Three pairs of my jeans, each with a hole worn through right mid-thigh.  Why?  No clue.  I can’t figure out why this happens to all of my jeans–and to no other pants.

Some of the consequences of yesterday’s microbursts.  The first image is of an oak across Carlton Road, the second is the sheared-off top of an oak from my backyard that just missed my house and back steps, the third is of a large oak that fell across my neighbor’s driveway and atop their house, without causing apparent damage.

We are in the middle of 11 days in Italy.  After visiting Nate in Crema over the weekend we drove to Cortona, a walled Tuscan hill town. Etruscans settled Cortona thousands of years ago, and it has been inhabited and a hub of commercial and artistic life since then.  The streets are narrow, cobbled, and steep.  Very steep.

Viewed in the context of the anecdotal picture in my commencement address, the photograph of Nate sitting on a street corner in Crema, Italy is proof the furball doesn’t fall far from the . . . how best to end this sentence?  Perhaps “furball” is the wrong noun.  (Click links for full-size images)

The

doesn’t fall far from the

The large plastic dog-treat container slipped from my hands when I was returning it to the top of the refrigerator.  I arrested its fall by trapping it sidewise with my hip against the counter.  Its top popped open and mixed dog treats spilled to the wood floor and scattered across the kitchen.  It was a religious experience for Cleo and Chelsey.  I grabbed the broom and swept and scooped up as many treats as I could but was no match for the girls’ low center of gravity, four legs, and voracity.

Part of the ritual for opening the lake house is checking the answering machine.  Most of the messages are hang-ups or automated calls, and there aren’t many.  So it was a surprise today to hit the listen button and hear the recorded announcement “you have 23 new messages.”  A quick scan showed that over 20 of the them were for David Randall from GMAC.  In other word, debt-collection calls.  While I am David Randall, I am not the David Randall GMAC had been patiently hounding for the past seven weeks.  The callers were indeed patient, leaving their names and numbers with at most a hint of exasperation.  I have no responsibility to tell GMAC it is pursuing the wrong pup but I have no desire to continue to receive deadbeat David Randall’s dunning calls.  GMAC is open until 8 pm and one quick call convinced it to remove my number from its database–until it trees another phantom namesake in my Maine phone number.

We’ve had terrible luck with bulbs.  Frost, squirrels, neglect, and other natural hazards killed most of our bulbs each year. We gave up trying.  A few lonely tulips struggle on.  Saturday I saw Cleo sniff and take a preliminary nibble on these petals.  I shooed her away and snapped the picture before Cleo could finish it off.  Apparently it didn’t meet Cleo’s exceptionally low edibility threshold.  The tulip blooms yet.

Patellar subluxation . . . patellofemoral syndrome . . . iliotibial band friction syndrome . . . dexomethasone . . .

Medical terms have a certain obscure poetry.

Last night we returned from dinner about 10:30.  Chelsey was waiting where I expected, peering through the back door.  Cleo was not where I expected, curled up asleep in her bed in my office.  It’s almost always bad news when Cleo varies her routine–you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.  From the mud room I saw debris underneath the dining room table, which has become Cleo’s den.  Another bad sign.  The dogs had gotten into something.  The question was what.  A few steps farther I had an answer.  Trash was strewn across the kitchen floor.  Where had it come from?  A few more steps revealed more trash, an entire shredded 13-gallon bag of trash, a doggie heaven of trash, around the kitchen island.  Coffee grounds, vegetable scraps, tissues, cardboard, empty cans and bottles, a soggy mess of kitchen refuse.  Somehow the dogs had pried open the trash drawer, reached inside the bin to pull out an almost-full bag, and had a garbage party.  Chelsey, conscienceless and oblivious, wagged her tail.  Cleo, possessor of the 95% of their joint brainpower, sat and watched nervously as we cleaned up, her face the picture of I know I did wrong but I just can’t help myself.  We couldn’t figure out how they’d forced open the drawer.  The only logical explanation is that we left it open a fraction, just enough for Cleo (because it had to be Cleo) to wedge in her nose and push it open all the way.  The alternative–my dogs are capable of opening a fully-closed cabinet drawer–is too scary to contemplate.

Imagine what the mischief they could make with opposable thumbs.