Dog days

Every month, my goal has been to write more often in the blog than I did the month before. Oh well! At least August will make September easier, right? It has been a busy month, nonetheless.

While Peter was in Oxford, Granny came for ten days and, as usual with her Mississippi farm-girl work ethic, made neglected parts of the house sparkle. She also made 7, yes, SEVEN, custard and pumpkin pies, all of which were consumed before she boarded the plane home again. We had three Airedales when I was growing up, all of which we considered my father's, so I'd forgotten how much she likes dogs. Though she was never able to get Josie entirely under control, she eagerly volunteered to walk her in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings. I'm not sure how far they got, but they seem to have come back friends.

Josie graduated from Puppy Kindergarten. Not summa cum laude, but not at the bottom of the class, either! And that last class was brilliant. With the instruction we received then, we now have Josie heeling and paying a good deal more attention to us when we are out walking. Frederic joined us for this last class and all but the graduate celebrated with cones from a neighboorhood creamery.

The school year is drawing near. We had our annual visit to the pediatrician. He usually says of Michael, who talks a mile a minute when nervous, "He's very precocious"; this year, on observing the length of his feet and the width of his shoulders, he said, "He's going to be a giant." Better get my hugs in while I can, then! He pronounced Elizabeth "perfectly healthy," which bolstered her confidence; she seems to need that, since her best friend, with whom she has been inseparable since kindergarten, is moving to a new school. Elizabeth is growing in other ways, too. She's just given me notice that, after nine and a half years, I'm to retire from doing her hair.

I'm working from home today. Michael just came in to report that Josie has been carrying around one of my 5-pound weights. The physiotherapist assigned me to doing biceps curls and "skull crushers"; it seems Josie has decided to do "neck lifts." Just heard some whimpering--hope she didn't drop it on a paw!

It's budget time at work. We are supposed to keep our budgets "flat," that is, not to spend any more money next year than this. I spent a good deal of time working with one of my team members on our various budgets. Some people write in full corporate-speak and it takes a great deal of effort to trim out the jargon and excess verbiage so that the financial controllers can understand the requests. For there are ways around that "keep it flat" directive. As in academia, you try to squeeze as much blood from the stone as possible, and if you want cash, you have to apply for it. I'm asking for cash to expand the archives operations: to launch a conservation effort and to digitize our foundational document, which is almost 200 hundred years old, with copperplate beginning to fade and pages crumbling.

We're going into the city tonight to hear a mass percussion performance at Lincoln Center. Cold and drizzly weather, apparently driven up from the south by Hurricane Dean's romp through Mexico.