Postcards From Maine

Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.

For the most part, we've just been lazing about, getting in some serious relaxation time. But of course, with kids around, there's never a truly dull moment.

The high low point of excitement came the other evening when my parents' overly-excitable fox terrier, after two days of blameless, nay, exemplary co-existence with the Llama-ettes, lost his head and went for the five year old. (She tried to pet him while he was bottom-feeding for snacks under the dinner table and nobody noticed what she was doing.) He nailed her in the face, leaving a three-cornered gash just above her lip that required a trip to the emergency room and seven stitches.

I must say that the gel was very brave. The only hard part was when the nurse gave her a local anaesthetic, jabbing all around the cut with a needle. It's bad enough for a parent to have to watch their child go through this and it's even worse when the parent has to help hold the child still to do it. Even though you know it has to be done, you have this horrid feeling that you're somehow violating their trust in you, because all they understand is that it hurts like hell and Daddy's not making it stop.

However, once the local kicked in, the rest was a piece of cake. The nurse gave her a teddy bear to hold (now known in the household as "Brave Bear"), I put my hands on top of hers, and she lay perfectly still while they sewed up her face. And that was it. The stitches come out Saturday before we leave and all indications are that there will not be any kind of permanent scarring. In the meantime, we're going through a ritual of daily antibiotic dosages and cleaning and dressing of the sutures. The gel assures me repeatedly that it doesn't hurt at all.

Meanwhile, as I say, we're having a great time. I took the girls to Popham Beach yesterday. Perfect weather - 80 degrees and clear. We built sea-walls and sand castles in a vain effort to stop the incoming tide and spent hours hurtling the waves. The day before we went down to the Maine Children's Museum in Portland, the chief attribute of which is that everything in it is virtually indestructable. Other than that, I've been lazing about, falling asleep to the sound of the surf every night, and eating entirely too much food.

I hope everybody is behaving here in the meantime. The 'rents have an iMac and Netscape and for whatever reason, Llamaland comes out looking terrible on it, so trying to read what everybody else is doing here is rather a pain. We'll be up here a couple more days and then head on home, there to squander all our relaxation credits by scrambling like hell to catch up with everything that we've let slide. I should be back in normal blogging mode by Tuesday or so.

Yip! Yip! Yip!