We've got an HOA meeting on Monday night, and I admit, I'm dreading it. So Bao and I have fled to our Mexican hideaway for a couple of days, to get away from the strife and watch the whales.

Well, I think they were whales. They looked too big to be dolphins. And there aren't any islands out there, and this is the right time of year for whales in the Sea of Cortez. Even so, just because they were here last year doesn't mean they'll be here this year. Global warming, and all that.

Flying foxes are dropping dead from heat exhaustion in Australia. Polar bears are starving in the Arctic. Maurading swarms of jellyfish are terrorizing salmon ponds in Norway and giant squid are invading fishing grounds off the California coast. Costa Rica's Golden Toad has been declared extinct, as nobody has seen one since 1989. In Africa, the savannahs are starting to disappear and the giant Quiver Trees are dying.

The whole world is changing before our eyes, but Bao is unperturbed. He snuggles close, blinks at the ocean outside our window and curls up with his toys and goes to sleep. Everything's changing, but so what? Change is the rule, not the exception. Buddhists and Taoists know this. So do Shih Tzus. The trick is to live neither in the past nor in the future, but in the moment itself.

So we're going for a walk on the beach.