Fall beginnings

Two things:
1. School has started. For Silas, anyway. Helen starts tomorrow. The kids are like little ADD mice on crack, they are so excited.
Silas rips open his backpack to do his homework, talking full speed while he's doing it--"Even though it says just one thing we're supposed to have five things and that's what she said, so it's okay, five things, okay mom?"--and halfway through one assignment he rushes off to do something else (pee, maybe? it would appear to be necessary) and then gets distracted on the way back and ten minutes later I find him in his room, putting together kid kinnects, except that then his attention falls on the Garfield book beside his bed and he drifts off to read it. Meanwhile, Helen has apparently not played with anyone in seven years, she is so desperate to play with Silas, and she lies resentfully on his back while he tries to read, and then, when he says he will play with her after he's read ten pages, lies beside him, singing a little song about how he'll play with her soon, soo-oon, oh ye-ahh. I finally have to call her off.

2. The rolloff is here. So far we have lost the basement drywall. Full speed ahead!

We've also retreated into the south half of the house. Our bedroom has pretty much every electronic device we own in it, including the coffee maker ("It'll be like a hotel!" I said. "We can brew coffee while we're taking a shower!") It also has about half our furniture. The rest is in the garage, which is set up with the kitchen table, some shelves, and the fridge. The distance between the fridge and our bedroom, in other words, is about fifteen feet--it's like we've returned to apartment living. Now, while I am as excited as anyone else in the household for the project to move on through and END (and I will be much, much more excited once the kitchen is gone and we have no faucet or drain for cleaning up dishes), I kind of like this phase. It's cozy--kind of a circle-the-wagons feeling. Or, actually,it's like the old, old days when Mike & I were living in a truck--we slept within arm's reach of everything we owned. There's something comforting in that.



Bye, bye, tiny kitchen with paint-chipping sawdust-dripping cabinets!