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I'm going to assume that you've never had a 70-pound dog wrap herself around your sleeping head in fear -- and let me tell you, you haven't missed anything.

Gracie is terrified of the chirps smoke detectors make when they're dying. They make her droolingly, shiveringly, pantingly terrified, poor thing. On Sunday night, after we'd driven eight hours to get home, after we'd had a little dinner and watched Finding Nemo to destress, we went to bed. Since we were finally home, I had lists and lists and lists in my head, all the things we needed and wanted to do, so I was taking a long time to fall asleep. And then the power went out.

For reasons we don't understand, this made the one smoke detector that's wired into the house (and so shouldn't have had any power!) -- and that's right outside our bedroom -- chirp. It chirped once, waited four or five minutes, chirped again, waited four or five minutes, chirped again, and then went silent. Grace was apoplectic after the first chirp, climbing on the bed with her pointy toenails and trying to slink behind me. After it finally went quiet, we were able to get her calmed down, still taking up all of my pillow, and I tried to go to sleep. And just as I was about to fall asleep again, the power flickered on and flickered back off.

And we did it all again. This happened several times, and Gracie's ability to calm down got smaller and smaller. When the damn smoke detector just started chirping every minute without end, she pretty much lost it.

I tried sleeping with the dogs in the ritual room downstairs, which was as far away from it as we could get, but since we had no power and thus no white noise, we could still hear it. Meanwhile, Grace crawled under Ms. P's altar, trying to get as small as possible. When I went back upstairs, she climbed into the bathtub and scratched at the floor, trying to get underneath it. Finally, I stood on a bench while Ms. P held the flashlight and we managed to disconnect the detector from the wiring (without electocuting anyone!).

It chirped once then, and I grabbed my robe and was headed outside to stash it in the car when it finally quieted down. We still don't know why it -- without a battery we could see -- was making noise.

Somewhere around 4am, we were able to fall asleep with both dogs and both cats on the bed. It made returning to work a little bit tough.

Other than that, though, vacation was wonderful. We got lots of lovely beach time and pool time and napping time and reading time, and I managed all of this without getting a sunburn, which is quite a feat for this pale-skinned redhead. We saw lots of great wildlife, too, and I'll post some pictures when I get them uploaded from the camera.

But it might take awhile -- we got a note from our social worker scheduling our first meeting for the home study, and she wants to come to the house. We have less than two weeks to do all of those projects we thought we'd have more like two months for, so while Ms. P studies for her biology exam, I'm going to be frantically checking things off of our list. We're in better shape than we've been in for a while, but there's still plenty to do (*cough* piles of random things in the bedroom *cough*).

Dispatches From the Front, Part 2

I was right when I anticipated being bored by sessions. Yesterday involved two 3-hour sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening. There were only five choices. The only one remotely related to my work was on sustainability, the subtle art of thinking ahead.

Some notes to the presenters. First, you don't have to convince us that after-school programs are a good idea. We all run the damn things. That's why we're here. Second, there is no such thing as concentric squares, and even if I can imagine what they might be, they certainly aren't 2x2 grids. Third, for the love of all that is holy, stop going off into digressions about random quotes that make no sense!

I skipped the afternoon session and lounged in my room, attempting to dislodge a headache by reading and watching television at the same time. It didn't work. Sleeping, finally, did.

Today sessions are the more usual 1.25 hours long. I should attend one on data collection, but I may go to the one on motivating high school students instead, just so I can spend time thinking about the students we serve instead of the reports I write about the programs we run.

One of the pleasures of being here is of course my colleague, but getting to know her and talking to her is making me see some things in our organization that I hadn't, from my vantage point in development, really recognized before, and most of them are disturbing. I'll blog them later, but suffice it to say I'm thinking carefully about my career path right now.

Dispatches From the Front, Part 1

There are palm trees here. You probably don't understand how this feeds my very soul. Palm trees! And open air walkways, because you can, here. And it's just the right amount of humidity combined with the perfect amount of warm. I'm going to be hard pressed to attend sessions.

Tomorrow is nothing but registration, however, so I suspect I'm going to head over to the nearby mall to buy myself a swimsuit and spend the day at the pool.

Heaven.

PS--The last leg of the flight, I sat between a man reading Ann Coulter and a woman--very New Jersey--with dyed blonde hair, overdone eye makeup, and lace-up platform sandals, who didn't do anything, at all, for the entire four and a half hour flight.