I am overworked and underpaid, but the windows are open and there is cool air and birdcalls coming in.

Some of them I recognize, some of them I don’t–what’s that two-tone one from the tops of the trees? What was that one yesterday evening, like a deep-voiced seagull scream? That slow, evenly spaced knock is almost certainly a woodpecker, but what kind?

There are five kinds of mushrooms that grow in the yard, just that I’ve seen yet, and there is a beagle asleep at my feet–an ill-trained, occasionally incontinent, fleabitten, dumber-than-a-sack-of-wet-mice beagle, but a beagle who nonetheless loves me with the boundless let-me-wallow-on-your-head love of beaglekind. There is a cat lurking on the windowsill–an occasionally grumpy cat with herpes and kidney stones and assorted medical woes, but a cat who loves me in much the same way that I love the beagle–“She’s an idiot, but she’s MY idiot.” (Ben and Gir have come to a truce, based on the fact that they both want to sleep on the bed with me in the morning. As long as Gir stays at the foot, Ben will allow him to live. Gir is not entirely sure about the fairness of this arrangement, and keeps trying to push things a little bit, which will eventually end with Gir getting the Ninja Killer Treatment, probably over the top of my sleeping body, but for now, peace reigns.)

I have too much to do, but stuff is getting done, and life is pretty good.