I just had 2 days off, which felt great.  I got to spend time, relaxing time with my mother and Mark.  We laughed, we got organized, we worked in the cemetery, we hung out at camp.  It was really nice.  Just before they left we posed on the porch at camp and took our own picture, the three of us.  Who knows how it will turn out: our heads might be cut off, it was really hard to look through the viewfinder of the camera, propped up on a stool on the dinner table.  Funny, though.  Cousin Elsa finally made her son outrageously happy by getting gas to put in the motor boat, so he zoomed around the lake a few times, taking me for a nice ride, along with my 2 dogs (who did NOT think riding in a motor boat was a really cool thing to do).  He reminded me so much of myself, finding great solace and peace in flying around the lake in an old tin boat with a semi-fast motor, alone in the world, leaving a wake behind me.  I loved doing that, loved the perspective you get of the shore from the water.  I know that's one of the great things about fly-fishing, that you're in the water, participating in a totally different way.

I slept in Dockside, the small cabin that sits on the shore just at the water's edge.  The dogs adjust well to that and Chances trots right on down there at night when it's time for bed.  I love that cabin with its nest-like property.  It's small, built of wood that's aged beautifully, and has doors that open up to the world of the lake.  In the early morning the dogs bark agressively at the mergansers who are close to shore, making the ducks quack quack quack indignantly (yes, Jenica, they're still pooping on the dock, but only on the very end now).  I don't think they have a clue what they're barking at, but they sure do have a good time.

I woke at 2:00 last night and stared into the darkness, total darkness of the lake and mountains just beyond my bed.  I contemplated being bipolar, and the distinction between my personality and my mental illness.  This is something I often think of.  Where does one begin and the other end?  Is there any difference between the two?  It's complicated because I want people to always remember that I'm bipolar when they observe my behavior--it's queer behavior, and I can only do so much to control it.  I'm pumped full of chemicals and my brain has been altered a lot, but my neurons will always fire in a different pattern.  Then again, I want to be treated the same as everyone else because I don't want to be "different," I've struggled all my life with being a strange person that no one ever understood.  Well, no one does understand me and no one ever will (the only one who comes close is my psychiatrist, and that will probably always be true).  Maybe that's a good thing in life, to hold the key to yourself.  I don't know, it's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it.  Being intelligent is a lot of work.  Being bipolar is twelve times more work--you always struggle to keep your behavior under control, to monitor what you say, how you say it, what you do, what you think, how you feel.  You will never know what it feels like to be normal, to have normal emotions or feelings, to behave normally or even the way other peoplel do.  That's one of the most difficult things I face every day: what do other people feel?  How is it for normal people?

On a brighter note, my family (what's left of it) is preparing to gather soon.  This is a good thing, a wonderful thing I'm looking forward to.  I decided not to go to Rhode Island on Monday, as I had thought I might.  I have too much to do here, and too many people to see here, so I will stay at home for part of my vacation and take advantage of what the Adirondacks has to offer me.  There is a party for Ken on Sunday evening, celebrating his 90th birthday.  It will be really nice, even if his son from Penn. is planning to come (we don't like Carl, he's never around and doesn't really understand Ken or his lifestyle).  Saturday afternoon will be spent with the Hawkeye Conservationists, first a presentation by the director of the Adirondack Council, then a meeting then a social hour.  I have to make something with blueberries to take to the group.  Martha Stewart has a nice recipe for blueberry shortbread in this month's issue of her magazine and I think I'll try it.  Must take advantage of her while we still can.

And now I should move along to the data base training module that I'm supposed to be working on.  I've put it off for months and am supposed to have it finished before I leave for vacation.  Since tomorrow's my last day it's time to be productive.  My thoughts are with the people in the Midwest, hoping the visit to the doctor tomorrow will bring some resolution to this and maybe even some new information and/or treatment.  It must be so hard not knowing what sort of day you're going to have each morning when you get up.  I hope things improve for Kristen--you're in my thoughts all the time.

Now that I've completed cataloging an entire set of Jackie Chan's earlier works (in Cantonese with American subtitles) for the Schroon Lake library I can take some time off and blog.  I'm excited that there are so many bloggers covering the Democratic convention.  I think this is really revolutionary in the media in America right now, and a grand way for us to keep up with what's happening.  I want to take a television down to camp, where my mother and her friend are visiting for a few days, to hear the speeches.  Liza doesn't want a tv there but Mark is interested so I'm not sure how it will go.  Mostly I want to hear the keynote speech and I'd like to hear Kerry's acceptance speech on Wednesday.  Since we may go to Potsdam either of those days it's unlikely I'll hear them both anyway so the point is probably mute (as they say here).

I'm off for two days, tomorrow and Weds.  This feels quite strange, having time off in the middle of the week.  I was busy today, getting ready to be gone, plus reminding myself that I'm scheduled to be on vacation for two weeks starting a week from today.  Who knows what my plans will be, though.  Doesn't look as if I'll be flying to Cleveland so I'm thinking of other options.  Stay here and build my deck with Ken.  Go to Rhode Island for a few days before the Rogers meeting.  I'd fly to Cleveland and meet my friend Priscilla there but I don't have a flight back scheduled until mid-August so there I'd be, sans transportation home.

Jenica set me up for a great weekend with her friends.  Thursday she and Drew arrived during the day, I saw them for just a minute.  Friday night I had dinner with camp friends, Bill and Ken, a nice time since their sons were there.  One son is in music school, learning how to be an opera singer; the other is doing his chiropractic internship and is a fountain of information about the human body.  We had a really nice evening.  Saturday I hung out at home a bit and went to camp in the afternoon to mingle with the young 'uns.  They're really a nice group of people and I completely enjoy being with them.  It got really windy on the dock, so in spite of the warm sun it was very cold.  The water is warm, 75 degrees supposedly, so Sarahanne and I swam (my first of the season, she said without embarrassment).  Tess is quite the swimmer and jumps off the dock with glee.  I went home to mow the lawn, was interrupted by the people I dined with Friday night, who arrived to stack the 3.5 cords of wood I had.  YAHOO!  This was a fantastic help to me and we set up a chain to get it done.  It took about 1.5 hours, even with that many people doing it.  Imagine how long it would have taken lowly me.  Now it's all done and is grand to see.  After they left I finished mowing the lawn--my outdoor domestic chores are done, except for weeding, which I barely started doing.  I did a tiny bit of indoor cleaning but the dogs did more paper shredding and other messing up to keep up with whatever paltry attempts I made at cleaning.

I went to camp for dinner with Jen & friends, then stayed for a game of Trivial Pursuit.  They are good, very good.  It's fun to compare their depth and breadth of knowledge with mine.  I've certainly lost a lot of pieces of information over the years.  Anyway, they are all very intelligent, charming and witty and we laughed a lot.  I really enjoyed myself.  And they are wonderful to my dogs, incredibly tolerant and loving, which scores total huge points.  Sunday morning the dogs escaped and went straight to camp.  Jackson and Chances returned to me, but those guys thought it was Jackson they saw swimming in circles in front of the next camp down so they gamely paddled out to rescue him.  It was the neighbors' yellow Lab, known for his swimming disorder and insane behavior, but I thought it was so sweet of them to go to such lengths to rescue my dog.  Tess spent the morning with them, swimming and visiting.  They treat her much better than I do, apparently.

I had Sunday dinner with Bill, Ken, and a Plattsburgh State graduate who was visiting from Long Island.  He felt like taking a long ride on his BMW motorcycle so he came up for a night.  I've spent time with him before so it was a nice, companionable visit.  He loved Chances and wanted to take her home with him but Ken thought that since he had no helmet for her it wouldn't be appropriate for her to ride on his bike.  I do have wonderful dogs, this is true.  They are very, very sweet.

Sunday afternoon I returned to camp, made Liza's and Mark's beds and spent a little time on the boat house porch, reading and listening to the water lapping.  Dozed a bit, then they arrived.  Liza isn't feeling too well but is happy to be in the Adirondacks.  Jenica returned from her trip to Burlington to deliver Tamara and Jonathan to their plane and had dinner with us, then left for home.  I stayed to visit with Liza and Mark, then went home myself.  The lake was like glass.  The mergansers who had taken up residence on the dock weren't there last night, though they were there when Jenica and friends were staying in the boat house.  Elsa says as soon as Ben puts in their float the ducks will move over there.  She's right.  The heron spends plenty of time in our bay.  The lilies aren't in bloom but seem to be doing ok.  Jim put a new toilet in main camp, at last.  Life goes on.

FOR A DANCER 
Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must've always thought you'd be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found 

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song playing right in my ear
That I can't singI can't help listening 
I can't help feeling stupid standing 'round
Crying as they ease you down
'Cause I know that you'd rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away(Right on dancing)
No matter what fate chooses to play
(There's nothing you can do about it anyway) 
Just do the steps that you've been shown
By everyone you've ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you'll do alone

 Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

 Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know 

(c) 1974 SWALLOW TURN MUSIC

Well no one can accuse Jackson Browne of being too perky, now can they.  I took out the Late for the Sky CD yesterday to listen to something different on the way home from work.  I was doing fine until the song After the Deluge came on.  I always loved that song and it never made me cry before, but something about it really got to me.  Maybe it's because I feel life on the planet is so tenuous in general these days.  I've felt that way since I was 8 years old, so maybe I'm just getting more and more cautious about the future, or maybe I'm just resigned to thinking that there may just not BE a future after all.  I don't know.  Anway, certainly Jackson Browne has nice music, but certainly it is sad, tragic, depressing--especially that stuff from the '70's, when his wife committed suicide.  So today on the way to work I listened to early Springsteen, a big improvement mood-wise.

We're having a heat wave, not a tropical heat wave, just an Adirondack version of one.  Temps in the 80's and humid.  Jenica is here and went swimming yesterday.  Reported that it felt great and she can't believe I haven't been in yet.  She's right, it would have made sense for me to have been in by now but I haven't been motivated, I haven't spent that much time at camp, and the weekends haven't been that nice.  I stayed at camp on Weds. night--it was warm, it was my last chance to be in the boat house for a while, and it just seemed like a nice thing to be able to do.  It was nice, very peaceful.

Busy week for my social life.  Book group met Weds. night but I had forgotten that and set something up with Ken so had to skip it.  The book wasn't that good and it turned out that no one really liked it, although according to Lin they had a good discussion (we always do).  I had a nice evening with Ken but it was hot at his house, even sitting on his porch.  Last night I did pretty much nothing.  Stopped by camp for a minute to see Jenica before she and Drew left for Burlington to pick up Tamara.  I was watching tv when Sarahanne and John came to my house, desperate in their search for camp.  I was impressed that they knew to find my house.  It was good to see them.  I sent them on their way (I hope).  The dogs were so thrilled to see them, I always think it's funny to watch their reaction to the arrival of people, especially in the dark of night.  First suspicion, but then always joy and great excitement.

Too much excitement, though, when I finally went to bed at 2 it turned out that Chances had peed a huge puddle in the middle of the bed.  Man was I mad.  I smacked her, which I never, ever do.  She hid under the table in shame (not pain, I would never hit a dog hard enough to hurt her).  I had to change the bed, soak the futon with the odor/stain remover, cover it all with towels then try to get to sleep smelling the alcohol of that.  She even peed on the pillow but did manage to miss the comforter this time, luckily.  Honestly, I don't know what it is with this dog.  This morning Jackson pushed the door to the bedroom open so Chances got into the kitchen, got the new jar of peanut butter off the counter and managed to eat HALF of it before I got up to take it away from her.  Burp.  At least her coat should be shiny and her cholesterol low.

I had my performance characteristics done by the director (with whom I'm in the middle of a grievance right now, dragging on since November).  She did a good job of saying nice and positive things about me.  She searched for negative things, could only come up with "you could make better use of a calendar"--a huge flaw in herself, and "sometimes when you work on a project you do it too quickly and don't think it through all the way," not true of me really but definitely true of her.  I disputed neither of these, figuring I was getting of lightly, as she could accuse me of all the things she has in the past (the things I've filed my grievance about).  This document goes in my personnel file and will be good fodder for the grievance, since she says such good things about me that contradict the memo she wrote that I'm grieving.  Let's hope she retires in February, as she's told countless people outside our building that she's planning to.

And now I have 1.5 hours until the weekend.  Must stop to get food for Liza and Mark's dinner Sunday night, plus something for them to eat on Monday, then home quickly before going to dinner with the people I had dinner with earlier in the week.  Tomorrow morning I hope to mow the lawn.  No, really.

My life is rated NC-17.
What is your life rated?

Well that's pretty tame, if you ask me.

It's finally summer here, without being extreme. Sunny, warm and very nice. I took the dogs to the vet on Monday night--took the boy on Saturday for $100 to pronounce him healthy and wise. He's cured of whatever his problem was and is just fine. Monday was girls' night and the two behaved very well. Chances has lost 9 pounds, much to the delight of all in the office. Tess only weighs 45 pounds, which surprised me. She was the belle of the ball. I saw my friends the Guckers there, whom I haven't seen in a few years. The joy of going to the Keeseville office is that you never know who you might see there. It was a real joy to see them, we used to spend a lot of time together and Robin was a great source of support and love during my dark, dark days in the mid-90's. I waited for their appointment to end--their young golden retriever has what might be giardia (beaver fever) from drinking out of streams while they've been hiking in the wilderness. Who knew dogs could get this? Anyway, we went out for dinner afterwards and had a really nice time. So good to see them again.

I've done review of performance characteristics for both of my staff members with the director--we sit in her office, the staff member, the director and I and I review what I've already told them and what I've written about them. It seems pretty stupid and repetitious to mee but I asked them about it afterwards and they liked it so I guess that's the format that works. Today I get my performance characteristcs done by the director (like having your palm read by an evil prophesisit), which makes me extremely nervous. She's not to be trusted so I'm prepared for the worst. This is the first time we've ever done anything like this at the library so it's all uncharted territory and could go either way. I only said GOOD things about my staff, hoping to set a good example, and have checked with other supervisors--they did the same.

Last night I went to the cemetery to see Henry's headstone. I thought it would be very emotional and a deep experience for me but it really meant very little. It's just his name in stone. I dug a spot for them to put it permanently and will call them today telling them that. It's just sitting on the grass by the big monument right now. I also, finally, planted all the geraniums (22 of them) that I've had at the house. The blossoms have been rotting from all the rain we've had and the plants look pretty scrawny so it's not exactly a beautiful showing for the crowd that will show up in August. Maybe Mark and Liza can jazz it up next week. I took Chances and Tess and the ran and ran and ran. Boy did they run--as far away as they could in that cemetery, which is pretty far in that place.

After the cemetery I went to visit the Camerons, who are renting Bill's camp (formerly Ken's camp). This is the man who took a course from Spaulding at Rockford College. They're here for 2 weeks, come every year and love to have Ken and me come as often as possible for dinner. I missed dinner (intentionally, wanted to get to the cemetery) but had a nice visit with them. We talked a lot about dog antics--not that many people you can spend an hour talking about that with, are there.

I didn't really have a good weekend, spent too much time sleeping. I always get nervous about that, take it as a sign of depression. I find no comfort when people say "you must have needed it," since I rarely do anything to exert myself. I don't get much sleep during the week, though. Saturday it poured and poured, but cleared up enough for us to sit around the camp fire at Linda's one last time before she left on Sunday. Then we had a nice dinner and of course the obligatory alcohol--whiskey, wine, scotch, rum. boom, boom, boom. All in moderation, thank god. Sunday we had a nice Sunday dinner with Fred and Joe (Ken's nephew, who travels all over the world with his job, much the way Henry used to but even more) so it was more festive than usual. Then I went home and slept all afternoon. This was after having slept most of the morning in the boat house, watching the mountains emerge from the morning haze. At least I stacked firewood for half an hour in the evening. Phil Cameron has offered the services of his two grown sons and himself to stack my 4 cords (now 3.5 cords) this weekend. Although I really, really hate to have people help me with things, I'm toying with the idea of asking for their help. It would be so simple and would take no time at all for them to do it. It just seems so lazy to have someone else stack your firewood--it's your responsibility, after all. And I truly HATE having people do things for me. Truly.

I thought my book group met tonight but just called Lin and she's sure it's next week. Whew! First of all, I haven't quite finished the book (Zadie Smith, White Teeth), second of all I've double-booked tonight and am due to cook for Ken so can't go to book group. He's all excited about tonight and has bought special food just for the occasion (ok, so it's only macaroni salad and baked beans, but for him to do that is really a big deal), so I can't cancel him. He's psyched. We're having hamburgers and will enjoy a touch of the creature before dinner. He's got this really good brandy that someone brought him. Maybe I'll buy him a bottle of good whiskey on my way home--he tried to go to the liquor store yesterday but was there too early and they weren't open yet.

So today I'll catalog some more videos--it's and endless stream for me. The member libraries take whatever donations they get to add to their collections, plus they buy the castoffs from the local video stores. It's really the biggest pile of junk and I can't believe what they call a collection, but they haven't asked my advice about collection development (yet) so I do what I do. The water temperature of Silver Lake is reported to be 75 degrees. There's no water in the beaver dam at the head of the lake, according to Phil--he was there on Monday and said it's just mud now, no water. Nature has a way of changing things.

Well, my map left out a couple of states (like, say NEW YORK) but all in all it's pretty typical that I've covered the East Coast and left a whole bunch of the Northwest unvisited. That's where I've always wanted to go. And Alaska. I have two more friends who are going there this summer. Well, that's good--someone should go there.

create your own

 
There certainly are some interesting places I HAVEN'T been to in this country, aren't there.  Some places I've always wanted to go.  Guess I've covered the Rust Belt pretty thoroughly, back and forth a few times even.
 
Heavy air here today, stuffy and muggy.  We had rain over the weekend.  Yesterday morning it was semi-sunny, thick haze over the lake, taking away the mountains until the haze burned off and they reappeared.  Sort of the way my consciousness reappeared, slowly.  I lay in bed in the boat house, staring out at the lake for a long time (while the brown girls stared at me from above, standing on the bed looking down at me as they do in the morning).  Little did I know that Tess had shredded half a box of kleenex on the porch in the wee hours.  If that's all she did I was lucky, though.  At home I've got all my shoes piled in the bathroom, which is shut off from her at night.  I've lost some precious shoes now to the little darling.
 
Saturday I had to go to Westport, which is a beautiful town on Lake Champlain, but the part I went to is not on the lake, it's on the highway.  Took Jackson to the vet, tried to give him back.  No luck.  That's ok, he's mine now.  He's healthy, a good weight, no heartworms, all shot up.  I'd just watched a Sharon Stone movie in which she gets executed, 4 vials of stuff go into her veins.  Jack got 4 vials of stuff shot into his veins too, only he didn't die, he perked right up and wagged his tail a lot.  Loved being the center of attention.
 
Saturday night was the final night of Linda's visit, this time.  She'll be back in 2 weeks.  We had our usual drinkathon.  Whiskey first, then wine, then scotch, then rum.  I can do that, especially since the last three were in moderation.  Just a shot of each,  to savor.  Apparently Erdvilas drinks like that at home too.  How a human could function is beyond me.  But then, I don't think he really does.  Sunday was Sunday dinner, 5 of us this week so it was festive and nice.  Spent the afternoon sleeping.  This is dangerously close to clinical depression, I'm afraid.  I'm keeping my psychiatrist's number at hand and think I may need to adjust my meds.  I'm just sleeping too much these days and have no interest in much of anything.   I did stack firewood for 1/2 an hour last night, though, which belies the depression theory.  Let's see what this week brings.  Tonight I hope to take the chocolates to the vet for their $100 conversation with David (each, that is--for $100 I get their company and good health for a year, I don't think that's bad at all, really).  I had a 2 p.m. appointment but had to cancel it because I can't take the afternoon off, too much to do.  Now I have to go and wait with the rest of the walk-ins.  Keeseville boogers, yuck.  We all sit in the waiting room and stare at each other, comparing pets and guts.  Sometimes it's entertaining but sometimes it's just really depressing because there are people who've never taken their pets to the vet at all.
 
Molly's been working hard on the program for Henry's memorial service.  Henry's memorial service.  God that sounds awful.  I guess it's the last thing we'll do about all this, together anyway.  I'm surprising myself by planning to read something.  I never have the strength to do that, but what I'm reading I really like and is something that is personal for me and seems to mesh with what I feel about Henry as well as some of my philosophy about humankind.  Since it's not a personal recollection about Henry, I think I can do it.  It's not a poem, sentimental or emotional, it's analytical.  Besides, it's Steinbeck.  That should make it ok to read.  We'll see how I do.  If I get to go first that should help a whole lot, too.  I spoke at Kox's memorial, rambled on a bit but did get to say some things about how much she meant to me as a child and how important she always was in my life.
 
And now it's time to do some more cataloging.  Children's books, adult books and then the bane of my professional existence: videos.

Just (proudly) finished cataloging the backlog of Saranac Lake's stuff. Books on tape and videos. The last one was a 1965 Sandra Dee, Bobby Darin video, which I had to do all original cataloging for, as no library among the 40,000 in the data base we use for cataloging confesses to owning it. My favorite subject heading in the whole bunch I just cataloged came from a recorded book: Jesus Christ--Drama. Isn't that appropriate for our lives these days. My father used to say Christ on a crutch! but that seems to take a long time to say when you're looking for an expletive. We used to try out Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, but that, too takes a long time to say. I was thinking this morning of two things my sister taught me when I was a child. You'll see the relevance in a moment. One was that, water does NOT come out of a hose faster if you put your finger over the end to make it spray harder. Oh I wanted to believe she was wrong about that, but she was seldom wrong about things of that nature. This came to me while I was filling the dogs' water bowl. The other was the meaning of the word shit ("Know what SHIT means?" no. "It means poop!" This conversation took place in the basement of 625 Rome Avenue, where Henry had his electric train set, where we had our television--black and white--set up, where we had "the pink shelves" full of canned goods that I took comfort would get us though survival in case of a nuclear attack, and where we kept some of our pet rats, also to where these pet rats would occasionall escape). This came to me as I was on my hands and knees cleaning up Jackson's diarrhea (to which I know I've referred to too much already in this blog lately) this morning at 7:30. If I cared more about this dog I'd be concerned but it seems my only real concern is that my house is starting to smell really bad. And yes, Kristen, you're right: dog shit smells at LEAST as bad, if not worse than cat shit. Hell, it's all bad. At least he has the good sense to poop on the vinyl floor and not the rug. I guess he gets points for trying. I noticed this morning that his tail and underpants are also green, adding to his charm, I guess.

I was awakened this morning by a pebble being dropped on my head by little Tess, who had found my stash of Sicily stones. Where she found them I'm not sure, but she has an uncanny ability to find things I don't want her to have. So boink! she dropped it from a standing height above me, hit me square on the forehead. Who could really mind waking up to that, when I love the way a dog's chin looks from below. You never really got the full effect of that with the dachshunds we had as children.

It's supposed to rain for the next 4 days. Guess this means I will NOT mow my lawn, but it will instead grow and grow while I wait. Some people mow their lawns BEFORE the grass is shin-height. At least I went to the dump this morning on my way to work. The dump man liked me, he said I had a good sense of humor. Nice to be appreciated by someone. Dump men are not easy to please, either.

What is going on with me? I just got home from Ken's, where we had a nice, companionable dinner and he really liked what I cooked, actually ate a lot of the leftover pork I sliced thinly and cooked with barbecue sauce for him. I listened to him tell me some new stories and some old stories, mostly about his brother and his uncle and the days they spent trapping foxes and minks, selling pelts for $50 a long time ago. Now I'm home, collapsing in a heap of tears and helplessness. There's a lot happening inside of me, literally and figuratively.

I have cramps. This makes me think I have endometriosis again, though I don't see how this can be possible, and I had my physical recently and all was declared ok, but it reminds me how afraid of this disease I truly am. Maybe I never let myself be afraid of the disease, since it wasn't cancer and was never going to kill me. All it did was do a lot of damage, cause a lot of pain and alter the course of my life. Anyway, strange feelings inside of me.

I had to retrieve my dogs from far, far away. Nearly two miles from my house, down the black top. They were at the Beach House, playing with the neighborhood children (who are wonderful, sweet and loving children and reminded me why I adore children so much: they loved my dogs and were so much fun for me to play with while I was getting my dogs). It was the chocolate girls, of course, and they followed a jogger all the way there, then stopped to play with a dog who was with the kids. Luckily Laura, Leroy's daughter who bartends, called me to tell me my dogs were there. Neighbors are good (but need to be kept at a distance). My dogs are bad. I'm worried about the future of my dogs.

I had to vacuum my bed. The whole concept of vacuuming a bed is fairly disgusting, is it not. The dogs (I know it was really Tess) got into the basket dye again. The powdered stuff, activated by water. She spread it all over the bedspread, and I had to vacuum it up before it got wet and stained the lovely spread Lin gave me to improve the look of my bedroom. There's only a small green stain, where she licked the package open. I noticed, however, that the maple floor is covered with blue dots from the time she spread the blue dye all over the place and it apprently rained in by the window and the dye was on the floor. Meanwhile, Jackson the blonde dog had dye up to his ankles this morning when he first went outside and the dye got wet so he now has green feet. Looks like a leprachaun. This part is amusing. They are very bright green. He would be endearing if he did not have diarrhea.

I am having a very hard time dealing with my brother's death today. For some reason it's worse today than other days. Nothing triggered it, it just started on the way to work in the car and has continued off and on all day. I don't know how to deal with this. I feel as if I've made an offer that was grossly inappropriate, but was made in total innocence, and made as a gesture to help and be supportive. Well, that's the story of my life in many ways. Act first, deal with the consequences. I feel as if I'm always apologizing for my actions, as if I'm so often misunderstood, and therefore very lonely. Which brings me to my brother, who helped me get away from that by helping me remove that feeling from within me. But the process wasn't completed and I lost my source of strength, so here I am. My this sounds whiny and insecure. But that's how I'm feeling right now. whine away.

I have too much work to do to and around my house and I can't seem to get started on any of it. I have to stack firewood. I have to weed my gardens. I have to mow my lawn. First I have to buy a gas can and fill it with gas. I have to get lumber to build a new deck, then I have to build a new deck. Mostly I have to stack firewood. I have to go to the dump. I have to clear off my deck. I have to vacuum the living room (heck, now that the bed is done you'd think I'd be all warmed up...). I have to clean the library so you can at least see the floor. I have to register Sonci's new boat. OK, so I've just made a list. Write these things down so you can cross them off when/if you get them done.

And now the dryer stopped running (it tick tick ticks when it goes round), the dogs are asleep and it's absolutely quiet, dead still in the house. I love it. I have to decide whether to sleep in the boat house or not.

Well if I am the universe card I owe it all to the wonders of modern chemistry. I had a hard time choosing between the sun (which I worship for its warmth) and the moon (which I love because of it's control over the earth vis a vis the tides, control over emotions, and not the least thing: moonlight). So am I living my dream? Well, I like my job and can't really think of one I'd find more satisfying. Work situation perhaps, but not the work itself. I love where I live and the situation itself. I'd have one less dog but I have no one to blame for that but myself. I'd have more money but then, I could get a part-time job if I really wanted more money. It would interfere with my quality of life in one way but improve the quality of my life in another way. Life is full of trade-offs, that's what I know is true.

I had a bad, very bad morning. Cried a lot. Tears show up on a dark purple dress. People don't like it when they walk past your desk and you're at your keyboard, typing and crying. It makes them feel really bad. But they get over it and so do you. Tonight life returns to "normal." Dinner with Ken. All dogs present and accounted for this morning. This is no small task and took 20 minutes to accomplish.

You are the Universe card, sometimes called the
World card. The Universe is the complete,
perfect whole. The spiritual path has come to
an end and enlightenment is reached. Events
have reached completion. The different facets
of your life are well-integrated and
harmoniously balanced. This is an ideal state
in which to rest and feel the true state of
your vibrant physical being. Your creative
potential is maximized and you have achieved
goals that you have set for yourself in the
past. After enjoying the pleasure of this
state, a new cycle can begin with new
challenges and triumphs that will keep you
feeling alive and keep building on the
foundations you have planted thus far. Image
from The Stone Tarot deck.
http://hometown.aol.com/newtarotdeck/


Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

You are the Universe card, sometimes called the
World card. The Universe is the complete,
perfect whole. The spiritual path has come to
an end and enlightenment is reached. Events
have reached completion. The different facets
of your life are well-integrated and
harmoniously balanced. This is an ideal state
in which to rest and feel the true state of
your vibrant physical being. Your creative
potential is maximized and you have achieved
goals that you have set for yourself in the
past. After enjoying the pleasure of this
state, a new cycle can begin with new
challenges and triumphs src="http://images.quizilla.com/K/Koshari/1072668967_heUniverse.jpg" border="0" alt="The Universe that will keep you
feeling alive and keep building on the
foundations you have planted thus far. Image
from The Stone Tarot deck.
http://hometown.aol.com/newtarotdeck/


Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

OK, so don't take Ativan when you have to catalog videos, books on tape, or weed old fiction. It really makes you develop an attitude toward the work you're doing. Like, you know, do I really care what the subject headings are? And which actors should have links to the video of this movie? Maybe I'll just leave out the headliners and include the lesser-knowns to give them their moments of fame in our online catalog. And as for the weeding, let's just throw them all out without checking to see if they've circulated, except for the ones with nice jackets on them. If they have clean jackets with nice pictures, maybe we should keep them. Yeah, that's the ticket, let's have a good-looking collection of books, the hell with circulation figures. We're not open to the public anyway so it's not as if anyone ever actually SEES our books. And now I'm frantically sucking down Diet Coke trying to care about SOMETHING, anything. I can't possibly catalog anymore videos or books on tape, I just don't care about format or subject headings. And now is certainly not the time to do the performance characteristics for the second clerk, who is currently not speaking, or even establishing eye contact with clerk #1. I finished up the perf. chars. for clerk #1 and went over them with her. She seemed to think it was ok but said I don't praise her enough. jesushchrist. What a good dog you are here, have a milk bone. So now I have to do the difficult one, clerk #2, who has a very difficult personality but does excellent work. Very hard to please (impossible, really), shuns you when you don't please her, is not a good old-fashioned team player. And that's what we look for here on Team Tech Services, team players. I play the role of Department Head and cataloger and general asshole, according to them.

Tomorrow is our 40th anniversary celebration at our annual meeting. We're supposed to have collected reminiscences of lots of fun times we've all had. I've been here 20 years, hard to believe I've worked here half as long as this agency has been in existence. When I came there were 2 bookmobiles and 25 employees. Now there is one bookmobile and 12 employees. Can't blame me for that. Anyway, it's lunch and tales and yucks, will kill most of the day. Group hug. The board will tell us how wonderful we are. We agreed unanimously to accept their counter offer yesterday. They countered their own offer, which I thought was pretty funny, but it was a good offer for us so we said yes. Now let's put this payroll mess away and get to the real fight: contract negotiations. Roll up our sleeves and let the bloodletting begin.

Bruce Springsteen sighting! Went to the Lake Placid horse show on Friday, took the day off to go with two friends, I love going to that horse show. It has some of the best horses and riders in the world. Bruce Springsteen's young daughter rides in it and every year he and Patty Scialfa go to Placid to be with her while she competes. Although my friends and I spent 4 hours at the show, wandering through the barns, petting the soft, soft muzzles of the $100,000 horses, watching 70 horses jump fences and admiring the most Labrador retrievers collected together in one place since the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, we only saw Patty, not Bruce. Last night, however, my other set of friends who are in camp now, went out to dinner (the postponed trip to Tail O'The Pup) and I declined the invitation to go. Who did Linda sit butt to butt witih? BRUCE, of course! His kids were eating their first lobster so she heard the entire discourse on how he eats a lobster. She said it was really cool and that he looked great, is a little short and they were driving a black Lincoln Navigator. So there you have it, my missed Brush With Greatness. But I had a great day at the horse show and really enjoyed my friends and the horses. God the horses are gorgeous.

The rest of the weekend was busy, so unusual for me. Saturday was the road cleanup sponsored by the Hawkeye Conservationists. We met at the bog, got our garbage bags, and wandered down the hardtop (called the macadam by the Rogers family and some members of another generation), picking up bits of garbage. I was with Linda's and my friend Mary Kay and my elderly friend Doug. We had a lot of fun. There were a dozen different kinds of wildflowers, a million deer tracks, a deer bed (no, not queen size, just a spot where it went round and round in the grass, tamped it down and slept for the night--right next to the road in the tall grass, go figure), and about 100 cigareet butts. The dozen or so of us who were picking up garbage were stunned at the number of cigarette butts and were also stunned at how little garbage there was. We expected more beer cans (we only found 2 in the 1/2 mile we covered) but were pleased not to find more. After the clean-up we got together for a cook-out at the President's camp, a big expensive year-round place down by the island--we've been there before so it wasn't one of those "oooh, I can't wait to see the place" gatherings. Their name is Ruder and their Lab's name is Kanga. I just love that. Anyway it was really nice, lots of people there and I always feel so good when I'm with them, part of a nice group of people I count as my friends. That took up most of the day. I spent the rest of the afternoon dead-heading and fertilizing my flowers, then we had a huge thunderstorm. I went out for dinner with Mary Kay to the Hungry Trout and had a delicious trout and JUST 2 drinks. It's much cheaper when ony 2 of you go and you forgo appetizers and bottles of wine. We had a really nice time and it was absolutely beautiful.

I slept in the boat house so I could be there Sunday morning for Bill's planned breakfast on the boat house porch. I made the coffee and he furnished the goodies. We had 6 people there at 9:00 and we had a great time. They arrived by canoe from Linda's and we all enjoyed the quiet morning, sparkling water and good food. It was really nice. Bill's idea was that it must be really nice to enjoy your morning coffee on that porch. Of course he's right, we all know that. After that I had a little time to clean up before it was time for...Sunday dinner! Of course, more food. That was fine, it was good to see Ken. We had a nice time, Ken, Bill and I, eating barbecued pork and potato salad and raspberry pie (my favorite). Back home for just long enough to debate with myself whether I should stack firewood or go down to the dock to read. Guess which I did? Well, I have to finish my book club book by next Wednesday! So down I went to the dock, where it was of course wonderful. The dogs all swam, even Jackson, who has discovered that he does indeed like to swim. Tess loves to swim. She and Chances swim out to greet everyone who comes to visit in a boat.

I had a phone message when I got home last night from my friend saying that Chances was at her camp, having been chased there by the neighbor with a broom. That was late in the afternoon. I thought it was pretty funny. By the time I got the message Chances had been with me for hours and all was well. I was glad she'd been chased, maybe it will cure her of the desire to visit with the neighbors. Of course, she'll always visit Harriet and George. George said Chances can outrun the old guy with the broom so I don't need to worry, but Harriet was worried because the man was being mean to my dog. I have good friends.

Anyway, I spent time hanging out in the boat house, how lucky am I to be close enough to be able to do that? Read in the cure chair, washed the dishes from the morning, took the trash to my house, tidied up a bit. What a nice place. Decided to sleep at my house last night, after much debate with myself, since I had to get to work this morning. When I first got home, at 7 last night, I looked at my bedroom and said "I'm not sleeping there," but as the night wore on of course I changed my mind. By 11 it seemed like too much work to transport myself to camp. I sleep there during the week when it's hot at night, and last night it was in the 50's and pleasant at home. This morning the brown girls stuck around the house (oh that Milk Bone training is finally paying off! Thank you Spaulding for teaching us the value of positive reinforcement) but Jackson wasn't home when I left. I think he just hides in the bushes until I leave so he can spend the day outside.

So today at work we have a union meeting in the afternoon to discuss the board's new offer about this payroll thing. They counteroffered something on Thursday while I was off at a member library's annual meeting. I'll find out what the offer is today. Supposed to be something good. This is after we wrote a letter calling them cold and callous (I didn't write the letter--I let the rest of the staff go crazy with a computer and write whatever they wanted, I just signed it, along with all the other members) and indifferent to our "more than 100 years' combined service."

And now I must decide whether to catalog some boring videos and children's books or work on the final quarter of my annual goals (one of which I wasn't able to accomplish: weeding the fiction), which I have to turn in to the director before she returns from Mich. tomorrow. Guess I just answered my own query about what I should do next, didn't I.

I think I have alcohol poisoning--the long, slow kind. I can't believe how much some of my friends drink when they're in camp. I was at my friend Linda's the other night for dinner and Erdvilas made me a drink that was a mixture of about 5 different kinds of liquor (he likes to make up drinks, plays a keen bartender). It went down too easily and I asked for half another one: he doesn't know how to make half a drink and I drank the second one he gave me. He also doesn't believe in putting more than 2 ice cubes in a drink (more ice would dilute them). He wanted me to keep him company in the kitchen while he was mixing drinks for everyone else, then he wanted me to sample the "exquisite vodka" that our freind Joe just brought back from Russia. Well, it was good vodka, but really. Then he wanted to mix me a drink of 2 kinds of raspberry liquer, layered, to show me that both of them were better than Chambord (which is "trash"). Then we had an "excellent" wine with dinner. I could still walk and talk, and I wasn't as drunk as I was on Marguerita Night at Sonci, but I sure felt lousy when I woke at 4:30 yesterday morning. I took some pills, a short nap and was ready for work when I got here at 7:30. I was even marginally productive.

Today I still feel slightly poisoned. Yesterday I had to stop at Ken's, at his request, for a touch of the creature, even though we weren't having dinner together. We miss each other these days, there are so many summer people around issuing dinner invitations that we don't honor our regular schedule. So we had a nip of brandy together. Just a nip, I said. And a quick visit. Long enough to cheer about the new vice president. I haven't been this excited about American politics in a long time. I really like Edwards (well, heck, he's so CUTE!) and hope this will be the ticket (yeah, that's the ticket). Now D'Amato is saying that Bush needs to drop Cheney and go with either Powell or McCain if he wants to win the election. Fortunately I don't think Bush has enough sense to realize he's right--besides, I don't think he can sit on either of their laps with their hands up his back, moving his lips the way he can with Cheney.

I bought new hooks for my screen door last night, the kind that are "safety" hooks (apparently I'm practicing using the "quotation" marks today), they latch shut around the hook part when you close them. This is intended to keep Tess from nudging the hook up and out of the eye, thus opening the screen door and running out. Proudly drilled holes and installed one on the inside and one on the outside of the rotten old door I have. Yes, they work well, but this morning when brushing my teeth I neglected to latch the door so all three dogs didn't even have to bolt out the door, they just sauntered out. I was late for work. Got in the car, pulled out of the driveway to look for them, saw Tess and Chances galloping towards the driveway from the bog, talking to each other as they ran. God they are endearing, the two of them together. Jackson, well he never appeared so he's spending the day outside. Supposed to have thunderstorms today so I hope he realizes he can get under the deck and out of the rain. Somehow I think that's beyond his realm of understanding but I can't do anything about it now, 40 minutes and 30 miles away. If dogs could really understand the connection between actions and consequences, my would would be a simpler one.

Tonight is Erdvilas' 59th birthday celebration. I said I'd go out with them (Linda has 4 friends staying in her upper camp) but am now having second thoughts. They're going to Tail O'The Pup in Lake Placid--it's a barbecue joint that has lobsters and clams, so that E can have a lobster. Or two, knowing him. These celebrations always end up costing me whole lot of money for a little bit of food. I always forget that these people are from Michigan, where they don't have fresh seafood--I think the Adirondacks are a queer place to eat seafood, but then they remind me that the Midwest is a queerer place to try to.

Tomorrow I'm NOT coming to work. I'm going to the Lake Placid Horse Show with a friend of Linda's and mine, visiting from Ohio. I haven't been to this horse show in several years and I love love love going. The horses are just beautiful. I walk around going "god that one's beautiful, no that one's more beautiful, oh no that one's gorgeous." Then we watch some jumping, and lots of practicing in the paddocks, then wander through the barns and I look at lots of the dogs they all bring with them. It's really a day meant designed for me. Anyway Mary Kay is interested in the horses because she's lucky enough to be able to retire from being a guidance counselor in a year and is hoping to get a horse. She loves dogs, too, so we'll have a good time I'm sure. It might rain but we'll do just fine. I used to go with Cam's daughters and we'd have a great time.

And now I must face the chores of the day. There is a space of less than one square foot of my desk exposed and a book order that needs to be completed. Some bills to be paid and more fiction to be weeded (I'm in the Ro's--YEA ME! the end of the alphabet is in sight). This afternoon I have to go to the annual meeting of the Willsboro library with my director. My grievance against her is proceeding at last; it's always an interesting exercise to get on with day-to-day relationships as if nothing were going on legally.

The sun is shining at the moment and the world is not a bad place in my attractive sector of it.

I did my patriotic duty and celebrated the 4th of July by sleeping for most of the day yesterday. I had a busy weekend, saw plenty of people and sat in the sun enough hours to satisfy my ultraviolet craving. There are now 2 docks in the water at camp, courtesy of Tom and Bill, and there's a boat in the boat slip with a motor on the back, courtesy of Tom and his boat trailer. Sometimes cousins are the most wonderful people. I slept in the boat house Friday, Sat. and Sunday nights and it was very nice, but it's hard for me to be at camp still. I took a shower there and turned around to see Henry's sweet metal soap container full of Dr. Bronner's soap (it was that awful tea tree soap, jeez that stuff smells horrible). Well if that doesn't make you cry nothing will. And he's everywhere in the boat house.

Saturday was sunny and warm, nearly hot. Left the boat house in the morning for home, sat on the deck and read in the sun until afternoon, then went to camp to sit on the rock at the boat house, then sat in the sun there. The dogs have been awful, running off to the summer campers and refusing to come home. Twice they've been returned by car, twice they've been walked home. I was told that Tess ("the little one") goes right in the door of one place and runs around the living room with the boxer who's staying there. Swell. This is very embarassing. I tried to keep track of them all weekend, but only got successful at it by yesterday afternoon. Sat. was the worst, Sunday I wasn't home much. They sneak out or run off when I let them out to poop. The poops.

Sunday morning I stayed at the boat house, drinking tea in the cure chair, enjoying the lake's calm. There was a heron in the lily pads, walking it's stately walk while searching for fish. I went to Sunday dinner at Linda's camp, very festive and nice. It was a hot day. Got to camp late in the afternoon, Bill and Tom were putting in main camp's dock and had already put in the dock at the boat house. I played with Nicholas, now 2 and incredibly gregarious and cute, and Kyle (Tom and Sheila's son), 9 months old and not interested in anyone but his mother. Talked to Sheila and Connie about Henry, cried of course. I think being with family this summer will be very hard. After the docking Tom, Sheila and I went to Union Falls with their trailer to pick up the boat Sonci bought, brought it back to camp and put it in the boat slip. Very exciting: a boat at camp! Now the boat house looks like a boat house. Of course the boat leaks a bit, it wouldn't be a Rogers craft if it didn't. I went to their camp for dinner, had a nice time with them. Sat on their deck after dinner and watched impressive fireworks across the lake. Talked some more about Henry, cried some more. Realized that I have no one here who knew Henry that I can talk to. I guess we all have that situation. I told them that he really liked them, thought they were the only ones who had any fucking sense. Boy did they beam at that. Well, it was true. They said they really liked his smile, would always remember his smile. Me too.

So that brought me to yesterday, when I couldn't seem to make myself be anything but horizontal. I got up in the morning at the boat house, enjoyed it there until the wind came up, then went home. Had run out of dog food so had to get home fairly early. Jackson has decided he doesn't like sleeping in the boat house so he ran off in the night and make his way home, was asleep on the living room floor when I got home. He also made a huge hole in the porch screen in the boat house--SHIT SHIT SHIT. I told Liza, who was very understanding. I apologize to everyone else and will try to mend it this weekend. I can patch it but will first try sewing it up. He figured out that he can walk across thin air to get to the porch. He's such a jackass. That's his real name, not Jackson. I started calling him Jackass, which he responds to about as well as Jackson. Anyway, once I got home, I fell asleep.

I have firewood to stack, paperwork to do, cleaning to take care of. Laundry is about the only thing I'm capable of doing these days. I did vacuum and tidy up the living room on Saturday, not that I mean to boast or anything.

Yesterday one of my high school friends called me. She's a really nice person, we connected 2 years ago at the big reunion gathering in Door County. It was nice to hear from her. We email fairly often. She lives in Virginia. We'll all be gathering next year for another reunion, looks as if we'll be in Portsmouth, NH at a house that Harvard owns I think I mentioned this before. I'm known for repeating myself.

It's hot here, July hot for the North Country. 80's. We had rain yesterday, which I love to listen to and like because it means I don't have to water my flowers. It was strange to have camp all to myself on the 4th of July. I didn't go swimming, decided I would take a shower instead. I stared at the water (this was before the dock was in) and the rocks for a long time, mulling it all over. "I'm 51," I said, "the water's cold and there's no easy way to get in. There's warm water if I turn the hot water on, and the shower works." So I decided to be a wuss and take a shower. I can't believe I did it. It must have taken me an hour to make the decision, though, because I wanted to swim but just couldn't make myself do it. For once I let my age determine my actions. This is not a good sign, I think.

Ahhhh...Friday afternoon, almost 3:00. There are 4 of us left in the building, each focused on our own last hour of the day. I love the way we all feel as if it's a loooong weekend, instead of just a 3-day weekend. Big fucking deal, we have Monday off. Guess it's better than a kick in the teeth, as some say. I'm looking forward to it, that's sure. There are a ton of people in my neighborhood, more being imported today. Summer begins this weekend. I was talking on the phone last night, distracted from reality, and two people came up my steps accompanied by all 3 of my dogs. I walked to the door. "Are these your dogs?" Yes, they are. Where are you from? They identify the camps just below my house, newly purchased 2 years ago. (oops, howdy neighbor). "We have a dog who's kicking the shit out of your dogs." Since there's no blood and my dogs are all wagging their tails and happy, I'm not getting this. Thanks for returning them, I'm sorry for the inconvenience (I hope it wasn't your garbage they trashed the other night at 2 a.m. when Tess came home with an empty juice box in her mouth, reeking of someone's sloppy joe dinner). Yes, it's true these dogs are all new to the game of wandering. Yes, it's true they have a different pattern from those of my past: they STAY where they wander to, the others used to go from camp to camp, in search of good grub. These guys are looking for attention, not just food. This is turning out to be a real drag. I know my life centers around my dogs, but this is not the way I want it to center. This morning I let them out one at a time (pain in the ass). Jackson took off. Tess snuck out when I let Chances in and refused to come back in, following Jack's scent down the driveway and into the woods (shortcut to camps, no doubt). The only good thing was that it was 6:30 so vacationers hopefully were still asleep and ass-kicking dog was not out. Tess returned soon, Jack just before I left for work. Good old, half-blind Chances, misses the whole thing most of the time, stays at home waiting for me to slip up and leave a bedroom door open so she can pee on a bed.

Got to go to Burlington yesterday. Had to have a mammogram, which took 10 minutes. You can see the results as they do them now, on a tv screen. Looked ok to me, no big spot showing, but there was a suspicious concentration that puzzled me. Not for me to figure out, they'll let me know soon if there's a problem. Anyway, on the trip over there was a big storm to the south, in the Adirondacks. Lightning striking about every 2 minutes, way cool. Lake was rough, not too bad, no waves over the cars the way it gets when it's REALLY rough, just some bouncing. The lightning was just really neat to watch.

Since the mammogram was so quick I stopped at Barnes & Noble--there's a 2-story store there. I bought a copy of The Sirens of Titan, since I want to read it again now, as an adult, to see if I still think it's way cool. I just loved it in the 70's, let's see what it's like now. First I have to read White Teeth for the book group, though. I just finished Curious Incident, it turned out to be good, not quite as fantastic as I'd hoped, based on all the high praises I'd heard about it. Anyway I had fun in B & N, then rewarded myself with an over-priced iced chai for the trip home. I slept all the way on the ferry. Soundly, as in "I'm afraid they'll have to wake me up" when we land.

So yes, I'm feeling better. While I was in B & N it started to rain really, really hard, then the rain turned to hail, big pea-sized stones. I love that, it's just amazing in June/July. Love the concept of stones going back up and coming down, going up again. Coming and going until they decide it's time to fall to the earth. Such meterological drama. Went grocery shopping on my way home for just a few things. Peaches, watermelon, Diet Coke and q-tips. The good and the bad. The peaches are sweet and good, the watermelon is sweet and seedless. I ate half of it last night. I love watermelon even though it's hard to eat when you live alone. I can eat a whole one in one sitting but then I feel pretty queer. So I'll finish it today and want more.

There are people who will want to see me this weekend. Some I want to see more than others. I'll buy a bottle of expensive bourbon for Linda and Erdvilas, will refrain from buying myself a bottle of single malt scotch (maybe). Don't know if any cousins are coming to Sonci, the ones who always do sent me an email saying their plans had changed and they're not coming. WHAT? 4th of July without John and Phyllis? Too queer to contemplate. I may stay in camp after all. But then, I've been saying that for weeks. What am I afraid of? That I'll just think and think and think about Henry? Or maybe I just like being at home in the summer.

Got a call from the funeral home saying that Henry's stone had just been "put" by the monument and something has to be done with it. Shit. I thought it was, like, you know, installed. The story continues. It just goes on and on.

Got my firewood to stack. Big pile in the middle of my driveway, supposed to spur me on to pile it so I can have a circle drive again. Fuck no, I can turn my car around, I don't need a circle for that. I have 4 cords now, must stack soon so it can start to dry. Will not dry in a big mother pile, found that out the hard way last year. I don't mind stacking it, I just get bored in about 20 minutes (max). Plus my mind starts to wander to unpleasant things. And now my dogs will wander too.

So now I'm on this list where you send a paperback to the person at the top of the list, add your name to the bottom of the list and see what happens (thank you Brook). Anyone want to join in? The pressure's on to come up with an appropriate paperback. Not one of those "I always meant to read it but never got to it" ones, either. Reading certainly is the leading activity in my circles these days (wouldn't my mother be proud). Since she used to offer to pay me 35 cents for each book I'd read, maybe I should ask for $35 now.

I have to do "Performance Characteristics" for my staff members. 9 characteristics I have to think of things to comment on. Good things, and different things about each one. Not an easy task. She's punctual. Dependable. Nice smile. Good sense of humor. Has a good beat and can dance to it.

Am feeling optimistic about the weekend. Will THIS be the time I finally get the geraniums in the ground? Jesus I hope so, just so I can stop thinking about them. I hate to leave Silver Lake on the weekend, though, it just sucks. It's supposed to rain on Monday so maybe I'll go then. Supposed to be sunny and beautiful both Sat. and Sunday. Big Sunday dinner at Linda's camp. Eat Like A Pig marathon I'm sure. Only this week I can drink like one too because I don't have to go to work on Monday. God BLESS America.

I miss my brother. I'm going through an I-can't-get-out-of-bed phase, which translates poorly when you're under the eagle eye of your director. I got up at 7:40 this morning, which won't get me to Plattsburgh by 8 (when Pbg is 40 minutes away and I have 3 dogs to deal with and myself to get ready for work). I was only 25 minutes late, but this is not good when the director has already brought it to my attention that I've been "late a lot lately," and "are you ok?" as if she almost cared but really is just letting me know that she's keeping track of my comings and goings. So chalk it up to another fuck-up on my part. Last night I was up until 3, though, not able to sleep again. This is a phase I go through every year, not usually this late, but it happens each year. It's a reverse Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder, not unusual in bipolars. It would be fun if I didn't have to get up by 6:30 to go to work 5 days a week.

So I got in the car to speed to work, popped in a CD to listen to the latest book I'm listening to, found my place amidst great confusion on my part (sometimes I really prefer tapees, you can fast forward and reverse when your mind wanders or when you lose your place. With CD's you have to stop and go at places the CD chooses) then started on my journey. All of a sudden I was crying really hard, missing Henry as much as ever but not able to control myself. Well WHAM, this happens, doesn't it. So I shut off the book and cried my way to Plattsburgh. I know this is why I'm having trouble functioning at work, and why my SADD is worse this year and why I can't get to sleep at night and why things just aren't right and why I don't want to stay in the boat house. I know all that, and I'm very, very sad. I just miss my brother.

Yesterday sucked, more than Monday did. Who would think that would happen? Piles of dog shit on the floor when I got out of the shower, failed attempts at finding a vein in my hand when I had to have my blood tested before work (making me late for work), discovering that the clerks in my department were not at their desks when I got to work but were instead in the director's office, having a bawling brawl with each other. I was called into the office to be included, all of us informed that part of the problem was a supervisory issue on my part. Gee thanks, nothing like NOT getting support from the director in front of the people you supervise. Because the people who work for you can't get along and don't like each other it's your fault? Well, maybe partly, but the director can either help the situation or nudge them along. nudge, nudge. Then we have more union issues, a situation getting worse each day. At least when I got home my wood got delivered without incident. Now I have 4 cords to put towards this winter's warmth. Will get 4 more in a month, 4 more the month after that. Last year Henry stacked a bunch, a BIG bunch of my wood for me (so that lots of times when I went to the wood pile for wood I said to myself "I'm burning wood that my brother stacked for me!"). This year I have to stack that wood soon so it will dry by fall. I don't mind stacking wood but am a good procrastinator. Even my 78-year old mother is better at getting this chore done than I am.

Last night I had dinner with my NJ Congressman and his wife friends, very good friends, for the third time this week. They're leaving on Friday so it's really nice to see them as much as I have. They're busy planning the house they'll be building in the next couple of years here. This is really exciting to contemplate. He'll be a Congressman for several more years, depending on the electorate, but she'll retire from being a doctor in a couple of years and will spend a couple of weeks here several times a year. This is a really exciting prospect. My larger community of friends is planning to develop a great colony of people in the neighborhood in the next 5-10 years. Anyway, I love the Holts and have such a great time with them. I love to hear Rush talk off-handedly about things on The Hill. And laugh to watch a Congressman dive underwater in his swimsuit with goggles on, leveling his dock while I tell him how uneven it it.

When I got home last night I discovered that Chances and/or Jackson (I almost called him Dexter, the Evil and now dead Chessie) had eaten two discs of bacillus thuringeinsis, an organic insecticide that I had to put in my rain barrels to prevent mosquitos from hatching larvae. So I called the vet, who said to give them peroxide to make them puke. This was of questionable usefullness, since they could have eaten the stuff at 7:30 in the morning and this was at 5:15. Oh well, I do what the doctors tell me. Jackson puked, no problem, but Chances is the most stubborn dog and would not throw up. She looked the part, but just lolled around the yard for a long time with her head down, glaring at me and refusing to come near me. Boy is it hard to get peroxide down her throat. And she WILL NOT throw up unless it's her idea, either. She never did. Anyway, Annie Holt the doctor says that bt will only destroy insect stomachs, just for your general information, should any of you out there ingest the stuff at some point. And apparently the discs they sell to put in standing water are quite tasty to dogs.

And now it's today and my staff is having a clerks meeting, where they plot and rail against the professional staff, then meet with the director, who then gives the professional orders originating with the clerical staff. It's a lovely invention, the clerks' meeting. When the professional staff have our meeting, we discuss goals and objectives of the organization, not how we can get the clerks to shape up.

It's a beautiful, truly beautiful dock day. If there were a dock to have a day on. I go to Burlington this afternoon for my mammogram. At least I'll get to ride the ferry, and I think the lake will be calm. Last night Silver Lake was calm and the light was golden and it was really pretty. Big yellow moon while it was still really light out, too. Nice effect.