Thirtyish Sentences About Today

1. I was up with the kids at sunrise, serving up popsicles and painkillers, but then we all slept until just after 10.
2. I worked a later day, afternoon instead of morning, to attend a training.
3. Today was hot as hell.
4. My husband was at home with a large number of unpacked beach bags leftover from the weekend.
5. The baby was fussy and napless.
6. My training at work was air conditioned.
7. But it was also super boring.
8. Draw.
9. Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happened.
10. Iced coffee with honey and whole milk happens almost every day.
11. It might be why I'm an optimist.
12. The boy was cabin-feverish when I got home.
13. We offered choices and he chose: go downtown!
14. We went downtown, walked around a fountain, walked around a block, greeted an exuberant homeless man who wished us a Happy Monday!, hurried through the beginning drip drops of rain, just missed the downpour with not a minute to spare, folding and stuffing the double jogger into the back of the car while fat, hot drops slapped my forehead.
15. I felt like there might be a perfect poem somewhere in there.
16. And then for lack of anything else to do in the pouring rain, we went to the mall.
17. Not a big fan of the mall, me.
18. But: there's a library branch there, which just happened to be open: score!
19. And: my husband had been wanting to go the library all day, but between the oppressive heat and the surrounded by unpacked bags and the fussy napless baby, it hadn't happened: double score!
20. Also: they have a climbing thing, and a certain little someone might just be in heaven when he's climbing: home run! Or something.
21. So, you know, it's not all about me. Or my tortured sports metaphors.
22. My boy said to me, at the climbing thing: Oh Mommy! I am having fun! 
23. He sounded downright rapturous, about the climbing thing, at the mall.
24. But later he fell into the (fortunately clean and unused) public toilet in the mall restroom, and he cried a little bit. But only a little bit.
25. We drove the long way home through the rainy city, yellow lights glowing on wet blacktop under a dark sky, my ability to find peace in the passenger seat ebbing and flowing with the sound of my daughter's cry in the backseat.
26. Bedtime kinda sucked.
27. But that's also kinda par for the course right now.
28. We're getting there with the bedtime thing. Slowly. It's summer, after all.
29. I guess if this day, or my life, had a message, it would be:
30. Every day has magic: moments of perfect poetry under a stormy summer sky. And every day has the mall, public bathrooms, spots of crying here and there.

Summertime Yellows (Cause it Sure Ain't the Blues!)

Holy hell, it's July! How did that happen?

The baby is growing like the weeds in our overgrown yard. The boy is bossing everyone and everything around (NO kitty-ditty! You canNOT sit on my chair! It is MINE! That would be a VERY BAD idea!). The husband is home for the summer, slogging through slow mornings sans coffee, as is his summertime custom.

I race off to work, late almost every day. It's so hard to say goodbye to my family, sleepy eyed and pajama'd in the family kitchen while I dart out the door in (still rather ill-fitting) work clothes. Kisses scattered in all directions, bags hanging over both arms, and one eye on the clock to calculate the time I'll arrive at the office, add five hours, and determine exactly when I can come back home to my loves.

It's summertime, and while the livin' ain't exactly easy with babies and yard work and a house somehow always in need of reorganization, it is sweet. Sweet like raspberries, lemonade, and sweet tea brewing in glass jars on the deck. Sweet like weather that beckons you to forget all the items on the to-do-list-that-won't-ever-die, sit down in the late afternoon sun and take note of the perfectly still air. So hot it could conceivably be another hot day from another hot year in the still, hot silence of your memory.

Or it could simply be now. Just one moment in this particular summer, staring at the shimmery air beating off the blacktop and feeling as if anything is possible.

God, I love summer.