Cold night last night, cold morning. Lots of rain, which was lucky for my flowers and plants because I didn't water them before going to bed. Poor yellow pansies were prostrate and collapsible. Dogs ran off this morning when I let them out and crawled back under the covers. First Jack came back, stood over me and barked, then he lay down in a little ball (little is a relative term when you're talking about a 70-lb dog) and was quiet. This helped less, as it quieted me down too. When I finally got up to feed them, they were all gone. I called work to say I'd be in when I could retrieve the retrievers. They came back, I fed them, turned to brush my teeth with the screen door latched shut. Oh no, not good enough for them, they punched hole #3 in the door and off they went again. What pigs they all are. Chances came back in 5 minutes but the other two took a long walk while I paced in the living room, watched Jimmy Buffet on the Today show and cursed them a lot. I finally made it to work. As Kristen would say, "woo-hoo."

Last night was really nice. I had my book group, minus 2, meet first at my house then wander down to camp. We had the mother of one, the woman who used to work with me in Providence 20 something years ago, join us, so that was nice. Another librarian in her 50's. We met on the boat house porch and they were all duly impressed with the facility and my dessert. We had a short, decisive discussion of the book. All agreed that, shortened and to the point it would have made 4 great articles in The New Yorker. We spent a lot of the rest of the 2 1/2 hours talking about ourselves, then about other books we liked that we've read. So, Kristen, we turned it into what you said it would become for you, which I thought was interesting. And at some points during the discussion we got fairly personal about ourselves in discussing some points of the book. Well, heck, there was a whole chapter on man's relationship with marijuana and marijuana's relationship with man, and the cannabinoids in our brains. The book is Botany of Desire, should anyone be interested to pursue this. A chapter on apples, one on the tulip (very interesting), one on marijuana, and one on the potato (most interesting). Man's relationship to plants and the relationship plants have to man. Good for me, since I've always believed that plants have a proactive relationship in the cosmos and have always influenced me in ways other than the effect they have upon smoking or ingestion. This is a spiritual thing.

So anyway I enjoyed the gathering of the clan, and liked seeing my friend Mary again. Interesting to see her again after all these years. Her daughter is getting married next week at her boyfriend's camp, just down the road from where Lin lives. Small world this is.

And I heard from the gravestone guy, got the bill for Henry's stone. A note on the bill says he put the stone near the monument. WRONG PLACE. I now have the unpleasant task of checking it out to see exactly where it is, then calling Abe (last name Lincoln, no less) to have him move it to the RIGHT PLACE, near Spaulding's grave, as I told him when I met with him. Lovely. Oh hell, let's just put ourselves in random spots around the site, shall we?

Today's work has been full of union v. management strife--trying to reach an agreement on a payroll/days off issue that management wanted settled by today, but only gave us their counter-proposal yesterday afternoon for. This after we gave them our final, yes final proposal a month ago. Games, it's all games, pure mindfuck. So now I have to gather the troops next week and explain to the 4 who think we should go along with mgt's proposal WHY it's not good to go back on your final offer. blech.

Tonight I'm going out with a woman I haven't seen for probably 13 years, who used to be my closest friend, a neighbor from the first years I lived here. She and her boyfriend and my husband and I cooked dinner together every single night because they didn't have running water so they liked eating at our house. We did everything together and were inseparable. Then we bought our house and moved and they broke up (and he put water in the house as soon as she left: one of the main reasons she left was his refusal to bring the water line from the barn into the house). So now I'm seeing her for the 2nd time in 13 years, which will be really nice. She's married to someone I've never met, has been for 15 years or so. Life is an interesting turn of events, isn't it.

What's up for the weekend, let's see. Call my sister to say good-bye and have a good trip home. Call Kristen to see how she's doing now that the tribe has dwindled down. Plant those fucking geraniums in the ground somewhere, anywhere. Maybe stay in the boathouse. Visit with Ken. The crazy women from Baltimore are coming on Saturday, staying in the cabin up the hill behind Ken's so I'm sure I'll see them on Sunday, maybe at Sunday dinner. Next weekend is 4th of July and Sonci will be crawling with people. The water is in...sort of. You have to turn it on with the valve on the ground that's nearest the pump (I love my male cousins) and the toilet in main camp doesn't work because it needs a new tank (they're working on that). Guess I shouldn't complain, if you do everything just right water will come out of the faucets. You can't leave the hot water tanks on, though, because you have to turn the valve off when you leave, apparently, so you don't want to burn out the elements in the hot water tanks. Whattafuck.