and two raccoons were on my back deck.

My pug chased one down the stairs while my hound chased the other around the deck until it ran down the stairs into the yard and I ran after my hound and chased away the one on the stairs in the process then ran after my dog who was covered by the big raccoon it had been chasing.

I said a quick prayer, “God, help” when I saw the raccoons leg and pulled it. I will never forget how soft the raccoon’s leg was in my hand or how I stood yelling at it as it faced me with arms wide open and standing 2 feet tall just a few feet from me while my hound was still in the fetal position in shock that the raccoon’s body was bigger than hers and I yelled at her to get upstairs.

I will never forget how I was out of my mind as I broke up that craziness and how I didn’t even feel that the raccoon swiped me before it ran off.

Of course I had to get the rabies vaccination, which is another story, one that caused me to jump up after I was stabbed with a needle, but my dogs were ok.

That event was not fun, but as the story comes up, the telling of it is, because it relates how I became known as the trash panda wrangler.

I was called into the emergency room not by my name but as “Woman versus Trash Panda” so I became known as the Trash Panda Wrangler, but as I have gotten older I realize that the laughter and time with friends and meaningful conversations while doing something enjoyable such as creating art is and will always been fun to me.