Today I have been plowing through those last minute things that can only be done at the last minute : packing, brushing the dogs, watering the plants and window boxes. Laundry.

The kids and I will be traveling with ‘ nested’ suitcases : the one, large one has a smaller suitcase in it and inside that suitcase are two, soft travel bags. The other suitcase has a smaller one nested in it as well, and that small one ( in theory) will hold all that we need to take with us. If all else fails, the kids and I can deal with ( read : move) this amount of luggage on our own.

When The Father saw the pile of suitcases that I had retrieved from the little attic, he asked me if I really planned on taking all of them. I responded, ‘ Well, I suppose you think that all of us can get by with, oh, say, three suitcases ?’. ‘Yes’, he replied. ‘Then I can’t do any shopping, can I ?’.

End of…discussion.

Schools

Here and there.

I was wondering just now, as I sat in the bath, will The Father stop by here when I am gone ? I mean, I have the link in the favorites bar, he’ll have to know it’s mine.

Will he finally take a look ?

The Father’s Father’s Day gift arrived today. No, I’m not that disorganized, I delayed ordering it on purpose.

I thought that he would enjoy it more if it arrived shortly before we all left him alone in the house for three weeks.

Something to help while away those lonely hours.

The little beach, last April.

The heat is bothering the puppies. They have hardly eaten for two days. To cool them off, we take them to the ‘ little beach’, a small, cleared area over by one of the harbors. If we let them swim in the canals, they have to be pulled out of the straight banked waters, and I’m not strong enough to pull them out.

So today the kids and I first took them up on the dikes to widdle and dump and then walked over to the little beach. It seems that every tourist who comes here brings their dog, and they all walked by our little beach today. In fact, they all sent their dogs to go and swim with ours, meaning that the kids and I got soaked from all of the fur-flapping as the dogs ran in and out of the water. Finally, a Belgian with a mean looking terrier set his dog out and I decided to leave. Our dogs might be big, but they are puppies and at times behave like dorks and that terrier had a set of jaws that could snap steel beams.

Sometimes, I wish people would just leave us alone.

( I wasn’t sure when I wrote this, but a Google search confirms that it was indeed a Pit Bull. )

I may have mentioned, somewhere, that Dad has only had about a week of having definite dates of our arrival.

He is so fine. I was rather happy about just 3 weeks being spent in Alabama, doing the things that we do there. And then he calls me tonight.

We are going to spend 3 days on the Gulf coast of Florida. It has been brought to my attention that this is not as posh as the rest of Florida. But, you know, I’m sort of outside of that circle and I really like the Gulf coast of Florida. Shark territory that it is.

I was glad to hear that we are going there.

We are also going to New Orleans. !. Dad says that there are lots of nice things for the kids, but let me tell you this : in ‘ Gone With The Wind’, they go to New Orleans to stuff their faces, and I know that this is still true.

The Father tells me tonight, well, why don’t I arrange a few days in Memphis for us. It’s not that far away- Graceland.

What odd and rather nice holidays we might have- in Dixie.

The Baby, The Boy, Elvis, The Girl and Buddy. The dogs went swimming this morning and are exhausted.

It’s hot here. Too stinking hot to blog.

All photos here.

Click Here.

My latest mission is to figure out why the company can’t receive e-mails from France. Their email is also coming in batches, rather than a steady stream. I have their email set-up running through Verio and no one can seem to figure this out.

It is mighty strange, and it looks like I will have to move them. You know, it’s not that easy to find a place that supports FrontPage Extensions.

But they do business in France, so I have to solve this.

Of course, I went to that fool let’s-all-drink-coffee-together – it’s so-much-fun-thing at The Baby’s school today. I couldn’t really get out of it. I tried, last year. Her teacher called me on the phone, and in that exquisite nursery school teacher voice asked me ‘ you are coming, aren’t you?’

It wasn’t that bad. The Baby clung to me like Velcro, so I didn’t look so very all alone. The topic of conversation was ‘ And, where are you going on your Summer Vacation ?’. The Mommies of The Baby’s friends were rather surprised when I said America. They thought that I was English. Odd, most Dutch people- when hearing my Dutch- think that I am German.

The mothers are all quite a bit younger than I am, and I noticed that when I said that I was American, I felt vaguely ashamed or embarrassed or something like that. A need to explain. In the back of my mind was the most recent mumbo-jumbo statement that Bush had made and a documentary that The Father and I had recently watched about the propaganda machine in America.

I still wonder how something so fine could have gone so wrong.

I have been working off of a full list of things to dither and fuss about the past week or so. Top of the list was the fact that my Dad didn’t really know for sure that we were coming ( and when) until I just called him, not 5 minutes ago. Our tickets arrived minutes after he took off for two weeks in Pamplona ( yes, he has, but not this year: he is recovering from a total knee replacement at the moment) and Nice ( he just loves the Negresco , dontcha know ) . I have to wonder why he has a cell phone, as he didn’t seem to have it with him.

But we are welcome, his cat is fine and he will pick us up in Atlanta.

Check that one off of the list.