Monday night and I spent most of the day sleeping. Got home from Washington at 6:00, arriving in Plattsburgh at 5 a.m. It was great to get home: dead silence except for the birds chirping their first-thing-in-the morning chirps when I got out of the car. It is really wonderful to live here. Hear a white-throated sparrow this morning for the first time this spring. Anyway, the trip to Washington was grand. We took the bus down, left Plattsburgh at 10 Sat. night. I dropped the dogs off at the kennel at 6:30 that night. Tess' first time there, Jack's too. Joan is so great, she thought it was wonderful I was going to the march. Anyway, the trip down was good, no one slept much. There were 2 buses, the quiet and loud, we were on the loud of course. Showed movies all night, nothing we hadn't seen, including Big--Tom Hanks sure was young back then. We had a good time going down, everyone brought some food & we all shared, plus Leisa had a little Jack Daniels to pass around. We got to DC at 6 or so, went right to the mall, wandered around a while. Lots of tents set up, free t-shirts, buttons, signs to carry. Then the speeches started and we were at the front, hanging out on the grass & having a good time. We finally figured we should get back to where the NY State marchers were so we walked way down the mall, found the general area and fell asleep on the grass there. Woke up after they started the march, so we started out with marchers from Penn. Since we lost 3 members of our group of 7 on the way across the mall, we cut across to the beginning of the march, ending up marching with the socialists, which I really liked (their t-shirts said "Pro-choice and Anti-capitalist," I desperately wanted one. Then we switched and started marching with people from California, who had bullhorns and lots of creative slogans to yell. The march took 2 hours even though we didn't go far, it was just really slow because there were so many of us. CNN apparently estimated the crowd at 1.15 million, but newspapers seem to be saying 800,00 or so. Lots of women but some men too. Plenty of women our age but lots of younger women as well. In our group was Leisa, Lin, me, Cheri (the woman who owns the Jay Craft Center) and her daughter, another woman I knew from Saranac Lake, and a third woman who was really strange and I'd never met before. So after the march we sat on the grass and listened to speeches a while longer before heading back to the stadium where the bus was parked (along with about 70 or 80 others). The trip was really well organized, right up to the metro tickets to get us back & forth to the mall. We left DC at 6:30. The trip home was slow, traffic tied up all the way up the East coast on 95 from the march. It was a great time and I'm really glad I had a chance to go.

Now I'm home and it's cold cold cold. Had a fire and had the heat on all day. Picked the dogs up this morning. Joan only charged me for 2 days, not the 3 I expected, plus it was a lot cheaper than I remembered, so all went well. She likes Tess, says she a nice dog (always makes me feel good when she likes me dogs, I consider her a good judge of dog character) and said that Jack barked the whole time she was in the kennel with the dogs but settled down at night.

Tomorrow it's back to work, only now the director will be there. First time I've seen her since Wisc., not looking forward to this. She has no sense about these things, will not know how to approach me or deal with me. She'll either be rude and cold, or will act like an 8-year-old around me.

Liza called me this afternoon, not feeling too great by her own admission. I talked to her for a long time, an hour or so, and she seemed to feel better when we hung up. She liked it that she could call during the day using the phone card so that was a good idea. She didn't sound as bad as she did the other afternoon when I talked to her--Friday afternoon she almost wasn't making any sense. Today she was good, just sad. Me too. Howard called & left a message yesterday, knowing it was Henry's birthday. I thought of Henry a lot during the day, but then I think of him a lot everyday.

Walked to camp on Saturday--the ice went out Friday! Going to camp is still really difficult for me, I just wish Henry were still there--more for him than for me. Everything at camp is fine, it seems strange to have water there rather than ice, but it's nice. A window at the peak on the second floor, in the bedroom at the head of the stairs, broke and there's glass on the ground. It seems to have broken from the inside--that usually means there was a bird inside who flew out through it. I didn't go inside to check it out, had just gone down to take the dogs for a quick swim. I'm trying to get used to going to camp, toughening up, I guess. I know those Rogers cousins will want me to comfort them this summer, telling me how wonderful Henry was and how great a loss to the family it is, how different camp is without him, etc., so I want to be able to be there myself (if I'm doing to go there at all, that is). If I never reach the point this year where I can be there and enjoy it, then that's the way it goes. I don't need to be there.

The dogs survived their incarcertion just fine. Because it was so short I think Tess thought of it as an adventure. Jack jumped in the car and went right to sleep in the back seat. Tess and Chances sat in the front seat and watched the road through the windshield all the way home. They really are a special pair. It will be good to sleep in my own bed with them tonight.

I started reading East of Eden on the bus, only read a dozen or so pages. Whew! This is a big, long book. And now I'm having my nightly therapy of Law and Order (you know, Crime). Oh yeah, found a cool site, I think it's redefeatbush.com. They had shirts and stickers and posters.