Feeling Like Summer...
It does, it really feels like summer. How does that happen, seemingly overnight? Of course the wretched heat helps, but so does the fact that I bought tomatoes at the farmers' market and my kale and swiss chard is ready to start harvesting.
Yesterday was a somewhat wretched day but it was brightened by the presence of all three members of Little Pieces in our house lined up for showers. It made me tremendously happy and of course I got to see my beloved Grant Badger, see Rob Lloyd after a million years and meet Herman Jolly. All wonderfully charming men. You know how it is....there are some people that you may not truly know that well in some ways and yet you still feel very connected to them. That's how it is with Grant----we just love him. I wish I could have seen them play the night before but this made up for it.
Who wouldn't like having these three come over to use your shower?
The rest of the day seemed to devolve into frustrating children, a special pepper plant given by a friend killed by an errant foot in the garden, and Ernie reacting to Dennis Hopper dying of prostate cancer. Sometimes you can brush those things off and sometimes they go right to the heart of you, right to the heart of the fear that you try to keep hidden away, so it was a hard day for him.
The boys had planned a family movie junk food night so we started it early because we were at that point where we just wanted to get the day OVER with. The movie chosen was Night At the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian which I had seen once before and thought was horrible. However I'd been given strict instructions that I could not read during it, could not look at the laptop during it and most of all, could not go upstairs to read during it. So I watched it and ate some Cheetos and tried to cheer Ernie up by making him homemade potato chips and I didn't find it as wretched this time. I still found the Amelia Earhart character incredibly annoying with her faux Katherine Hepburn phrasing (I find Katherine Hepburn rather annoying as well) but in the end.....it's a movie about history and how can you not love that? When it was over the boys happily retreated to Lego and I used my 'get-out-of-jail-free-card' by saying I wanted to 'go upstairs and read." The boys settled down eventually and Ernie sat on the porch with a glass of something strong.
Today however has been lovely. I'm sitting in the front yard with that summertime-morning tease of heat and humidity. Ernie and Owen have already had a water gun fight and now Ernie's doing some tilling for our third raised bed. Later today we'll go over to Ann and Bob and Sophie's. I'm thinking of bringing a white peach and tomato salad. I got incredibly perfect and FRAGRANT white peaches from my fruit of the month club (thanks Debbie!) and we bought tomatoes at the farmers' market. I've got fresh mint and basil in the garden---maybe with a bit of red onion and shallots if I have them.... I've also got to make strawberry-cherry cobbler. The other day our neighbor Greg kindly let Owen pick some cherries from their tree and there's not quite enough for cobbler so I'll add in strawberries from the market. Sounds summery as well, huh?
Oh, and yesterday was my sister Debbie's 21st anniversary of being sober. I NEVER remember the date to send her a card. Oh well.... Cheers, claps and huzzahs all around for her though, don't you think? CONGRATS Debbie.....with love!
from our drive the other night:
oh, and one more thing. Yesterday Owen was trying to convince us to take him to Toys R Us because he'd decided what Lego set he wanted to get with his savings. I kept saying, "not now, maybe later" but then he thought for awhile and countered with, "well, you know when we get home from school you guys always tell us to do our homework right away and get it over with? Well, why don't you take me and just get it over with?" Score. We took him to Toys R Us.