Owning up to my lie

I promised to take my lap top to Baltimore and blog from there and I didn't. Oh, I did take it to Baltimore but I didn't blog there. Three granddaughters can distract you from stuff like that.

We had Tegan (4 next month and a force of nature) all day and I'd pick up Morgan and Emma from the Calvert School at three. Their in what most everyone would call 'first grade' but Calvert calls 'Age 7'. They usually do after school stuff until Cathy picks them up after 5. Josh takes them at 7:30. They have a long day, but so do their parents (both lawyers that they are). What amazes me is that they've done such a wondrous job raising those girls given how much they both work.

We took Bad Dog Bela with us, tranquilized to the gills so he wouldn't bark all the way. Bern wanted him to go since he'd been in the kennel for almost two weeks while we were at Oak Island, North Carolina. The vet gave us some tranquilizers that make him shaky-legged and prone on the way there and back. He fights the drug like hell for 20 minutes and then needs to lean against something to stay upright. Normally, he barks the whole time he's in a car, which would be an issue on a 280 mile trip....

Bern loves Bela so. It touches my heart to see how much she loves a Bad Dog. But I do too. He was good, if drowsy, all the time we were in Baltimore.

Being with the girls (as we call them) is like wading through the gene pool uphill. But it is worth doing. It's what you do for children and grand-children. And we see so many things that remind us of Josh and Mimi. And other things we don't recognize that must come from Cathy's shore of the pool.

Saturday was Morgan and Emma's birthday party out at a farm about 20 miles north of Baltimore with a sunflower field and a bouncy blown up thing and a bonfire and lots of food and lots of privileged kids from their classes at Calvert School. We stayed about half-an-hour, until a quarter of the other kids were there then we slipped away to Connecticut.

We drove home in 4 hours and 14 minutes--with one stop--280 miles, you do the math. It was a Personal Best for the trip.

I love those little girls gut deep. They get under my skill...Well, their skin, in some real way, is my skin as well....I love them so, so much. But from time to time, they make me crazy....Just as their father and their aunt did from time to time so long ago. And they turned out nicely, if I do say so myself, though no fault of my own! And I love them, Josh and Cathy, like at the marrow of my bones level, and their mother only a bit deeper....