omigod omigod it's almost time to go!!!

I should not continue to torture you, gentle reader, with my mind-numbing and self-absorbed countdown of billable hours. But let me just say: Three days left and ONLY 21 hours to work! Woo and hoo. If all goes according to plan, I will actually have Friday morning off to run errands for the trip.

Meanwhile, we are so unreasonably excited. We have the new Rick Steves Paris book. We have a whack of euros and an apartment that we're renting from a Frenchman named Ugo. We have two spiffy new cameras to replace the ones that were stolen. We have a nice young couple coming to house-sit.

I think that Nelly senses something is up, though. Her level of anxiety whenever I leave the house has gone up noticeably. She is doing the canine equivalent of grabbing my ankles and begging me not to leave her. I get out of the shower and she is standing there, silently condemning me with her piercing gaze. Like, I know the schemes you are hatching in your perfidious heart. You insult me to think I am so stupid.

Plus the other day she inexplicably peed in the dining room. Normally I would conclude from this that she's developing yet another a bladder infection, but I'm pretty sure this was just a fit of pique, or fear, or something.

When we went to Italy three years ago, I stayed over there for a full month while Enrico went for just over two weeks. When I got home, Nelly actually ignored me. Normally she greets me with overhwelmed, joyous relief, that I have returned from whatever danger has kept me away from the protective embrace of the pack. But that time in Italy, I pushed her too far. She may be woman's most loyal friend, committed to the unbreakable bond of the pack - but that time, she was all, who are you? You are dead to me, woman.

So it's hard to leave the dogs. They are old now, so you never know. But I am somehow confident that nothing bad will happen to them, if for no other reason than Nelly would stubbornly refuse to go into that great unknown without the opportunity to chide me, one more time, for my perfidious heart.