Isn't my cutie sweet? I'm so proud of him. He improved his time on freestyle by about 25 seconds last week. Alas, this week he was back to over a minute again because he had some kind of asthmatic fit on the way and he couldn't find his bathing suit and wore one of his brother's suits and it was falling off and he had to keep yanking it back up while he was going across the pool. But he's still a swimming superstar in my book!



And Frances qualified for Champs in another event this week. I've never had anyone qualify for Champs in swimming before, so this has been a fun surprise. She qualified in backstroke at the second meet and has continually improved her time since then, and now she has qualified in freestyle. She was lucky not to get DQ'd in butterfly this week, and her time went down by about a second and a half, but she is still fewer than two seconds from qualifying in that event as well. And she may be on a relay team, since her relay teams have done exceptionally well. Even last week, when she wasn't on the A team, her B team won second place. Considering the Blue times that several of the A team members have, it's a pretty good showing.

My boys are gone. I know they should be gone, and I'm excited they are gone, and I was the one who insisted that they should be gone. But I still miss them. It's just incredible how the dynamic of a place changes once you have even one fewer warm bodies.

I am continuing to do a bad job of my summer, and sadly there are only a few weeks left. I need a big, fat, honking vacation. Tropical island. No plans. Warm, sandy beach, hammock, gigantic frozen drink (or 12 of them), maybe a snorkel, just so I can say the word snorkel and laugh. Snorkel, snorkel, snorkel.

Instead, I'm still in my pajamas at 9:30 a.m., sitting in a very messy house with unpacked boxes from our carpet extravaganza, with a child in a dirty swimsuit playing Strawberry Shortcake on the Nintendo DS and with a dog who won't stop licking her foot.

Last night I spent most of the night playing cleanup from my computer disaster (inbox wiped out, anything left resorted into about fifteen different mini-mailboxes that had nothing to do with the sender) and trying to have a crash course in keeping up with my various commitments. I think the reason I'm not dressed right now is that I still have a zillion things to do to make right all the stuff I botched last week or should have done but didn't that I'm thinking if I just sit on my floor long enough with my computer I'll start to grow roots down into the subflooring and not have to actually face reality.

I also was supposed to break my Starbucks habit and I didn't. Heh.

Okay, I'm just such a sorry blogger lately. I have a whole pile of posts I started but never finished. I don't think I'm pushed "publish" in about two months.

So no matter how short or boring or pointless this is, I am going to upload it just so I can say I did it.

I just got back from the district championships with my tennis team. It was a fascinating experience. In many ways, I think I don't fit in especially well with my team, but I had a fun time nevertheless. We made it to the semi-finals, which is further than most Woodlake teams make it at these events, and we should be very proud. I lost my first singles match, and I lost it pretty badly (really bad first set, but almost a tiebreaker in the second), handily won my first doubles match, and then lost our final doubles match in tiebreakers for both the set and the match. It was heartbreaking, and I wish my record looked better. I should not care about these things, but I know that I am not going to be moved up to 3.5 this season, and the remaining bit of my friends will. Oh well. I am really into swimming these days, and I think I might just put my energy there and put tennis on a semi-permanent break.

This week I'm back to my overwhelmed self. I need to set up meetings for CC, I need to enter a bunch of stuff in the computer, and I need to handle a whole pile of dive and swim team things. If I'm honest, right not I want to waste away in Margaritaville about 800 miles from here. I'm just in a rough spot right now and doing a poor job of everything I do (except playing Yahtzee). I could be on the verge of the biggest change in my entire life, and I'm scared to death and also trying to just keep it on the DL. If I think about it too much, I'll both have no answers and will freak myself out. Game face is my phrase of the week. I'm just trying to perfect my game face while I quietly totally lose my mind ;)

Once again, it has been so long since I have posted that Blogger has forgotten me. It's not that hard to do.

It has been one of the hardest months ever. Physically it has seemed, from the outside, a little exhausting because there are so many things wrapping up. Softball season is winding to a close on Saturday. The dance recital and all its rehearsals are now behind us. Preschool graduation is tomorrow. Tennis is going full force. Swim and dive team have already started before other things have managed to finish up. The overlap in these few weeks is always unwieldy, and this year was no different in that regard. Everything wants to have some capstone event--an end of the year party, a ceremony, a big show. In some ways, I am happy letting the end of the routine be a punctuation mark in itself.

But what is really different is the attitude. My attitude, which is inflected so heavily by the attitude of burden all around me. Doing these things is "bad" because I'm being told that they are bad and too much. And what has made it so difficult is the realization that my fundamental beliefs and motivations are, at their very root, so terribly flawed. And that I am the one who must change.

The first thing that I have been having to come to terms with is that although I desperately wanted each of my children, to the point I was willing to subject myself to physical pain, an emotional rollercoaster, financial stress, I suppose I just have too many and I needed to heed my partner's desire to stop. It is, as they say, water under the bridge at this point, but the fact is, I should be feeling remorse for my desire for children, and I do not. I honestly don't know what to do with this set of information. How can you want something so very much, love people so very much, and yet have to acknowledge that they were, in fact, a bad idea? How can something so bliss-inducing, so sweet to you, be wrong?

The second issue deep on me is how I have chosen to help them grow. So much of our own attitudes come from our own upbringing, and most especially our overcompensations. As a child, I was exposed to fairly little. I had a happy, comfortable life, but we were so simple, so narrow in what we did. I always felt different, somehow inferior to the other people around me in the gifted program or at camp or in my academic high school classes. I never had the opportunity to play a sport as a child. I took piano lessons, but I did not do any other activities. I did not travel much. I did not spend time outdoors other than in my own small, suburban neighborhood. I went to college having never seen an animal in the wild other than a squirrel. I had never even seen roadkill other than a duck that has been hit by a car near the small borrow pit near our house. I had never seen a deer cross the road, never seen a raccoon, never even seen a woodchuck. I had never been hiking. Never been camping. Had never been off the East Coast until I was 14 and my Dad had been given a comp ticket after giving up a seat on a plane on the only business trip I ever remember him taking in my entire life. Even though my grandparents lived in Myrtle Beach during my early years and my other grandparents had moved to Florida right after I was born, I seldom even got to play in the waves at the beach because my parents couldn't walk on sand.

So I have tended to overcorrect. I have wanted my children to have the chances and experiences I didn't have. People often ask me if I did gymnastics as a child. Nope. But I wish I had. I wish I had played softball. I wish I had been on a team. I wish I had taken art classes. I wish I had been more places. Wish people had recommended more good books.

Now what I'm having to come to terms with is this: we're just as poor as my parents. Maybe a little more able-bodied, but we're still poor. If we want to retire, if we want to have savings, if we want to be responsible, we must pull it all back. I made the painful decision to give notice to Frances' piano teacher this week. We also will not be renewing the various classes and activities we have just finished. The music lessons will be something that we can perhaps continue with me as a teacher at home. I get tears in my eyes when I think about how I must do this in order to appease the person who is supposed to be my partner. Sometimes I wish that I could expect as little out of life as he does. To treat it simply as something to be endured until the day you die (alone).

Kerry and I have been seeing a marriage counselor, and the one thing that has become clear from the experience is that everything about me is wrong. Unfortunately, so far there hasn't been much focus on how I am supposed to grow and change, so I am still stuck in my old ways and feel unrepentant. I'm just not sorry for who I am, only for the fact that I am likely losing my children and a warm roof over my head. What I have learned is that the things I stand for: family, time together, adventures, trying to live in the now, are not what work. At least not for me in this relationshp. My greatest wish in the world is to feel that I have a place to call home, a place where I feel safe and loved and know that I can return even when I'm not perfect. I'm terrified of being alone in the world with no friends and no family. Right now I feel very much like I'm in that place. I don't have any close friends. I had unrealistic expectations of what marriage would be like. I don't know what I've done to cause not only myself but my whole family to be rejected by our families of origin. So, well, I'm a little scared. And also rather defensive. I feel like I should wish that I would just die, but that's the last thing I want to do. What I really want to do is survive despite the contempt and indifference around me because there's a big part of me that feels like it isn't wrong to want to build a family where one is lacking. I want to be somewhere where people are not afraid of my children, where they aren't seen as a burden or a mere financial liability or something so out of control that no one would want them to be where they are.

I actually have had bags packed for several days to set out on a totally crazy adventure. It would be considered kidnapping or legal abandonment, and the responsible streak in me knows that I would risk losing my children forever if I acted on my desires, but I'd love to just get in the car and keep driving until I get to California or Canada. Alas, it's a little hard to do with no money at all in my pocket (to make matters worse, I lost my ATM card and my credit card this weekend).

In the midst of my contemplation of my future, in our present we have been doing a lot of reading:

* My Louisiana Sky, which is probably the best book I've read in the past several months
* Be the Pack Leader, which we listened to in the car
* The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
* Berries in the Scoop, a sweet story about a family from Cape Cod
* The Mystery in Old Quebec, which has me wanting to leave it all behind and run to a little piece of Europe in North America
* a book about a family that travels to see the Sphinx in 1898
* a book about two children who are trapped on an ice floe near Greenland
* The Breadwinner, a young adult book about a young girl in Kabul when the Taliban took over
* Milagros, the story written by local author Meg Medina, and the story behind this year's dance recital
* The Glass House, a book I unfortunately identified too much with right now in my life; I kept feeling horrified that I may not be very different than the mother and father in that book and that my children's lives are equally chaotic
* The Art of Racing in the Rain, very sad and also sweet in the way only dog books can be
* Ali and the Golden Eagle--just started today
* Katherine Paterson's Park's Quest, about a boy who searches out the truth about his father, who died in Vietnam

Tennis, tennis everywhere. This week I have five matches, thanks to a rainout last week. For that one, I now have a 6-0, 6-0 win thanks to a line on the other team defaulting. But I am on for the other four days. So far I have a 4-6, 6-1, 10-4 win from Monday, and tomorrow I have a 3.5 match at ACAC playing at #3 doubles with a partner I've never played with before. Thursday Michele and I are playing at #1 singles, or at least I hope we are. I'm not in the mood for singles right now--too much pressure when my rating is on the line, and I'm not psychologically stable enough to ignore my feeling that if I blow it, I'm going to be a 3.0 for the rest of my natural born existence.

Right now I am taking a reading break to watch a show on the National Geographic Channel about human feet, with no legs, washing up in shoes in British Columbia and northern Washington. I really cannot imagine a more disgusting topic, but I'm strangely drawn to it despite the nastiness. Today was a fairly productive day, about which I will post pictures tomorrow, so I'll save the information about Shalom Farms for that. Last night I went to a used curriculum sale that typically nets me much of my material for the following year, and though it was not as good as I remember past ones to be, I did come home with a few gems. I bought two IEW products--The Elegant Essay, which is aimed at high school students, and Teaching the Classics, a DVD set that sets out a procedure for analyzing literature. I don't particularly need that, but I am fascinated by procedural methods of teaching skills, so I look forward to watching it and using the materials with my boys. My understanding is that the techniques and charts can be used with any age student. I also got some very entertaining SAT prep books (I especially like the vocabulary one, which has extremely funny sentences), the next Wordly Wise for Ollie, and a used copy of Algebra 1/2 by Saxon. But the best find was a little group of older books from the 1950s that are just delightful. One is by Elizabeth Coatsworth, who I really like, and the other was a mystery story by Mary C. Jane called Mystery in Old Quebec. We read it all today as a read aloud, and everyone loved it. It is well written, well paced, just the right length (123 pages with some illustrations here and there), and quaint enough to make us all smile at its language and what the children were allowed to do--10 year olds left on their own all day long in an unfamiliar city in another country while their father is in business meetings. I'll be looking for more books by her, though I suspect they have probably lost popularity and may be out of print because they are no longer "current."

And speaking of the library, I paid a $60 fine today. Yes. I'm embarrassed. But it's still cheaper, I suppose, than buying all those items I didn't return in a timely fashion. I figured the best response to that would be to turn right around and check out fifteen new items, including three movies (movies are what get me into trouble most of the time).

Meanwhile, we are still reading My Louisiana Sky and we just finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. As luck would have it, the movie of that appeared on the Disney Channel yesterday, and despite our tight schedule, we saw all of it by watching the end earlier in the day and then the rest of it later, since there was a reshowing (no, I don't really know how to use our DVR, and we happened upon the movie halfway through in the first place).

Now I'm obsessed with the idea of a spontaneous trip to Quebec. I've never been to Canada, and I'd like to go. Of course, I have no time whatsoever for something like that in the foreseeable future, but that, in my opinion, is what is wrong with my life right now. Details, details, but we also don't have money for it, and I'm not brave enough to camp solo outside a major city so far from home when I know nothing about the place.

Overcorrection is a word that has become a bit prominent in my mental life lately. I spent a few hours with a new friend before I left for camping on Friday, and we were discussing some of our "overcorrections" in our life. Like having four kids and wishing for more when I was an only child. Or making camping a priority in our family when I never once went camping or hiking or even really into the woods when I was a child. Or wanting to take on a lot of volunteer responsibilities when I don't have a significant paying job that makes me feel competent and useful and contributory to society. Now, I'm not sure that this overcorrection is "bad," so to speak, but perhaps it is explanatory, or perhaps it is a clue to what is wrong with how I conduct relationships. I make no bones about the fact that I am to blame for my awry relationships, and any clues about what drives my selfish single-mindedness are, well, clues. It doesn't mean I have the faintest clue about what to do about these clues or, blush, that I feel especially ready to renounce what I want (you're probably not going to get me to stop camping, for instance, though I suppose I could be flexible and not involve other members of my family in my own passions). Counseling will probably never be particularly helpful to me until I decide that I am ready to change. So far, I'm just not sure. I'm sort of sad to say that, but it's hard to let go of my own hopes and dreams with a clear heart and conscience, even if my own hopes and dreams are seriously flawed and self-destructive. I guess I cling to my right to self-destroy in the name of dreams. At least it sounds kind of romantic, right? I promise I will grow up and be mature some day, so perhaps I'm in the adolescent phase right now and harmony is yet to come as I develop.

Since this is a place I can put my own personal feelings, I'm going to talk about this spring of my discontent, but with a disclaimer that I really do think I'm becoming one of those cantankerous, impossible to please old ladies. I'm starting to wonder if I'm just determined to be displeased no matter what is going on and if I'm just well, kind of getting off on being crochety. So there. Now I'm going to talk about my carpet.

I had been looking forward to getting new carpet in our house as the event that would Change My Life Forever. Now we got it, and from the minute I first walked on it before it was even installed everywhere, I was not happy with it. It's too thin. It doesn't feel soft and wonderful and luxurious. It feels kind of chintzy. It feels too thin. It isn't cushy. Though it looks loads better than our old carpet (hey, mulch would have looked better than our old carpet!), it doesn't feel as good. The padding is too thin. You can feel where the staples are when you walk barefoot. You can feel seams. You can feel where the padding ends. It looks funny on the stairs. And in some places it isn't tacked down properly. That is something that we can get redressed, but what do you do when you aren't happy with the...whole thing?

I went to a major local flooring retailer with a good reputation because I didn't want to fall into the cheap trap we typically fall into by using someone that a friend recommended who was "cheaper" and who then vanishes off to the Philippines by the time you discover that the hardwoods were improperly sealed or the granite wasn't measured and cut to the right length. I also wanted a full service experience--wanted to come in and say, "I have four kids, two dogs, and we're slobs with poor bladder control. We want the best carpet for our situation that we can afford," and to have them direct me to just the right product. I felt like this is what I did. I had three estimates from three different places, I went with the middle one for a variety of reasons--price, full-service (furniture moving and replacement, not sub-contracted, etc.), reputation if anything went wrong. And I took home carpet samples and chose the better of the ones I brought home. I asked several times if this was a good carpet choice for fairly active people who are fairly rough on things, and I was told yes. Maybe they just don't make things like they used to.

But what is a person to do? Sure, we can get "I feel carpet staples" addressed, and we can get "this stuff on the stairs doesn't seem tacked down well enough" addressed. But let's just say you ordered a sleeping bag from LL Bean for your Boy Scout son. It came, and you felt it and decided that this bag you ordered isn't going to cut it for that Northern Tier trip, that you really were thinking that the 15 degree bag would be fine with a liner, but after feeling it, you just *know* that you need that -15 degree bag that weighs a little more but that will serve for years to come. Obviously, you send it back and get what fits your needs. Now imagine that you just spent $7k on carpet that is going to put you in debt, that you really didn't have, and that took some sacrifice on everyone's part. You bought it as an investment that you expect to have for the next 15 years or so and that will improve the value of your home if you find you have to sell it in three months. The company custom orders it, custom cuts it, and sends out two people to spend nearly nine hours moving your furniture and installing it. You removed every single thing that you own out of your upstairs. You risked your already risky marriage over this thing. And it comes in, and from the second you step on it, you know that it isn't "right." What do you do? And quite seriously, I don't want representatives of a flooring place either suing me or killing me in my sleep if I say this isn't what I was looking for and isn't up to my expectations.

After all, I picked it, right? I asked for help with the choice because I didn't know how to pick, but in the end, I picked it. I feel like a total dunce. And you know what? Nothing's going to change because (a) my husband thinks I'm insane and imagining things (even though I invited two friends over to corroborate my suspicions that it isn't "right") and (b) we're wimps and even if we do feel deeply disappointed, we'll never do anything because we're too afraid. And I'd add a (c) I'm afraid I'm a whiner, so I don't want to do something that will prove it.

I really hoped for a carpet that felt so clean, plush, and wonderful that I would want to invite everyone I know over to have a sleepover on the floor. When I've bought a bound remnant as a rug for downstairs sometimes, I've had that *awesome, cushy, can't keep my body off the carpet* feel. I don't feel that up here.

So enough about the carpet. Carpet is probably the least of my troubles. So I'm going to focus on the positive things in my life right now. My boys are Boy Scouts now and are having a great time. At least I assume they are having a great time--they are gone camping at Dutch Gap this weekend, a two night campout. Unfortunately, last night there was one of the worst thunderstorms in recent memory, featuring driving rain, intense lightning, and pounding hail. And they neglected to take along the suggested synthetic fiber clothing that would dry easily and had only a change of cotton clothes. But I'll bet it was a grand adventure. I had two friends and their husbands over for dinner tonight, partly with that ulterior motive of making them opine on my new carpet situation, and partly because now that my floor won't entirely nauseate people, I'm eager to let people in my house now. We also had some new friends, Rutledge's speech therapy buddy and his family, over for several hours yesterday. It was a lot of fun to spend time with them, and the dogs got a lot of good exercise. We have an excellent dog trainer and had our first dog training session this week. I can already see a difference, if not in behavior, at least in response to us. Right now we are working on "loading" them on the clicker, making sure that they know that the click means a treat is coming. We are going room to room and making sure that they are associating the click with the treat no matter where they are. And we are working on getting them to respond by looking at us when we call their names. Poor Helen is still very nervous--she cried all through class because she was across the room with Ollie when she wanted to be with me and Bilbo. She also was too anxious to turn over to be cradled and massaged, though I think she'll be fine doing it at home. Our other task is to make sure that we are supervising them 24/7 for the next 8 weeks while they are in class. I have to admit, I've already screwed up a few times. I have lost track, forgotten to watch, and one of those times, Bilbo swiped a plate of potato skins off the table on our screened porch. And Helen worked a little more on the hole she is digging in the middle of the yard. But we're all kinds of works in progress, so I suppose we can cut ourselves a little slack.

Otherwise, I'm sort of drowning. Falling apart, really. I am wondering if I'm finally just losing it. I am not keeping up well at all with my various volunteer and supposedly paid responsibilities. I literally just cannot get my act together. I am getting resentful of people who ask me questions or put demands on me. I want to slink away in a hole and disappear. I am privately very snappish and snotty ("Find the damn swimsuit order information yourself--you can check the website or ask someone as well as I can, for God's sake!"), but unfortunately, when actually asked, I sound all contrite and willing to serve ("Sure, I'll find it for you and get back to you."). I'm about at the cracking point. I wish I had nothing to do with swim or dive team. Wish my kids weren't even on them. Wish we were doing nothing at all this summer and all of our time is our own. Now that I'm in charge of all volunteers for dive team, etc., I have to be at all the meets, I have to be at all the meetings, I have to be available.

I currently believe that the only way out of this is to move. Pronto. Like in the next month.

So I'm left just feeling really, really resentful, especially of myself. I can't believe I put myself in a position where I'm stuck, alone, and barely have my head above water (truth be told, I think everyone can see that at this point, my nose and mouth are clearly submerged and I'm circling the drain). I hate failing. But I'm also thinking I really wouldn't mind a selfish phase where I don't commit to doing anything for anyone but myself and my immediate family.

Then I have this situation at church where I've been asked to teach Sunday School, my visceral response was, "No! I love going to a Sunday School class myself and it's a high point in my week getting to see these women, and no way do I want to take myself out of that to take on more commitment." Next I'll think, "But gosh, that's selfish." And then I'll remember, "Didn't my last therapist keep telling me that I needed to be selfish, that my problem was that I wasn't selfish enough?" (Now my husband would be guffawing and rolling on the floor if he heard someone say that about me, but whatever...). I actually led that class on boundaries a few weeks ago and mustered up some courage from that and said No, I can't, it would be irresponsible of me at this time to take on any further responsibility and I need to be in this other place and helping there. But now I've been asked again--a kind of pretty please, everyone else is chipping in, can't you just do one or two weeks. And my gut response is No! No! I want to be selfish! I want to go to the adult class! I want to get support for myself rather than teach others! I don't want to commit to being in town those weeks! And then, being me, I feel guilty for feeling that. And then justified, and then guilty, and then justified. And around and around it goes. So guess how I actually respond...by avoiding it altogether, not answering email, and thinking, "Hmmm, maybe I'll just find myself a new church or become an atheist or something."

Why is life so complicated!

You know what isn't complicated? Sitting here typing on the bed across the room from my daughter, who is feeling a little lonely in the house without her older brothers, the same older brothers who she normally feels are tormenting her. Having her tell me, as she is drifting off to sleep, that the book she is reading, "The Care and Keeping of You" by the American Girl company, has the word "vagina" in it and that she just flipped ahead, but she isn't really sure she wants to read the part about periods yet because that is gross. I agree. Periods are gross. I remember my own shock when I first heard that this was not just going to happen to me, but would happen for *decades*! And knowing that my warm, sweaty, curled-up sleeping little boy in his Mario Kart Wii pajamas is going to be carried upstairs in a few minutes to cuddle next to his big sister. And that tomorrow we will all be happy to see Walter and Ollie come back all dirty and smelly and with lots of wet things that will need to be hung all over the yard, even though Friday before they left may have been full of screaming because he spit on me or he touched my ears or he's telling on me. Then there are my roses blooming so perfectly in the front yard, next to my indulgent yellow perennials (we only trampled two playing softball). And my two trying-their-hardest doggies, including dear Helen, who is probably just really happy that she is no longer living in a concrete and chain-link run and has a soft bed and den of her own and a family who loves her and feeds her treats continuously for ten minutes at a time three times a day in the name of "training." Deep down, I know that there's really a lot more to life than thick carpet or even analyzing your many deficiencies to death.

Can't get pictures uploaded.
New dog=Helen=perfect
Starting dog training classes with both dogs on Thursday
Carpet going in Thursday
Freshly painted upstairs hallway, stairwell, trim, doors
Painted Frances' bedroom, but not done
Need to recoat Ollie's room
Still need to bail out upstairs
Lots of boxes of miscellaneous items needing sorting
6 trips to Goodwill
Trash can overflowing, pickup three days away
Lots and lots and lots to do

Facebook has been spying on my mind. I must have posted something, because now it is setting ads in my right margin about moving back to Blacksburg, job listings there, and solicitations from moving companies. I swear I do have one foot already out the door.

My carpet moment coming is the perfect time for me to reassess whether I need certain things. We are already starting the process of getting books and things from dressers and shelves downstairs so the rooms are empty. I have a feeling I'm going to like the sparse look, so maybe some of the stuff won't go back up!

We are in the midst of looking for a new dog. It's hard to be emotional about the process. Right now we have in an application with Richmond Animal League, but they are pretty tight about who they will adopt to, and we may not make the cut. Because our cat is an indoor/outdoor cat, it might be a problem for an adoption through them. We also had been not entirely up to date (based on traditional, not holistic schedules) with vaccines for Bilbo. He has been extremely healthy and also doesn't have much of a social life--up until recently he rarely left the backyard or our house. We also don't board him or send to him any kind of daycare. So Friday I took him in to make sure he had had his yearly exam and everything recommended. I hope it wasn't too little too late.

The dog we would like to adopt is a 3 year old black lab who we have called Helen (she's Jamie at RAL). She seems relaxed, happy, smart, and plays very well with Bilbo. Bilbo, we have noted since Hokie has been gone, is a pretty laid back dog for someone so young. He is pretty much a couch potato. It's a sad commentary on one's activity level if I run faster than they do! But I have been walking him 2 or so miles a day for the past two weeks, and he is getting faster, if not thinner. I'm still having trouble figuring out how to keep the cat food in a place where the cat can get it, but he can't. My latest attempt was to put up a gate in my walk-in closet door, which sort of worked with Bilbo (until he knocked it out), but for some reason was higher than the cat was willing to jump. So the next step was on the counter. This works fine unless he stands on his hind legs and pulls it. Now I'm on to trying the washing machine. So anyway, sweet Helen would probably fit well for us because she seems calm, friendly with us, and would be a good companion to Bilbo. She looks like a classic man's best friend. I suppose we shall just wait and see if we are approved, and move on from there.

Fish tank remains. Now that I don't care, it doesn't seem to cost quite as much or be so unstable. We just replaced one of our T5 lights, but otherwise, things seem stable and uneventful. Hopefully they stay that way!