Dog Days, or Reasons Why I'm Dogging-the-Blogging

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It's summer. The kids are home from school. I've modified my schedule to be home by 8:00a.m. each day, which means we're neck-deep in home improvement projects, music-, horseback riding-, and art lessons, trips to the water slides, picnics, sport camps, and such.

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The 'youth baseball politics' saga continues into the all-star post-season. Frankly, it makes me want to live off the grid and avoid all humans with the intensity of a three-year-old faced with spinach.

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My daughter is becoming one of the most captivating people I've ever met. I can't believe my good fortune to have time to spend with her over the next two months! I don't want to waste a minute.

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My oldest son has an incredibly great sense of humor, and I don't want to miss a moment with him, either. By next year, his wit may have outgrown me.

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I have a bicycle. Two, actually: road and mountain.

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Also, camping and fly-fishing equipment.

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Anyone heard of summer theater? Yeah, that's going on as well.

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So... I'm around; and I'm watching/reading all of you, but I may be scarce in the writing/posting department at least until I either get so many photos I have to finally upload them to make room in the camera, or find something of general interest about which to write. Whichever comes first.

Father's Day

While I'm not a big fan of contrived Hallmark holidays, I'm not so much a grinch as to be completely unmoved by the sentiment behind them. My life as been enriched immeasurably by two fathers: my own and my children's.

In another month, it will be two years since my dad died. I still can't quite identify the impact of that. The dramatic in me wants to tell you that I stagger through my days still overwhelmed by grief in little ways, because certainly there are moments when such a statement would be true. But the sadness and loss are most often eclipsed by the imprint of his life. He was strong. And he gave me strength. Not by requiring it of me; no, quite the opposite -- through his generosity with it when I wasn't strong enough on my own. Even in his absence now I am still strong... because he was. Truthfully, I don't begrudge him his early exit, though I'd give almost anything to hold his hand again.

In a stroke of unbelievable good fortune, however, I have another strong hand to hold. Together we brought three beautiful children to life and have had to figure out how to raise them. It's a work in progress, but never has a man been more dedicated to the process, or to the partnership of parenting. I am a better mother -- a better person, in fact -- because of the energy he devotes to being a father. Which is not to say our home is without the occasional conflict, or that our children are above reproach. Nevertheless, if you envision all the ways in which a father can influence -- for good or ill -- the present and future lives of his kids? These three kids won the lottery. They don't even know yet how lucky they are.

But I do.

Waaaaaay TMI -- read on at your own risk

I usually wax my bikini line. And then I finish up with either razor or tweezers to get the stragglers. Yesterday it was a razor. And it slipped.

No, no, don't worry; no blood, no flesh cut to ribbons. However, there was a casualty. Um, the usually quite carefully manicured landing strip suffered a fatal encroachment and had to be completely shorn.

Why do I reveal this embarrassingly intimate detail to the Internest as a Hole? Because how else could I provide context for what I really need to say today: my undees feel really, really strange. And it's distracting.


Wha?! I told you it was TMI...

Leprechaun

Sleep eludes me. It is the veritable pot o' gold at the end of a rainbow I'm too exhausted to even see. It isn't that I can't sleep; it's that I don't ever seem to get the chance. My schedule has got to change. I must change it. So I will, but I don't know the details yet.

Like peanut butter

Of course you know it's got lots of fat, but you tell yourself, "It's good fat, right?"

And the sodium... god! It's sure to shrivel your kidneys, but you console yourself that you'll only have a little.

Yeah, it's sticky and difficult to eat, but paired with bread and jam the problem's solved.

No matter how much you know you should stay away from peanut butter, you just can't.

Still alive, but too tired to write.

A HUGE thank you to SoozieQ and mmmmmmmmMoto for this:










Yes, Bobo has come to live at our house, and just in time, too! For tomorrow Brizzy goes to the hospital to become, shall we say, less male, and he will need the comfort that can only be realized by chewing endlessly on the squeaky things inside Bobo.

THANKS, Moto!!

(And Sooze and The Hubs! Who, by the way, make awesome trophies, too!)