The Holiday Round-Up

We're back.  I missed you.  How have you been?

Here are some holiday snippets:

This is the second time I have rented a house for a holiday (first time, VA; this time PA).  This time, like last time, we arrived to discover that the water pump wasn't working.  What is it with me that I book holidays involving arduous travel on hot days to destinations without showers or flushing toilets?  This time, like last time, we put sweaty kids to bed and waited, uncomfortably, for someone to come and fix things. 

This waiting period gave us ample opportunity to muse on a second co-incidence.  House in PA, like house in VA, had a singing deer head (both named Buck) prominently mounted on the wall.

By comparison the rest of the holiday was lovely, if you don't mind small living rooms and sky lights that resonate like drums when it rains.  9 days of vackay at the Pocono lakes; 7 of those 9 included thunder and torrential downpours.

Still, the lake we were at had lovely little beach areas and we spent two idyllic mornings outside with the kids.

Bonus: a community center with a nice indoor pool and well-equipped but never crowded games room for the preschool set.  This kids room was the location for the Claraism du Week: "Mummy, look.  A dead caterpillar.  I hope it grows up to be a dead butterfly!"

Hardie threw up countless times, but my mother-in-law got her grilled hamburgers and s'mores one damp evening so everything was OK.

And now we are home, re-discovering the smell of cat.  One must get habituated to it, but we've been in fresh "mountain" air and our lungs are no longer accustomed.  After a week and a bit of three (THREE!) cats in a small row house with the windows shut, the smell is overwhelming enough that I feel like we are parting thick clouds of airborne dander every time we cross a room.  Whiffy.