Summer Lull

The Kitten has abandoned me with the younger of the Kittens, taking the older one with her for a little adventure before school starts.  It seems "The Village" in which I live deems me an only moderately competent parent, as there are many people willing to take the younger Kitten off my hands for periods of time.  I've seen to the periods that I have to be away from home, but I fear that if I acceded to all these requests, I would spend no time with the Little Monkey.  I will stand firm.

It is difficult to believe that we are a wake-up from August.  Global Warming has conspired to create seemingly perfect Summer days here on the Shore, low humidity, temps in the 80's.  Things have slowed and the pace seems right.  I'm working pretty hard to lay out where my little business is going to go in the Fall, when those I would do business with have returned from their vacations, and furloughs, and other distractions.

The presence of the second Lab has renewed Baloo's lease on life.  No longer content to laze around the house, he spends a good part of his day being hectored by his six-month old stepsister Zu-Zu whose energy seems even to weary him.  They are fast friends, and I am happy to think of them growing old together.

A week ago, I began my summer beard, much to the consternation of the women of my house to whom it is a naked affront.  Seeing a portion of them off at the airport yesterday, I was reminded of the wisdom of shaving it before their return.  The one who remains wriggles and squirms against even the gentlest nuzzle, creating for some future boyfriend a horrible precedent of continuous clean-shaven-ness.  They don't understand the necessity of the summer beard.  It is a way to mark time, to see how the previous year has ravaged one's face through the accumulation of grey.  It is a way to mark virility, making sure one still has the capacity to even make a run at a beard.  And it is a way of asserting one's independence, one's agency.  I shave fifty weeks a year, dammit, and for two weeks in the summer I will not be denied!  Until the Kittens' return, that is.