Winter of my discontent

Tuesday morning we woke to this:

Again.

See that stuff on the road? That's ice. Ice. In April. Snow I can do, but ice? Come on.

Third Tuesday in row, besides. Soccer was cancelled. Baseball was cancelled. All activities celebrating the great outdoors were shut down, possibly forever, because how exactly are we going to do swim season, or camping season, or anything season, with a blizzard every Tuesday? Helen's soccer team hasn't had a practice in over a month (games, though. They've had those. All I will say  is that apparently the other teams are finding space to practice.)

It's had an effect on my mood.

Technically the shores of Duluth, but it could be my heart.

 Not helping is my annual freak out about summer. This year, oddly, has mostly been better: perhaps I have come to accept certain truths, such as that my platonic ideal of summer - a blend of a few childhood experiences, the farm from Charlotte's Web, and various other cultural suitcases that I have not had time to unpack - does not actually exist in the universe as we know it. Also that staying home with my children all day every day would be an unmitigated disaster, one that would have to begin with quitting my job. Therefore: I'm signing the kids up for a blend of camps, sports and babysitters, with a goal of minimizing drive time and camp time, and I'm fine with that. Mostly. We did run into one stumbling block: when I went to sign Helen up for swim team, the team she was on last year, the one with all her friends, was full. I briefly lost my will to live. Just to put in context, this was three days after the bombing in Boston killed three and shattered lives and limbs. So I pulled myself together and decided I had just lost the will to live here, in this competitive, crowded, rat race of a suburb where everything is a fight and a struggle and I'm always having to hustle and bark.

Then I signed Helen up for a different swim team and moved on.

Meanwhile, we are going about our days. It's supposed to be seventy-five this Saturday: that's a good thing. Not all of the tulips and daffodils got snapped in the superfreeze we had at the beginning of April ( 6 degrees. It got down to 6 degrees Fahrenheit), so that's also something. (The lilacs, though, are toast, and one looks as though it might be permanent toast.) Helen and I went for a run slash bike ride yesterday after work; it was warm, or warmish, so long as we kept moving. We saw kingfishers and muskrat and sparrows and turtles and talked about returning to the ponds in the summer with a friend. I found a program for Silas for next year where he can serve as a volunteer in the local parks & rec offices: perfect, I'm thinking, because what he needs more than anything right now is a job. I mean, he'll have to wait until next year, but still. Just knowing that is out there eases my mind.

Relief trucks on way

We've officially reached that moment in summer when I stop believing that fall will ever come, or snow, or cool weather, and it will be hot, gray and grim until forever. This would be depressing except that my inner response seems to be, oh well, better keep working, then - which is kind of a relief, to just give up on the idea of reaching for the stars, or blissfully idyllic autumn runs, or homegrown ripe apples, and just put my head down and do what needs to be done.

So it's kind of hard to believe that the high tomorrow is supposed to be 75. I hope it doesn't lead to a sense of wild imbalance or unsustainable hope.

One thing that has been a backdoor relief for some of us - for me, mostly - is that the crackling dry city combined with all these fires has led to a complete and total moratorium on home fireworks (and a near-moratorium on commercial displays). Silas got weepy about it - "I just don't want to have a fourth of July without fireworks," he said, sobbing, and my heart broke a little, because we *could* have dragged ourselves downtown, in the traffic on a work night, to the lacrosse game at Mile High Stadium, where there would be fireworks, except that we cruelly opted for sensible. Meeeean, is what we are. Especially since I felt nothing but triumph in my heart about getting to opt out of the "highly illegal vs. but it's so fun" debate this year.

Anyhow. It kind of comes back to something I've been thinking about a lot this summer - I wrote about it on the Get Born blog, but imperfectly - this disconnect between what we want for our kids and what they themselves want. One of the commenters on that post made the excellent point that one of hard things about parenting is finding out that "children are people--real, flawed, normal people." When they're beautiful babies who have everything yet to learn, it's easy to think they can be anything; then they start growing up and it turns out that they actually have no desire to chase the gold ring, or the brass ring, or however the saying goes. Silas is never going to be an aggressive competitor, the one who gets down the mountain the fastest, or who stays at the gym the longest, or who cranks out the most perfect score on the most important test - and this should not be a surprise, since neither are his parents. He's going to be someone who gets pretty close, since he is smart, and he does have kind of a talent for throwing a ball - and he'll like being that close, and maybe even feel that he's entitled to be there, since he's smart, everyone says so - but then when it comes to consolidating his gains and closing in for the gold, he'll abstain, and go off to play his iPod touch instead. Just like me, only for me it's a good book and an afternoon spent puttering around the yard.

The difference seems to be that I feel like my lack of ambition is a calculated choice, and is furthermore sustainable, as in it's paid for by a job. Whereas one could argue that I and all the other parents who urge their kids to improve their freestyle stroke or practice reading for one hour a day or work on their endurance are deeply insecure about their children's ability to become functioning adults.

Or maybe it's that we want our kids to become a certain kind of functioning adult - I would be so very depressed if Si chose to support his video game lifestyle by becoming the manager of a Chick Fil-A, for example, even though the salary he'd most likely pull down is not much different from M's salary as a professor.

I ought to point out that I would also be disappointed if he chose to support his video game lifestyle by becoming an investment banker. It would be a different kind of disappointment, however. One mixed with pride and bafflement (you do what, again, son? invest in...banks?)

I get confused, though, about how much of that choice is my business. I assume, I think, that Silas would find that managing a Chick Fil-A as depressing as I do, and I am trying to steer him toward a path that avoids it. But what if he would actually like managing a fast food joint? (shudder) It's no berth on a major league baseball team, sure, but I think we need to agree that there's going to be some kind of Plan B for that dream. What if his satisfactory Plan B is different from my idea of a satisfactory Plan B? What then? How do I parent that? I have no earthly idea.

If anything, I feel like I'm steering him toward the investment banker option. He's good at math, and I know enough about schoolish things to encourage him in this pursuit and encourage him in improving his math scores and math savvy - mostly by taking advantage of various school and community math-burnishing options. But where do these lead? What if they lead toward investment banking? I don't even know. I just cheer on the sidelines and push him in the community-sanctioned directions and I'm not even sure what the community is sanctioning.

You know what I mean? Parenting is the blind leading the blind, man. And then getting crabby when the follower doesn't end up where we wanted him to go.

Endings

Si's last day of 5th grade was yesterday, and while I am making a determined effort not to get too wistful/ slide into a sea of despond, I must remind myself that it's okay to own my feelings on the subject. Which are:

1. Iiiii want to sleep in, tooooo.

2. What the--didn't we take photos of his first day of kindergarten/ first day of second grade (which is when he started his current school)? I could have sworn we did. Honestly. Who's the record keeper in this family, anyway? Where are they? WHO CAN I BLAME FOR THIS.

3. Ack! Summer's beginning, and here I am, still trudging off to work.

4. We forgot to get a teacher gift, didn't we? Losers, man.

5. Everything ennnnnddds.

First day of 3rd grade, which is apparently the best I can do on the memory comparison front.

Close to first day of kindergarten with bonus Viking chain mail.

Close to first day of second grade with bonus broken collar bone (Sand Dunes).

Last day of 5th grade. You'd hire this guy, right?

Three...two...one...

For his daily writing assignment so that his writing muscles don't atrophy, I asked Silas to write about what he was looking forward to most about school. Here's what he wrote:


It has been a long, boring summer. Camp, horseback riding, fishing, Legos, a trip to Yellowstone, fishing, playing with friends, sleepovers, a sleepover party, homemade ice cream, homemade popsicles, pool, cousin time, grandparent time, crawdad fishing, biking the neighborhood, zoo, museum, more Legos...

Thank god that's over and he can finally DO something all day. Well, six hours of the day, at least.

Meanwhile, Helen and Mary, her doll, are both looking forward to starting first grade.

We visited the Denver Doll and Toy Museum to celebrate (and also because The Boys went to the Rockies game).

Last days of summer

Summer is such a schizophrenic time for me. On the one hand, I wake up at five thirty and run, shower and go to work, the same as I do every other frigging day of the year. On the other hand, the house is filled with long lazy days and unfulfilled desires and endless, endless fights over who gets to have a playdate or who is touching whose Legos. I get home and the heat and need to loaf hit me like a wave, but then there is no loafing, because however leisurely the kids might feel themselves, they don't really share that feeling with others, and monitoring them is a fulltime job and M has been up in his ears with it for the past nine hours and it's my turn now and also everyone is hunnnngrrry. So like every other mother on the planet I am looking forward with panting enthusiasm to the first day of school. I am also trying to wring every last drop of summer from this month. Thus this weekend I spent in a frenzy of yard work, and then took the kids (and my parents, who are visiting in order to help us with the last critical week before school starts) to do two installments of our summer Park Project.

The pavilion at Cheesman Park

The Park project is where we visit Denver parks, investigate their offerings, and fill out a little survey sheet.

Helen gave the fountains top marks but found the playground average at best.

The survey sheets are more to make it official than anything else (well, I think Silas secretly loves them. They fulfill his need for order). Otherwise we're just visiting parks and testing the playgrounds. These were our second and third parks; last time we went to Observatory Park, which still earns top marks from both kids (the observatory. Not many parks can boast a functional observatory, and the fact that it was closed on the day we visited probably made it even more desirable. The mysteries of the stars, etc., as opposed to the pain in the neck of peering through a telescope at tiny swimming pinpricks that, we're assured, are VERY IMPORTANT.)

Si tested the pavilion for scooter worthiness.
The playground was serviceable. Although less so for proto teens.

I'm hoping to visit at least one more park before the summer's really done (probably not before school starts, though, which means not before baseball and soccer start in earnest, so really, who am I kidding? Life, which has been pretending to be busy all summer, is about to crank into high gear.)

Smith Lake at Washington Park.

For me, the Park Project has been an excuse to visit places I've meant to go for three years and explore the city we sort of live in a little more. It's both satisfying and sad. I wish that I could have been doing this all summer, for one thing. And it makes me think of all the other things I wish I was doing with the kids, and how I desperately wish I could have the summers off, and how the kids are growing up and already Si is almost too old to be read aloud to (one of the main reasons I had kids, already phasing itself out! Why go on?). I get this rushing, panicky sense of needing to do it all now and maximize this day, this week, this time of their lives.

I have to forcibly sit down sometimes, and remember: in twenty years (in five years), the details won't matter. Their childhood will have become just that--the thing they have, imperfect, marked by expediency and what-we-happened-to-have-on-hand-at-the-time-ism--and it will be enough. Really. It will. Even if they don't learn Spanish.

Camp Report

After a week of being a single-child family, Mike drove up and retrieved our other one on Friday, and now we're back to the two-child dynamic ("It's not fair that HE gets a sleepover and I don't" "Hey! You guys went to Starbucks! No fair!" "Silas is being MEAN to me!" "Helen won't stop BOTHERING me!" et cetera et cetera ad infinitum tunc nauseam) (incidentally the online English-to-Latin translator I chose is so slow I suspect that it is an unpaid intern in a cubicle, looking up the word in her Cassel's Latin dictionary). I was hoping that it would make it easier to cook dinner, what with no longer having to admire and comment on every single voluntary muscle movement of my daughter, but it really just changed the issue from one of having to provide continual fawning attention to having to provide continual mediation when one party requests fawning attention and the other party brutally declines to provide said service.

This is why having siblings is good for the character. Or this is what I tell myself as I rush down to the basement to break up another sobbing screaming fight. Over whether or not a certain Lego person is allowed to wear hair.

It does make dinner preparation more difficult.

By the time he got to me, Si had been asked how he liked camp so many times that he just kind of shrugged, but overall I suspect he had an awesome time and that he may have even found his medium, so to speak. His metier? Whatever it is when you find the place you're supposed to be. An abundance of scheduled, organized activities in which you can subtly show off without being the center of attention or having to really exude effort: that's my boy.

While his first day home he was noticeably more cheerful and polite, as though, I may have audibly hoped, he was actually well-mannered and behaved at camp and got into the habit of being so, by Monday it had worn off and he was argumentative and bossy as before. "What time are YOU going to bed, Mom? Isn't that pretty late? You know you need your sleep, and ten-thirty is pretty late."

This is less charming in person than it sounds on the screen and given that it is generally in reponse to a mild reminder to turn off his light soon comes across as a version of you're not the boss of me, mom. Two can play this "it's your bedtime" game, you know.

Summer continues apace. I am trying to ensure that we engage in iconic summer activities, such as popsicle making, that we did not manage to do last summer due to the kitchen's imminent demise. Right now it's really a race between iconic summer and weed growth, though, as every time I settle in to help with an activity I glance up and notice that the weeds in the backyard are closer to the door and are they supposed to be snarling like that? and have to rush out and yank some up lest they think they can just take over with no struggle at all.

What is UP with me lately

The rain. The rain is what is up with me. I get that rain is good, that I haven't had to water the lawn in over a week and hurrah and, furthermore, it will end as all weather things do and we will go back to all dry all the time and also HOT. (Okay, we are in fact back to HOT). But: the rain messed up my weekend, and I am NOT HAPPY. Specifically, the rain made a perfectly easy and sensible project, painting (some more of) the house, suck all of the non-accounted-for time out of Sat & Sun. To wit: Sunday I woke up and prepared myself for my weekly long run, as is my wont. Except that as I was tying my shoes and otherwise puttering toward Start, I happened to get that itchy, let's-think-about-those-clouds-and-how-they-might-impact-my-plans feeling, and that feeling led to a decision to switch the order of things, from run-then-paint to pain-then-run, which was fine, except that the paint part ended up taking up all of the paint and run time...and I guess maybe what I'm really mad about is the painting.

Augh will I be glad when the painting of the house is fini. It seems like it is neverENDING.

The other reason I felt a little pressed for time on Sunday was that we had to leave after lunch to bring Si up to his first-ever overnight camp. One of his best friends is also attending (they're sharing a bunk bed, in fact), and they've got about a million fun things scheduled, from baseball to archery to rain to canoeing to campout night to rain to horseback riding, and fun counselors that actually seem focused and attentive, like they might remember his name--but I still said, as we drove away, that I was SO VERY GLAD that my own personal days of sleepover camp are over. It just...has that overtone of bleakness. The too-hot, slightly mac-and-cheese-smelling dining hall. The bare-bones cabin with the plastic mattresses. The cabins that used to be snugly nestled in a cool pine forest but now, thanks to pine beetles and blowdown, are scattered across a bare, stump-studded field.

Si was enthusiastic about it, though, or at least a good sport, and by the time we'd gone back to the car and returned with his Harry Potter book he was deep in a game with his friend and barely looked up to say goodbye. So that's all good (but I will be glad to have him home, and to have school back in session and everybody in their place and predictable while I'm at work).

Brief update

So, we went camping last weekend. We forgot our sleeping bags and ketchup for the hot dogs; it was hot and dusty until it got really very cold, and when we got home there was an entire weekend's worth of chores to do, plus extra laundry and dishes from the camping. Nonetheless it was wonderful and I enjoyed every minute of it, except perhaps the moment we made the discovery about the sleeping bags ("Oh what a SHAME!" cried Helen and collapsed in misery.)

The kids spent almost every minute climbing in the rocks behind camp

except when they were geocaching

or melting their matchbox cars in the fire. Helen was well-dressed throughout, except when wearing her hot polyester nightgown. Silas was basically invisible, except when waving from some high rock. I read, and cooked a bit, and tried to nap (too hot). The mosquito level was fine.

Chore report

Well, the first shaky/whiny/frantic (how will we DO it all) week of summer has passed, and naturally we haven't actually carved out any sort of routine that makes sense, but things do seem less frantic. The kids are in their school daycare program for part of this week (rather more dismal than not, with full-group punishments for untattled transgressions and a distinct limit on outdoor time), and then onto their aunt's for hedonistic fun, sun & legos. I'd feel worse about the school daycare except that it is looking to be about 6 days total of the whole summer, maybe less, and one day of each of those is a swimming day (for which I say, Better you than me, daycare, and also: good luck!) Meanwhile, M and I are both getting a decent amount of work done and not feeling too compromised, and the kids...well, they'll be fine. If I were home full time they would get more sleep, but they would also spend more hours of the day engaged in saying "I want a PLAYYYYDAAAAATE" and "Is it ten yet? Is it ten yet? Is it ten yet?" and "I want to go swimmmmiiing" and probably a lot of "It's not FAAAAIIIRR." So. And they would DEFINITELY spend less time at the pool, per visit (they were there for THREE HOURS. As IF).

We're taking advantage of the summer schedule to work a few more chores into the kid routine. This has had mixed success. To elaborate:

1. Success: lawn mowing. Silas mows the lawn now. He gets five dollars if he mows the lawn without requiring nagging. If I have to remind him more than cursorily, he gets $4. If I have to do it myself, he gets nothing (obv). So far (for three weeks) this has worked quite well, and for the first time since owning a lawn I do not regularly have to mow it. Yessss.

2. Fail: getting the kids to pick up after themselves/ pick up activities before moving on to the next activity. This pretty much does not happen without M or I standing over them saying "and now THAT lego, please. No, don't build with it. Just put it in the box." The summer is young, however.

3. Mixed: dishes. We don't really have a fixed schedule for this, so the kids always feel like we spring it on them at the end of a long day ("I see you're tired and just want to play wii--how 'bout you load the dishwasher instead?") However, they've gotten to where they (mostly) remember to put their dishes on the counter, and if we prompt gently, into the dishwasher.

4. Mixed: room cleaning. We have a fixed schedule--every weekend, they have to clean and vacuum their rooms--but there is so much variation in the definition of clean (floor only, or surfaces too? bed made? do the shelves/desk need to be organized? what about that drawer of doom which is crammed so full of crap that it barely opens--yet which seems to contain many critical items, such as allowance and favorite hair thingies?), plus "weekend" is such a long, leisurely span of time that it's easy to find ourselves at 8:15 on a Sunday night without it having managed to happen at all, that this chore seems to involve more than its fair share of stomping and flinging oneself to the floor, or shocking requests to delay completion/ solicit help.

5. Mixed-to-success: putting away laundry. Sometimes I put a basket of clean, folded laundry in a kid's room and it is whisked away into drawers as if by magic. Other times I find myself tripping on it three days in a row as it first gets rifled for preferred clean clothes and then, confusingly, overpiled with freshly dirty clothes. In either case, I would like to involve the kids in this chore earlier.

We're trying. Ideally, I'd like all chores to be like the lawn mowing, in that they're required to happen, but my needing to remind kids to do them has been cleverly excised from the process. In other words, I'd like a little more ownership of the chore process from the children. I remind them frequently of that study from Harvard about how the kids who made the happiest adults were those who were required to do chores as children; however, I suspect this invigorating story translates to kidspeak something like this: "blah blah blah blah no, you can't play Wii now blah blah blah blah."

Hawks, meadowlarks and killdeer

It's spring, all right. And while this means that yes, it's rainy, and when it's not rainy, it's cold, and the mountains are so socked-in with clouds that Denver's true nature as a high plains city is starkly apparent, it also means that the birds are out. And the benefits of being in a newish building in a place that's still half wild and abandoned ranch are becoming apparent. I pass six or seven meadowlark territories on my fifteen-minute lunchtime walk, nesting kestrels, nesting killdeer, magpies and a prairie dog town. There's also a trio of Swainsons's hawks whose exact family relations I am trying to work out--I'm assuming two adults and a grown offspring, but really, who can tell? And you don't want to over assume these things. On Monday I went birding before work and while my basic take-home experience was it was so bleeping cold, it was still awesome. And I saw lark sparrows, a grasslands treat. As I drove from there to work I found myself flickering into an old seasonal excitement about the unfolding of a new place. And it seems like forever since I've felt that--or, well, since 2008, when we moved, and a new place was unfolding before us.

That feeling has mostly sloughed away and this week has been marked more by heaviness and low-boiling dread--this rain, I think, and also panic over the approaching end of school. The unstructured deliciousness of summer sounded great back in February, when every day is a slog of is-this-Tuesday-then-we-must-be-having-chicken-soup sameness, but now, as it roars up upon us, all I can imagine is summer's daily chaos. Last year we did too much camp, so we've neatly compensated by probably doing too little this summer, and I'm worried the kids won't get enough swim time, or exercise, or mental stimulation. I'm also worried they'll eat M alive, or if not him, then his ability to get any work done at all. I imagine nine straight hours of "STOP SAYING THAT" and "that's MY ice cream cone eraser" and "why does HE get a playdate" and "IT'S NOT FAIR!" Meanwhile I'll be at work, writhing in sympathetic suffering and feeling constantly compromised. Also wishing I could be at home to make sure everybody does their daily writing and page of math and reading and etc. Secretly I see summer as my chance to cram into the kids' heads all the things I think they might be missing during the school year and I am constantly irritated at how employment interferes with my ability to homeschool.

Good times. I must strenuously remind myself that in 15 years, when the kids have turned out how they're going to turn out, I will remember this state of mind as happiness. It's hard to believe, I know. But it's true. That certainty is a little magic pebble I keep in my pocket and touch now and then, for comfort.

Update: Project Return Home a success

Okay, YES, I did make it home on Thursday. However, my escapade apparently left me too tired to post. I'm attempting to rectify that situation currently--the posting, not the tiredness. So, uh, here's my post. In list form, because still with the tiredness.

1. Si's last day of of school was today. Technically I should say "day," since classes dismiss at 10:30 a.m. following a school-wide party (which I'm not faulting them for, because it's hardly like there's going to be meaningful instruction on the last day). Let's have a round of applause for my husband's job, which allows him to work from home in a flex-time situation completely at his own discretion. If we had to do this on two minimally flexy jobs we'd be screwed.

2. Let the party of summer begin. *groan and fall to floor* Last summer was one single three-month fight between me and Si on the subject of how much daily monitor time was appropriate. This year we're doing camps and playdates, so hopefully it will be less of an issue. Also, he's like...more mature, or something, and is actually starting to understand (slash parrot back in a convincing tone of voice) our position re the video gaming.

3. On the party deck tonight...cold lentil salad and Shrek 4.

4. I'm still kind of looking forward to summer. I wish I could participate in it more, though: summer is the time when I really wish I didn't work.

5. We're in the middle of signing papers in which we agree to have the interior of the house gutted, though, so not working/ working less is off the table as an option. I'm actually excited about the remodel, though--in addition to a fancy new kitchen where the drawers don't shake sawdust and paint chips down into our dishes, we're going to have actual insulation in the roof! As opposed the 3-inch soggy fiberglass batts we had before. Already we have some excellent improvements: the house no longer smells like mold, we don't have ants, the rotting soffits and fascia boards have been replaced, AND, since it was cheap and easy (relatively speaking), we had two skylights put in.

So! Have a good Tuesday evening. I'll be thinking of you as I eat popcorn-laced butter product in the air-conditioned dark.

Technically June 1 is summer don't even argue

I know, I know, midsummer and official summer are still three weeks off, blah blah blah. But after a LOVERLY weekend, involving swimming pools, a Rockies game, and getting to meet this fantastic lady, I have a sunburn, which means that in my accounting book, it's summer.

Plus, Helen's summer program ("We got two free swims!") started today, and while Si's school isn't officially out, he's totally ACTING like it's out, with the moping and the anxiety-about-change (which I so, so get and am trying to hide in myself so as not to provoke his any more than it is), so I say we just call it done so by the time summer does start he'll be relaxed and happy again. Or something.

Finally, what with all the sucktacious stuff happening around the internet (my heart is breaking for Katie Granju and her family, and I am also technically Scared Shitless about Si's teenage years) and elsewhere, we need us some summer.

Right, yeah? Let's go get us some pina coladas.

Wait, Is This a Post About the Weather?!?

Well, yes. I happen to love weather and could happily talk about it all day long. I'll try to keep it short.

Because what I love most is weather like we're having today: misty- rainy, with occasional lapses into sleet. Sporadically the clouds lift long enough for me to get up from my desk and walk around the block. Weather like this makes me happy to be in an office, happy for once to have an indoors job, happy to have a job that makes me drive almost up to the foothills, so that when I do walk around the block I can catch glimpses of the snow-covered hills hiding behind the hogback. Standing on pavement in the rain and looking up at hillsides that are white with snow makes me feel like I'm gifted with second sight and can see into alternate worlds. That, up there, is the world I wish we'd moved to; this, down here, is the world where we actually live.

So. Happy last day of summer!

Edited to add: the sky just turned green and then it started to hail. All over the building, I can hear little exclamations of surprise and dismay.

And some people think weather is boring!

No more pencils, no more books, etc.

So this is interesting: Si didn't WANT school to get out. "Are you looking forward to the last day of school?" everyone would ask, all excited. Summer! Freedom! Et cetera!

"No," he would say in a small voice. "Oh," they would say, confused, and change the subject. Unless they were me, and then they'd press for details. "Well, why NOT?" (Aren't you glad you're not my kid?)

I must admit I was dreading that the answer would be because then I'll have to spend more time with you.

And it may have been, but he was too savvy to say that to my face. Instead he mumbled something about changing grades and having to leave his favorite teacher and so forth.

As any mother with grade school kids will know, I, too, did not want school to get out. And yes, this was partly because I'll have to spend more time with my kids. Having the whole house to myself for long stretches of time is beautiful, and writing just isn't the same without it. Also, too often "quality time with my kids" devolves into "quality nagging time." Time to turn off the TV! Play outside! Please close the screen door! Where do your dirty dishes go, again? What are you going to do for exercise today? And for the love of god, STOP SHOUTING!

And so on. It's mind-numbing for all involved, and actually for non-involved parties within earshot as well.

However, I'm hoping that this summer will be different. Helen has daycare three days a week, so those will be more quiet days, when I try to get work done. On the days when I have them both, though, we're going to hit the city. This place is lousy with museums, many of them free. There are hundreds of playgrounds--we can visit a new one each week and not be done by August. We can hike ("we hate hikes, don't we, Silas?"). We can play in the creek (I bring a book. It's awesome). We can go swimming, especially when this cool-stormy weather pattern we've been having in Denver clears up. We can play minigolf.

Summer: I AM looking forward to it. And dreading it, but mostly in a I-hope-I-don't-fuck-this-one-up way, which is mostly good.

What about you? Do you have fun summer plans?

Answer: harebell.

So, had that job interview today! *Siiigh.* It went okay, I guess, if you count replying, "ooh, this is a hard one," to the interview classic, "What drew you to this position?" as "okay." Grog. I need an interview coach, to videotape my interviews and give me point-by-point feedback. And then let me DO THE DAMN THING AGAIN.

Oh, well. It'll be nice if it works out; if not, unemployment has its benefits, too. Especially in the summer: vacations! gardening! home improvement projects! letting the kids have a real summer vacation, instead of endless "camp" that suspiciously mimics school.

In fact, as I lay last night fretting over the day to come (not so much the interview as the fact that I had to DRIVE, and then PARK IN THE CITY), what I was thinking about was where in the yard is the best place to put daylilies. Also: what about those half-pots that bolt into the wall for our slightly barren-seeming courtyard? Or clematis? Does the courtyard get enough sun for clematis?

I spent hours thinking about this. HOURS. I wish THAT had been a question in the interview--So, you're going to plant daylilies bordering the aspen trees out front. What's a good companion plant?

Answer: harebell. Licked that one.

Enjoy your week, homeys.