Ruthie ignores her bowl of IAMS Chunks most of the time. Until someone sits down to a meal at the nearby kitchen table. Then she recognizes it's time for Her Pack to eat. So as I finished my breakfast of strawberry yogurt just now, she began crunching her way to the bottom of her food bowl. Now she's sprawled out at my feet with her belly on the cool vinyl floor, no doubt wondering if I'm going to give her the Dannon yogurt cup to clean out.
I usually have instant oatmeal for breakfast - trying to knock the cholesterol down a few points - but I switched to yogurt this week when the antibiotics sterilized my digestive system. Oatmeal can harden to concrete in a bowl, so I usually let her finish off the last few bits before I rinse the bowl and put it into the dishwasher.
Today is Maria's last pre-vacation day at work and it's a day I must spend getting everything ready for tomorrow's wedding photo shoot and Sunday morning's departure for points west.
My to-do list includes:
1. Find the missing Thermarest air mattress, buried deep in the jumble of stuff in the attic. It must be done soon, before the heat of the day turns the attic into a sauna.
2. Buy chlorine concentrate for the hot tub. We don't have enough to see Morgan through our absence and I don't want to come home to a tub full of murky, bacteria-filled water.
3. Charge all of our camera batteries.
4. Shift some cash from savings to checking to cover the bills I'll pay from the road. I hate going on vacation just before the end of the month and having to calculate when Maria's paycheck and my pension will roll into the account in relation to when various bill paymnent checks will get cashed. There's also the question of when my tenant's rent check will arrive and whether Morgan can deposit it in our account without the benefit of our endorsement.
5. Do a couple of loads of laundry.
6. Edit a few more photos for use in our community art fair exhibit that takes place a couple of days after our return. We have much of the work done, since there will be precious little time to pull this stuff together after we get home on or about July 6.
We're shooting the 4 p.m. wedding rehearsal at a rural church today. I don't think the photos are that important, but it's a valuable chance to work out the angles and lighting issues for tomorrow afternoon's ceremony.
The temperature is expected to soar into the 90s today and tomorrow, with heat indices above 100. It was hot and steamy like this on June 24, 1967, when I got married for the first time. Yes, today would have been my 38th wedding anniversary. We hung in for 26 years before the wheels came off for the final time. I lay claim to half - well, maybe 51% - of the blame for the implosion, but I know we're both better matched now. And we have two splendid sons to show for the effort.
Well, that took an odd turn, didn't it?
Now, it's off to the attic in search of the Thermarest.
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