Yesterday afternoon when I ushered my beagle boy into the house after a bit of exercise I saw he was chewing on something a bit out of the ordinary. It was a vertebra. A relatively large one.

Then it all clicked into place.

"AHA! So THIS is why my back has been so sore!"

Repeated attempts have proven me incapable of squishing it back into place. I'm beginning to question whether it is, in fact, my vertebra and not, say, the vertebra of another large mammal (a deer, perchance?).

One might question the fact that I might have noticed when my beagle boy managed to dig, gnaw, and disengage said vertebra from my lumbar region, and I answer with this: I'm so exhausted, I truly believe I could sleep through anything, even the scratching, chewing, and removal of said vertebra at any given time.

More on the origin of the mysterious vertebra later.

Back to work tonight. I no longer yearn for large tips at that lovely place. I'm simply hoping for people to be nice to me.