Starts and Fits

It is no coincidence, I think, that I have posted exactly once since school got out. Aside from a piddly one-hour art class here and a couple hours of babysitting there, the children are with me all of the time. (Why do I seem surprised at this development?)

The first few full days of summer found me lying prone on the couch by 6:00 p.m., welcoming Jason home from work with very little to show in the way of dinner, and sending frantic emails to friends: "It gets better, right? I think I remember from last summer . . . it gets better."

And it has. Summer, in all its messy, hot, sweaty, bright, busy glory is here, and the children fight, and the children get in bed with me in the morning and lie on my stomach and ask for blueberries, and the children shriek with joy, and it is better. Fun, even.

Fun, especially when I throw my virtual hands up in the air sometimes and let the girls eat cookies in a tree

or order pool food for dinner (yes, those are Doritos)

or make a huge mess in the playroom and leave it there, untouched, for days. (I give myself huge mom points when I let them do that.)

The house is finally, finally, almost totally and completely done. And just in time, too, because while I had been quite Zen-like in my acceptance of the timeline and the endless parade of people in and out of my house, my Zen-like qualities are (very) limited, and it turns out that two and half months is my limit for a construction project. Behold, the backyard:

out the back door - before

side view - before

out the back door - after

side view - after

We have clearly not created acres of park-like space, but we have managed to make our little area useable, and it's so much better than it was when it was concrete and pea gravel. The girls love the hot tub (especially since they get cold at the pool on a 93-degree day in the sunshine) and can usually be found squealing at the jets or creating elaborate arrangements of Polly Pockets in the water.

The laundry room is done, too, though I haven't taken many after shots yet. Look at this

then imagine them full of baskets and backpacks and coats, and then imagine how pleased I am that behind those lockers is a little room containing main floor laundry and a new washer and dryer. (I am very pleased.) My neighbor was outside when the delivery guys took my old washer and dryer out from the basement and she now regards me as having been living like a pioneer woman, what with my dryer from 1904 and my washing machine that required a pliers to start it.

All in all, we're chumming along just fine here in summer 2012. Jason and I celebrated 13 happy years of marriage on Tuesday, and I took a whirlwind and surreal trip to NYC early this week, too, which included car service, six hours on the town with two good friends, national television, and sharing a green room with Justin Bieber. More on that next time.