Mallory and I have decided that dad needs to give her a puppy for her birthday. It would give her a month to work on house training him before she started school again, and it would also be the perfect thing to wake up the house once Harrison's gone and it's just the two of them. I quickly jumped on this bandwagon when she brought it up and we concluded that the puppy needs to be a beagle named Kenneth. (See picture.) Dad, of course, has completely refused us point blank. But I e-mailed him this picture today in the hopes of breaking him down. I also reasoned with him by saying that it could keep him company once Mallory leaves and the house is empty. He replied, "I'm NOT lonely for a dog!" So THEN I told him that by the time she leaves for college, I'll have my own place and will GLADLY take Kenneth off his hands. We'll see what happens.

In other news... I missed camp a lot today. I had this weird mixture of feeling both lonely and surrounded by too many people. See, yesterday Mal went to work and Harris took a nap, and there was no one to talk to. At camp, that never happened. But then this morning at church, there were tons of people and trying to have polite conversation with them as was expected was overwhelming and draining. I longed for that specific mix of people that I'd spent a week just having fun with. Not too many of them and not too few.

Oh well, that's probably what makes camp such a great place to go back to. I doubt I'll be going back next year, what with my "Live with a Spanish Family" plans, but the year after, I'm there.

I think another thing I loved about this last week was that it was a welcome rest from the food struggle (as I expected.) I knew that I'd be able to exercize complete moderation without so much as a hint of feeling deprived... and i was right. Its just so easy when there are so many other fun things to occupy your mind. But I also knew enough to know that it would be short-lived. Not that its been bad since i got home, but i'm back to thinking about it much more frequently.

Tomorrow i NEED to draw.