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Never shoot unless you're certain of your target. That's what I learned from every trainer at every gun safety class I ever took, and for years I have followed that advice. I hate gambling.

I hate gambling because I always guess wrong. I hate being wrong. My friends think I'm pompous and sanctimonious, but I'm not really. It's just that I hate the searing scrape of dismay that curls through my soul like a spiritual D & C when I do something wrong. I do a lot to avoid that feeling.

Right now I have that feeling because I think I just did something wrong. I just broke my trainers' rule and shot at a shape, not a face. The noise it made when I hit it doesn't match what I expected to hit.

I saw it first on my security cam: a stranger with a swim cap and dark mask over bushy whiskers, scaling my perimeter fence. When I got outside into the cold night the first shape I saw in the vicinity was a silhouette that matched what I had seen on the camera. I aimed right between its sideburns and pulled the trigger, even though I couldn't see its identity. When I shot, it let out a wail in a familiar voice that sent pee trickling down to my sock.

I just raced back in here to look at the camera footage. I've called and called for my bald bouncer, but he's not at his post and his earmuffs are not on their hook.

Divorces end better... No, that's not quite right. It's not the divorce that's ending, is it. Really what's ending is the marriage. Let me begin again.

Marriages end better when the parties involved agree on how to split up their marital property. Otherwise, some bored judge will have to patiently hear hours of emotional arguments before using the gavel as a machete to thwack apart the marital estate. Despite the polite attention they give, most judges don't really care about property division because stuff is just stuff; money is just money. (Mind you, I'm not talking about children here. Children are not property. Children are people, with rights of their own, and the Court treats them accordingly.)

Usually property division just isn't that big of a deal. Each party is ordered to make a statement of financial disclosure, under oath, telling the Court exactly what property is owned together and separately. This includes all assets, the desirable stuff that is worth fighting over, such as retirement accounts, vacation homes, and Kitchen Aid mixers. The disclosure also includes all debts, the kind of thing parties fight to not get, like second mortgages, credit card debt, and the rest of the Rent-a-Center payments.

In theory, parties can exchange their financial information about assets and liabilities and all by themselves can come to an agreement as to who gets what portion of each. Most things don't offer much room for disagreement: bank accounts or credit card debts, for example, are very straightforward. The value of the account (or debt) is printed on a statements, and the numbers are what they are. The parties might argue about who gets the account (or who pays the debt), but there is no real room for disagreement as to the figure. Even real estate is really not that variable, because different appraisers will use basically the same formulae and tend to be within a few thousand dollars of one another.

But you have to remember that people getting divorced are often not in a mood to agree and typically they will disagree with a great deal of passive agressivess. The commonest way to do this is to dispute the values of items of personal property. Personal goods are wonderful things to argue about, largely because there's often no right answer as to value.

For example, is a 1950's waterfall bedroom suite a valuable antique, or is it just ugly used furniture you got for free from family? It depends whose column it's being added into. Generally, the party who hopes to keep more of the stuff on their side of the division will deliberately lowball the value of everything, to show the judge how little they're asking for; while the party who perceives the stuff as being "taken away" will put as high a value as possible on it, to show the judge how deeply they're being screwed. A party who doesn't want a particular item will put a very high value on it, to show the judge how generous they're being by letting the other party take it. There are endless ways to hide the balls.

That reminds me about a case where dogs were the root of the divorce. As I recall, he wanted to take pictures of her having sex with the family dog. That wasn't what caused the divorce though. The dog thing was going on for a long time before the divorce.

I think she said the dog stuff started on their honeymoon. From her perspective, there in the roomy motel suite with a king-size bed, it seemed like a reasonable request. After all, the dog was already used to sleeping in their bed and it wasn't the least bit camera-shy. With a little practice, everybody got the hang of it and things went swimmingly.

But as time went on, he wanted to add more diversity to his photo album. He persuaded her to try different and multiple dogs. Between the ones he borrowed and the ones he bought, their small house soon grew crowded. Chew toys of all description littered the floor. Tumbleweeds of dog hair gathered in all the corners, rocking gently in the breeze from the dog flap in the front door. Dog doo of every caliber carpeted the lawn, and eventually UPS had to stop home delivery because the carriers were distributing too many biscuits.

Over time the long nights took their toll on her. Day by day she grew wearier of the atmosphere in the home. She longed for the simpler days when she didn't have to use anti-flea shampoo in the shower, when she had no ringworm, and when rainy days didn't make the home stink of wet dog.

The day she finally lost it was the day the refrigerator motor burned out because its vent was plugged with dog hair. She was bent over in the fridge, reaching for the perishables to pack them in the cooler of ice she straddled, when the Great Dane came around the corner and spotted her. Being well trained in the bedroom, where yummy treats were the reward for a good doggie's performance, it assumed its customary position.

Sadly, there was no camera standing by to capture the ensuing scene. When the big dog jumped her, it knocked her face-first into the fridge. Her head and shoulders slid into the gap between two shelves, pinning her arms at her sides and mashing her face into a bowl of calf livers set aside for the dogs' supper. She kicked out wildly at the dog, but instead her foot connected with the cooler. It overturned and spilled twenty pounds of ice cubes across the linoleum.

It is true dogs have acute hearing, but even the sharpest have trouble telling the difference between poured-out ice cubes and poured-out kibble. On this day, every dog within earshot assumed the noise in the kitchen meant dinner was served. They gathered and circled like vultures just out of reach of the increasingly frustrated Great Dane, who was still trying to earn its treat despite the flailing and screeching.

No one saw exactly what happened after that, but it is true she filed for divorce at the courthouse a few hours later. She left a copy of the paperwork on the kitchen table for him, along with a meatball sub for his supper and a note of apology saying she just couldn't take it anymore and she was moving back to her mother's.

At the final hearing the parties had to explain a discrepancy in their financial disclosures. According to one affidavit (his), at the date of separation the couple owned one intact male Great Dane, as well as assorted smaller dogs. According to the other affidavit (hers), at the date of separation the Great Dane in question was not intact, but neutered.

Anybody can see that the value of a dog might change depending on whether or not it has its balls. The problem is, does it become more valuable or less valuable without them? It depends on your position.

In this case, the parties couldn't agree on what the dog was worth or who would take it. Ultimately the Court ordered him to take the dog to the local shelter, with the parties to each contribute half of the surrender fee.

He never did tell her how he liked the meatball sub she made him, on the day she moved out.

My stinky shaggy flock of crossbred ewes mills around the too-small holding pen on shearing day. "Send the first one!" hollers the shearer. His station is all set up: a square of clean plywood, an overhead hook for the clipper's drive unit and extension cord, and wool felt booties over his work boots so he can step on shorn fleeces without disarranging them.

Everybody who knows one says the traits of a good shearer are a strong back and a weak mind. My shearer is among the best. Fortified with a wide black weightlifter's belt and three beers beforehand, he will peel the fiber from my forty sheep in a short day's work, if I manage to keep up with him.

He is the temperamental superstar; I am the crew and supporting actor. (The sheep, I suppose, are the anonymous extras: necessary but interchangeable.) Into the pen I go, laying hands on the head of whichever sheep first passes within range. Using the strength of my knees, my back, my arms, and all the force of character I possess, I coax her through the gate and into the capable grip of the shearer.

Out of the pen comes a ponderous matronly-looking ewe covered in six

inches or more of greyish-yellow wool. A few minutes of New Zealand

dance moves with the shearer, and then she returns to me all greasy-clean-white, svelte, and embarrassed. Back in the pen she goes, lesser in diameter and in avoirdupois.

This concludes her Year In Fleece. She will start growing next year's clip as soon as I turn her out to pasture this afternoon. My own Year in Fleece is just beginning: by this time next year, I will have processed that uncomely heap of dirty raw fleece into beautiful, usable, saleable products.

It took my sheep a year to grow the fleece. It will take me a year

to transform their fleece into the income I need to keep them through winter once more. First comes soap and water, then picker and carder. After that it's the spinning wheel, niddy-noddy, and dye vats (all colors), followed by swift and ballwinder and knitting needles (all sizes), unless maybe it's up on the warping board, through the raddle, and onto the beam so I can weave.

The hosts sent me down to open up the lake cabin, because I knew where to find the key. I didn't drink anything on the way in because I wanted to save some for the others - once I start, I don't stop till I've doublechecked all the empties. While I could still flick my bic I laid a fire (fast and hot) in the barbecue pit, then I got lit too.

By the time guests began arriving I was hanging happy, playing with myself a guessing game about who I could convince to try me on for size before the morning. What about her - she came by herself - nah, maybe that means she comes by herself. How about that couple over there - they brought a couple of little kids with them - proof, I suppose, that they know how to do it - but they look pretty content with each other. Ooooh whooooo's THAT??? Longsleeve rashguard, midlength trunks, and eyes that are looking me o-ver. Ye-esssss for that I'll get up and poke the fire.

I worked so hard for my money, those years of dairying. I knew every cost and every savings in a 30-mile radius, whether for diapers or diesel fuel, ketchup or cattle feed, veterinarian supplies or Valentine's Day cards for little kids' school parties. I stretched dimes into dollars and squeezed credit accounts till they cried for mercy.

As soon as I stopped throwing money at cows, I had money to spend. Money to burn, literally: on the cold April day when I cleaned up the dooryard of my house for the final sale, I stacked old fenceposts and slabwood and half-rotted sheds into a pyre.  I doused the heap with old chainsaw fuel and then I twisted a $1, a $5, and a $10 bill into a spill, I borrowed a smoking friend's lighter, and I lit the dollars in defiance of God, cows, low milk prices, high divorce rate, and the endless cold sifting snow. I touched off the burnpile. The flames soared and roared, searing my eyebrows, cauterizing my bleeding heart, and melting all the snow in a half-acre radius.

Years later I still have trouble spending money freely. I'm off public assistance now, I have degrees and a good steady job, but I still get queasy when I do a big grocery shopping or when I balance the checkbook. I thought the feeling of fiscal trauma would never pass.

Then friends took me to a casino for the first and last time, to try to cure me of the shakes.

I brought $200 in twenties: 10 units in which to teach myself what slot machines were all about. The first bill turned into $30 then evaporated fast. Second one went towards the suppertime buffet - no sugar/no flour, though, because that's the strict rule I must follow right now - and then the third and subsequent twenties ebbed and flowed into the dazzling altars of chance until by 1:00am I was as broke as if I were still farming.

My friends stood me to a scotch and soda at the central circular bar. I watched flecks of light fall from the disco ball into my liquor and I thought about fire and ice. I watched a gay couple dirty dancing to the DJ's thumping tunes, and I saw how they were immune to the lure of the slots for as long as they gazed at each other.

I looked out across the rows and rows of glowing slots, each hungry machine being fed and coaxed by a shadowy hunched-over figure - and then I saw the slot machines were the same as cows, and the players were the same as dairymen, and the cash fed into the machines was a no-hope bargain just the same as milking cows, because when the machine printed a voucher or the cow gave milk, the cost of production would always exceed the value of the product.

Gambling is the name for what happens at casinos, and what happens on farms. Farming, especially dairying, is addicting in its power to lure strong people to folly, its numbing mindless repetitive endeavors, its seductive promise of better times ahead, its teasing and tormenting intermittent payoffs, and its cumulative erosive effect on budgets and families.

I was one of the lucky ones. I escaped with enough of my soul, with enough years left, and with enough friends to see me through the reconstruction.