"No person ever died who had a family." - Ray Bradbury

Today I stood in a standing-room-only church and watched as another one of my best friends said good-bye to her dad.  I thought, we are too young for this.  I thought, what if it was me in the black dress following a casket down an aisle?  

At funerals, as well as at weddings, the moment that always gets me is when the family is walking down the aisle.  When I see that teary, gorgeous bride and her dad or that teary, devastated family - no matter how well I know them - I always tear up myself, just thinking of how surreal a moment it is, either way, exquisite joy or exquisite grief.  Today the girls and I stood around, one foot rocking an infant carseat base, one hand holding another sleeping infant, four hands holding Christmas-themed travel-sized Kleenex scavenged from the bottom of my purse.  We hugged each other, on a day when hugs really count for something.

Later, I came home and kissed my girls.  Lots.  Jason came home and I was inordinately glad to see him, my husband of ten years on Friday.  Tonight, I'm newly-aware of how brief it all is and more determined to do it well. 

Packing It In

An incomplete list of things I did today:

-vacuumed

-gave Jemma two time-outs before 9:00 a.m.

-took Annie to Safety Town

-five loads of laundry

-returned books to the library and got new ones

-went grocery shopping with Jemma

-got this week's CSA pick-up of TONS of veggies

-reapplied sunscreen to everyone

-ate lunch at the pool and swam after Annie was done with Safety Town and spent the last half hour with a cold Jemma snuggled against my chest under two towels for warmth even though it was 80 degrees

-marveled that Annie just SWIMS now

-made an obstacle course in the driveway for the neighborhood kids

-made white bean soup with pancetta and tortellini to use up the rest of our kale and swiss chard

-had a new babysitter over to meet the girls and play (she was a hit!)

-talked on the phone to Connie at least four times

-paid bills

-emptied trash

-let the girls get soaking wet in their clothes outside just before bath time

-went running by myself

-watered the garden

-put Jemma to bed

-drank a beer

Fin.

Status Updates

Stephanie is . . .

-so obsessed with the new Basil scent of Mrs. Meyer's handsoap that she could not stop washing her hands and smelling them at her in-laws and had to drive immediately to the hardware store in Petoskey to buy some during the girls' naptime.

-sad that Tom's Mom's Cookies was closed when she tried to go there last night.

-officially tired of Jemma's "glare" that she does when she is unhappy.  Used to be sort of cute, is now just rude.

-doing this thing where she submits query letters to publications, gets the green light to write a piece, and then doesn't feel like actually doing the writing and procrastinates it until the night before the deadline.

-thinking about getting a cleaning service.

-drinking orange Izze.

-wishing she and her husband could ever be on the same page about having/not having a third child.

-impressed with how amazingly well the girls did on the drives this weekend.

-super, super, SUPER tired of hearing Annie and Jemma sing "Once Upon a Dream."

-pleased that she somehow knew what flotsam and jetsam were when it came up in conversation in the car tonight.

-still recovering after being party to a conversation that covered the likelihood of underground concentration camps in the U.S. run by the New World Order (Clintons, Rockefellers, Gates', Bushes, Obamas OBVIOUSLY).

-clearly tired of the packing/unpacking drama of the last five weekend since she forgot to pack underwear this time (!).

-looking forward to celebrating TEN years of marriage on Friday.

-hoping to take the girls to the pool tomorrow.

Summer So Far

We're on week three of unscheduled days and so far, so good, I guess.  We've had more than a few moments (read:  hours) of Parenting with Love and Logic scripts gone awry, time-outs that degenerated into Annie, held captive in her room, whipping a zippered sweater at her bedroom door for the satisfying "clank" sound it makes, yelling "Jemma's poopy!" while Jemma holds my leg and insists, "I Not Poopy!"  We're all tired at the end of the day in a way we weren't just a month or two ago.

And yet we're getting into a routine, too.  Mornings, I push them in the jogger and sometimes stop at Starbucks after my run.  We play at the park for a spontaneous hour here or there, have a picnic in the front yard, bake a chocolate cake for no good reason.  We run through the sprinkler or take a scooter ride (Annie is unbelievably quick on her Razor).  We reapply sunscreen.  We feed the tadpoles.  We grill.  We eat popsicles and wait for Jason to get home.  I am seduced by the late-night light and stay up way too late, reading Dandelion Wine like I do every year in June.

We've been gone the last four weekends in a row, and we're headed up north this weekend.  So the suitcase sits, open, on our bedroom floor, and anything I packed for last weekend that didn't get dirty remains inside, on call for the next trip.  I do laundry constantly, and there is always a swimsuit hanging to dry over the edge of the tub.  The Red Wings announcer's voice floats out from the living room.  The herbs in our garden are tall.  It's really, truly summer.

"It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed.  Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow.  You had only to rise, lean from your widow, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer."

-Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Another Weekend at the Beach

Our plan was originally to leave first thing Saturday morning for "the cottage," but because the weather was glorious on Friday (and forecasted to be not-glorious on Sunday), we hightailed it down there on Friday afternoon and met up with Nate, Charmaine, and Evie at the beach.  The girls were instant friends.  We played, talked, caught up, cooked some dinner, and opened a few beverages before putting the girls to bed.  Uncle Dennis and Aunt Susie came and hung out, too, and the grown-ups played The 80's Game far, far too late into the night.  

We got to bed after midnight and were awakened at 5:30 by Annie's lusty singing of "Once Upon a Dream," followed by her loud crying when I went in to inform her that everyone was still SLEEPING and she should rest/go back to sleep/Not Make Loud Singing Noises for at least another hour.  We went through a good amount of coffee once we were all finally up, then spent four solid hours out in the sunshine - at the park, at the beach, having a picnic on a grassy spot downtown surrounded by the farmer's market, acoustic guitar music, and lots of classic cars in for the weekend.

We headed home after dinner last night, just as it was starting to cloud over, cool down, and sprinkle, but not before getting Sherman's ice cream, of course.  A whirlwind thirty-some hours, and totally worth the tiredness today.

Mmmmmm . . . Lettuce

Even though I love a good salad (preferably one with lots of cheese, fruit, and nuts to jazz it up), I hardly ever make one for myself for lunch.  Today, though, with this gorgeous lettuce sitting on my counter, I couldn't resist.  It was officially the first delivery from our CSA and look, it's making me eat healthier already!  I fed the leftovers to the little group (herd?  rookery?  litter?) of tadpoles that now lives in a bucket in my basement. 

Compromising, Romanticizing, Improvising

Not to be outdone by Jemma, Annie had to get her hair cut, too.  She wanted it short (like, well above her shoulders).  I didn't.  We compromised.  (At what age do you give your daughter creative control over her hair?)

You would think that it's all giggling and eating watermelon and sunshine around here every day.  You'd be wrong.  (But it was, on Memorial Day.)

So far, we've only had one or two truly gorgeous, sunny, warm "beach days" during our weekends at "the cottage."  In spite of that, we put on our bathing suits and go to the beach.  The girls beg to stay every time we try to leave, so we make one more sandcastle, do one more round of swings/slide/monkey bars, take another walk, eat some more pretzels, re-apply sunscreen, and listen to the sound the waves make for another hour or two.

The lawn really needed to be cut.  I know you're shocked that Jason didn't get right on that, given his penchant for yardwork and all, but it was clearly out of control.  We finally broke down and hired a lawn service after I spent part of the previous weekend crouching in the front yard, trying to trim it with hedge clippers.  (Surprisingly successful; unsurprisingly back-breaking and a good quad workout.)  

We also dug around the bottom of the bag of pretzels to scavenge for salt to put on our corn on the cob and edamame for dinner on Sunday night.  We also hang two beach towels from the curtain rod in Annie's bedroom in lieu of actual curtains and use an old sheet of my parents' from the 1970's as our beach/picnic blanket.  It's pretty bare-bones, down there.  In a good way.