The basketball game with the dog isn’t working out quite as well as it did the first few days, because Zelda has decided that she likes to swim. She won’t even wait for us to get to the ball anymore: if it’s in the water, she hurls herself in after it. Once she reaches it, she drags it to the stairs and then waits. If we don’t throw it, the current created by the pump will slowly drag it away from the steps and into deeper water. She lets it get a foot or two away, and then her muscles start to bunch and her legs tremble and then…Splash! She’s back in the water. She spent more time in the pool today than I did.

R’s computer is broken and he is out-of-sorts. I think possibly that not having all the outlets that his various games provide is giving him too much time to reflect and worry. But it’s not showing up as coherent “I am anxious about school starting” statements, more just generalized mean, coupled with a longing to fight about nothing. I declined to buy flank steak for stir fry and you’d have thought I’d become Republican from the scorn heaped upon my willful ignorance. Sometimes I think becoming taller than me has gone to his head. You’d think he’d at least learn to cook before criticizing my ingredient choices.