So many things going on!

The Boston trip was a lot of fun, although I was pretty pooped most of the time. There was an exhibit called Americans in Paris at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts which included works from late 19th-century American painters living in post-revolutionary Paris. It was fantastic. That's not usually a period of art that I'm so crazy about, but the various works were presented as part of a cohesive narrative about life in Paris as an American expat during such an amazing time of transition and it really worked. I'd recommend it if you get a chance to visit Boston before the end of September. Just to see one painting called "Madame X" was worth the price of admission alone.

The trip home on Friday was easier than I had feared. I printed my boarding pass before leaving for the airport, got there at 3:50 for a 6:30 flight, and hardly anyone was at the airport. For once, it was good that Logan airport is such a dump, and that the American Eagle flights go from only 5 little gates with no bathrooms or shops beyond security. It kept the lines very short. I managed to squeak onto a 4:50 flight and got home about the time my original flight was taking off. Yay!

The weekend was a flurry of working on the nursery and sitting around at the small animal hospital of the vet school. Poor Goofch is very sick. Please light a votive for him if you have the chance, because no one seems to know what's wrong with him, but he has lost about 15 pounds since we came home from the Marquette trip and last week he stopped drinking water. Our vet did lots of tests and couldn't nail down any causes and none of the treatments they tried helped. His vet suggested sending him over to the vet school hospital (sort of the Johns Hopkins of the small animal world, as far as I can figure) and we decided to go ahead and try them after K suggested it-- thank you for the advice! We would have hesitated if not for that advice from one of the nations BEST vets (can we send him down to Alabama for treatment?). But really, if anyone can figure out what the problem is, it's the people at NCSU, but it's already cost us a couple of mortgage payments to have no answers.

UPDATE SINCE I WROTE THAT:
I just spoke to the vet at NCSU, and after a lot of testing and such, it's starting to look more like a liver infection, maybe some kind of hepatitis thing. TREATABLE! Yay! They haven't entirely ruled out cancer, but he's showing signs of improving since they've given him more antibiotics, IV fluids, anti-vomit drugs and some food he can keep down. He's such a sweet dog that he has a bunch of new friends who are loving on him lots, which is good because I bet he's scared. Hopefully we'll get to take him home soon, all healed and it'll be worth the mortgage payments.

SNG made an astute observation: if the dog has hepatitis, can it be passed to one of us or to the baby? I better ask about that when I talk to them next...