Coming Up For Air

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. In no particular order:

• dog health problems (still an issue - we're in the midst of doggie physical therapy, which involves multiple lengthy walks on a leash daily - not a big deal, other than that it's time-consuming)

• a plumbing incident that flooded the garage

• the telephone landline went dead (also involved the alarm company, so I had the pleasure of dealing with two sets of customer 'service' drones and tech reps, each of whom blamed the other)

• my knee is acting up again, requiring a weekly visit to the dr. for synvisc injections (about a three-hour round trip, including waiting time)

•  our 18-year-old son went to a seminar in Washingtonn D.C. - not a big deal except that it required "professional dress." This is a kid who wears nothing but gym shorts, t-shirts, and sandals. His idea of dressing up is putting on cargo shorts and tennis shoes. Wrestling him into khakis and polo shirts is a major undertaking. Getting him into a suit and tie ... fugetaboutit. And dress shoes? You'd have thought we were pulling out his toenails with a pair of pliers. After dragging him around town getting suits, slacks, dress shirts, etc. I had to teach him how to tie a tie. We finally got him packed and on the plane ... which promptly developed maintenance problems, causing him to miss his connecting flight. In the meantime, my wife, who is usually very good at handling the paperwork for stuff like this, somehow missed a bunch of required forms, which meant we had to drive around town and buttonhole teachers and doctors for grades and health records, which then had to be overnighted to D.C. We finally got it all done ... barely.

• at the same time our daughter went off to camp, which was much less dramatic, but still involved a large (excessively large, IMO) amount of shopping. Since she doesn't drive yet, and Mom was busy getting the boy's paperwork issues resolved, guess who got to go shopping with daughter dearest? That's right ... dear old Dad. The worst part was I couldn't just drop her off at the mall and wait at the nearest bar like I do with my wife. I had to (1) set a good example, and (2) tote around the credit card.

• While all this was going on my 94-year-old father had a pacemaker implanted, so we spent a fair amount of time at the hospital and taking him to follow-up doctor's appointments.

• AND on top of all the preceding, I had a couple of projects with hard deadlines come due. The projects themselves weren't that bad, but we had to contend with project administrators who were more concerned with process than outcome. We finished the work and wrote the reports in plenty of time, but had to go back and make changes because some forms weren't filled out to their satisfaction and the report format didn't satisfy them. I spent more time on administrivia than I did doing substantive work that contributed to the project outcomes.

But all good things must come to an end. Just about everything should be wrapped up early next week.

Thank God...