No, ma'am, this isn't a dog, it's just a furry carry-on.

                                                          Photo by Mark Gesinger

We are never getting another dog. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but it's going to cost about 3 bazillion dollars to ship Seamus to Brazil in the middle of summer. In fact, it might be cheaper to just charter him a private jet. We are using Club Pet to handle the two (or eight? twelve? depending on the heat) week boarding, vet checks and shots, final groom (we want him to look good for the Brazilian bitches), and international health certificate, and they seem pretty good. They have been extremely helpful so far, and if he gets there alive they'll get a double thumbs-up from me. And if he doesn't make it, well, then, I've saved a bazillion dollars on the next post. I kid! I only wish I could just buy him a seat on the airplane. He's a much better traveller than Madame Barfsalot and Sir Arewethereyet. Maybe we can ship the kids as cargo.

The house looks like a badly-played game of Tetris. Boxes, luggage, purchases, and mountains of sunblock and laundry soap are everywhere.  I won't be able to live like this for five weeks due to my control-freak nature, so my plan is to sort it into organized piles for the five destinations (long-term storage-like my boots *whimper, our snowshoes and most of the furniture, air freight-like my kitchen stuff and extra clothes, stuff that will be put on a boat and take a while to get there-like our bed and not my boots *whimper, stuff we are bringing to Seattle/Spokane-just our clothes for two weeks, and finally, stuff we are going to store and bring with us on the plane from DC to Brazil. We each get two 50 lb bags and a carry-on, and I intend to use every ounce I can on my own sheets and towels, shoes, and kitchen stuff. But no boots, because boots are dumb and I hate them.

I have little color-coded dots for everything so the movers don't get confused. All this organizing has really put a damper on my relaxing in bed all day. It's so irritating. Plus, I've had to get up every day this week and make my own coffee since Mitch is off learning to shoot automatic weapons and crash through roadblocks at what my teenager calls "Jason Bourne Preschool" (said teenager also thinks this is much cooler than finding out Nirvana once opened for his dad's college band).