Looking ahead

Next week we head to the Oregon Coast, where my parents have rented a house for two weeks and family are coming in from far and wide. I am greatly looking forward to it, and just to be sure I'm extra appreciative, I will wrap up my week by solo facilitating an all-day board retreat for one of my clients, guaranteed to leave me utterly brain-dead and ready for a vacation. Maybe Moxie will be able to beat me at Boggle, heh heh.

Whether Toby will be ready is another question. The tenacious wound between his foot pads a few weeks ago? It's back. Sneaked up on us. Worse than ever, so bad that he didn't even want to put weight on it on Sunday (and for Toby to not want to be up on his feet - well, that's a problem). Happily, he's already on antibiotics because his other foot problem turned out to be an infected toe, rather than his run-of-the-mill allergic itchies. It says something about Toby's summer that I'm thanking my lucky stars for his puss-filled toe.

Seriously, we're going to the beach. Where the dogs will want nothing more than to romp around and get coated in sand and sea water. Open oozing wounds are not a good fit. Will Toby just yearn and bark and make a pest of himself the whole time if we can't get him healed enough to romp? This is where Enrico just smiles serenely at me and says, it will all be fine. One way or another. Thank heavens for Enrico.

Another thing on the to-do list before we go is fixing yet another leak in our roof. Maybe we should've forked over the extra couple thousand dollars when we replaced the roof three years ago, or maybe it's just the crazy weather of the past year. We'd had a torrential rainstorm and as I was just ready to head out the door yesterday morning, I heard the unmistakable pat-pat-pat overhead in the attic. Stripped off my work clothes, put on grubbies, hauled the ladder off the carport rafters and into the house, put on the headlamp, and hauled myself up into the attic. Which is dark, lacking any flooring - thus the need to balance carefully on the rafters lest you fall through the ceiling drywall into the house - and littered with rat turds. Just how I dreamed of starting my day.

But I got a bucket and tarp placed, and managed to find a roofer to come out and suggest a fix that he can make on Friday, before we leave town. Meanwhile, because of the leak, I was running late and for that reason I was home to receive a call from our friends B & J, who just returned from two months abroad. B reminded me that we had the keys to both of their cars. I knew they were due back in town the night before, but had completely forgotten about the car keys. So, had it not been for the leak, our friends would've been without transport for the whole day, their only day to run errands between their intercontinental flight and the first day of school for their three kids.

So you see, it's lucky that the ceiling leaked exactly when it did, and it's lucky that Toby's toe is infected. I won't say these things happen for a reason, because I don't believe in that. But it's all good.