Before I leave for what I call ‘my annual four-day working vacation’ I have to prepare the home front.  DH is no longer capable of cooking meals other than heating things in the microwave.  Therefore, I’ll be making and putting up frozen dinners for him.

     The dogs are sometimes too much for DH to handle alone.  I’ve arranged for friends to stop in and take them for walks so they are good and tired.  That way they won’t be their normal handfuls.  I’ll make certain that their food is in good supply and they have plenty of cookies.

     Then I need to print out my works in progress so that, if I find time, I can work on them at the conference.  I will do the writing on my Alphasmart and can transfer everything to my computer when I get home.  However, I need to have the printouts to work from since the Alphasmart doesn’t hold the book files.  Yes, this is where a laptop would be a very handy thing and would save my aching back from schlepping a lot of paper.  I dream of having a nice one, one of these days…