It's not necessarily that we deliberately put off returning to our normal house-cleaning schedule since our return from a week away in New Hampshire's wonderful natural mountain preserve in the White Mountain National Forest, it just didn't happen. In that there were so many other things to do. I didn't neglect the bathrooms or the kitchen, they ended up being cleaned as a regular routine. And Irving gave the house a thorough vacuuming at one midway point. And then we kind of left resuming that house cleaning schedule for another time.

 

That other time dawned this morning. So it was time to give the house a good cleaning, we agreed. Which means dry-dusting everything, and we've got a lot of things that line up to be dusted. Including the wood floors. Irving looked after the rugs and the vacuuming. And when all those things were done, it was the turn of all the other floors. In the laundry/mud room, the powder room, the breakfast room, the foyer and the kitchen. They're all tile floors, and scheduled to be washed.

 

Washing floors on hands and knees seems to take no time at all in comparison to the dusting. All that bric- a-brac including picture frames on the wall, ornamental clocks, porcelain pieces, bronze animalia, all of which we so enjoy having, takes forever, it seems, to dust. Perhaps it's because I've a tendency to linger at each one, seeing them each as though for the first time, while relieving them of imaginary dust motes.

 

Finally, though, we were finished and it was time to enjoy what was left of the day. A timely romp through the forest with Jackie and Jillie was in order ... back by popular demand ... which is to say our puppies' expectations. We were surprised when we came down for breakfast to see that we'd had rain at some point in the early morning hours. The deck was drenched with rain and so was the backyard. But it was also a mild day in the low-to-mid 20s, with sun to dry the landscape, so it wasn't wet for long.

 

Out in the forest it could hardly be detected that rain had fallen. The clay-based forest floor still sported wide cracks, indicative of a surprising lack of rain for September, after August's daily rain events. It was a perfect day for a circuit through the forest trails, and we took it at leisure. Jillie took to barking at one point as we reached an elevated portion of the trail, and I assumed she had become aware through her robust sense of smell that some of her friends were nearby.

 

And sure enough, peering through the dense lower story of the forest I could make out another, further trail, and just glimpsed some pale golden hair moving along. Which led me to make the assumption that before long a pair of familiar dogs would gallup over, bushwhacking to greet us in the expectation that Jillie's invitation to come right over would result in cookie handouts. And that's just what happened.