Update: Not snowing anymore

1. The other day I came home from work to find the washing machine on. This was during a week of independence training for the kids, while M. was in Utah and I had to work all day, so I was uncertain whether to be thrilled or worried. "You're doing laundry?" I asked Helen. I had inexplicable visions of a spic and span house, windows washed, dishes put away, carpets freshly vacuumed, or, alternately, a whole-house juice disaster. What have the children been doing?

"Oh, I'm washing my stuffed animals," she said. Sure enough, I peeked in the dryer and there was the first batch, washed and tumbled. Huh.

"They were so dirty!" she added with relief when I didn't say something crabby. "One had these strings of glitter glue all over it!"

It's one of the goals for independence training, that the kids will see Issues That Need Addressing and then Address them (the other goal being cheapskateness, of course). So. Success, then.

2. On the way to swim practice this morning, Helen and her younger friend got into a discussion of the mysteries of the Speedo. "I don't get why when boys get older their swimsuits are so small," Helen's friend said.

 That makes two of us, I thought.

"I mean, they're just like this to this. Why are they so small? They're like underwear."

They giggled about that, and then her friend continued, "I just don't get why they're so small."

Helen, being her mother's daughter, was right there with an answer. "When they get older, kids get smaller swimsuits. So that they're tighter."

3. I'm reading two Westerns right now. In the car, I'm listening to The Sisters Brothers (awesome! and constantly anachronistic in a Shakespeare-in-Love way. And funny) and every night before bed I open up The Son and read about meticulously researched and lushly described atrocities on the Texas frontier. Both westerns have brothers (or, uh, did. Spoiler alert) and so they blur together a little in my mind (while I'm lying in bed, reading: These guys used to be a lot funnier. Oh, wait, that's the other one. Darn.)

Generally the Western as a Platonic form is one that I avoid. All those carefully researched whorehouses and false front saloons weigh on my soul like so many bedbug-filled saddlebags, plus I think I smell competition whenever I get too close. I, too, write about bears and sagebrush and if my narrative drifts into the past, Indians and members of the seventh cavalry tend to make an appearance. I don't want someone else's words crowding onto my page, or some such.

So it probably makes sense that I'm doing two at once. Drink my dose of Serious Historical Western in the evening, then chase it out in the morning with Bleak, Funny and Completely Ahistorical on my way to work.

4. I know, I know. It's been a while. I needed a break, and this was the only thing I could really neglect. But I'm back, I think. I need something to help me forge through another endless summer of work.

5.We, uh, got a dog. I'm not sure how it happened (well, actually, I am: by dint of incredible persistence on the part of Helen). But all of a sudden I am having to police what can and cannot be chewed on.

Meet Buster.