More than one bark, actually. And very loud.

We had a string of thunderstorms glide through last night, setting off the dogs, who wanted to be sure that the evil thunder wouldn't sneak up on us. They smartly fulfilled their duty by loudly barking at the rumbles, even when so distant we barely heard them, thus keeping up baby between feedings.

To keep things even more interesting, the cats chased each other through the house on the new wooden floors around 1 am just to see whether they could drown out the storms with their own thunder. During that endeavour one of them lept on the banister rail where we had left our tools, knocking the small wrecking bar onto the new tile at the entryway, shattering one of the newly laid tiles.

In order to let Shelley and Kelley actually get *some* rest (once the cats had done their best) I took the dogs out on the couch and slept there, sometimes with them snuggled up nice and tight between their fits of sounding off.

I kept the patio screen door open to catch the sweet petrichor and damp breeze brought on by the weather, so that made the time between thunderclaps worth the waketime.

Despite rumors to the contrary, this really is the first time I had to sleep on the couch with the dogs. :-?



With it being so wet out we didn't want to work on house projects, and besides I had a doctor appointment that turned into an hour-and-a-half wait beforehand. This to talk about my ankle/foot sprain from last spring. Not much to be done - as I figured - except to put up with the ache and limited flexibility until it heals itself. Some more stretching and hot pads may help, and biking is probably good for it, which relieved me to hear.

We also made all our plane reservations for about 10 days back east, visiting relatives and friends in Cleveland, Ithaca, and Albany. Woo, baby's first plane ride! (I didn't get mine until age 18 or so, when I went to study in Scotland.)