Sweet By & By

Lazy, lazy livin'

I haven't been posting much and here's why, in a long, stream-of-consciousness explanation:

It's hot here, and that fact alone makes me crabby. It's shaping up to be a broiler of a summer. Today I lounged around by the pool reading, eating popsicles, dipping my toes in occasionally. It was lazy, but I felt entitled after earning $500 this weekend for a quickie freelance project and approximately 7 hours of work (thanks, Disney).

The kids are fish, I tell ya, absolute fish -- they want to be swimming at every waking moment. So, if I'm not out and about, I am immobilized pool-side. Yes, I could take my laptop outside and work, but that laziness factor impedes. I am also embracing leisurely reading again after, oh, 12 years ... I always say graduate school killed my love of reading. So right now, having a book in hand is more fun than being on the computer.

The kids are at camp 2x week, and on those days I am glued to the computer working, working, working - no breaks, no looking up, panic setting in as the clock edges toward 4pm. Then I have to sneak in early morning and late evening hours, plus some on the weekends, to get my weekly work requirements satisfied. After all that intense online concentration and finagling to get work time in, I hate the computer and refuse to do anything on it.

And, I'm trying to do fun, "meaningful" things with the kids, like reading aloud The Animal Family and Mr. Popper's Penguins, helping R each day learn to write lower-case letters, hanging out lots at the library, doing silly crafts like paint-by-numbers, and taking them to movies unexpectedly. [An aside: I surprised them today and took them to see WALL-e ... I walked away feeling a little miffed about the "G" rating ... R. spent most of the movie in my lap, afraid of the intense scenes and the many intimations of WALL-e's impending doom. It's an interesting movie, but I'm not sure it deserves all the accolades it's getting].

And, I am even too lazy to post a photo to go with this post, which my regular readers (ha! all 3 of you) will recognize as unusual. Our annual July 4th shindig is this weekend, so I'm sure I'll have tales to regale soon.

Parallels

I've been surprisingly upset by the death of Tim Russert ... we saw him during his regular appearances on the Today show and always giggled at how excited he got about politics. But we also appreciated how well he explained political topics too, like the maddening electoral college. I've heard this story told a hundred times this week, but we actually saw him early on election night 2000, when he had his white board and had written "Florida, Florida, Florida" on it and kept poking it with his finger to emphasize that the race would come down to that state. He did kinda feel like a TV friend, and I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me last week when I heard about his death.

I am getting unexpected reading time all of sudden, since I have two pool-obsessed kids who want to be swimming night and day. They're both old enough and swim-savvy enough to handle being in the pool while I am out of the pool, right next to it, under the umbrella with a book. Since I don't keep leisure-reading books at the ready too much, I grabbed Anne Lamott's Grace Eventually: Thoughts on Faith, which I started last year and didn't end up finishing. I am getting more out of it this time 'round ... nah, I'm not going all religious on you (she's a  Christian I can dig -- spiritual but feminist, irreverant, and - most important - very liberal), but I do appreciate her outlook on life and her attempt to put goodness and love at the forefront of all she does. To use humor and smiles to deflate meanness. To take care of those around her. She readily admits to lapses in this lovely behavior, however, and her (mis)adventures at everyday life make me laugh and wince at the same time.

Anyhow, Tim and Anne are in my mind today ...I can see many parallels in their lives, and I guess I can only hope that a wake or funeral of mine would have half as much goodness and love oozing out of it like Russert's did yesterday. I caught a re-run of it on MSNBC last night, and the speeches from his friends, as well as Springsteen's tribute and stripped-down version of "Thunder Road," un-did me.

Summer bliss

  Two kids marched happily off to camp this morning, eager to try out archery, science experiments, hiking, the nature center, the lodge, the pool.... They go 2x/week, which will provide a healthy dose of sanity for all of us. I told B. that yesterday - the first day of summer break - was incredibly long, although not in a bad way ... it just reminds me how many hours there are to fill in a day when children are involved. We did lots of reading, tic-tac-toe, collaborative monster drawing, errands, and - I confess - a DVD and computer time.

I have KCRW streaming, I'm working fast and furiously to squish a normal work-week into a two-day work-week, and I'm getting the evil eye from the new inflatable shark, who's drifting hungrily in the pool. Welcome to summer!

This 'n' that

Ok, so I am sitting here in this very room with windows wide open on a June Gloom day, and I am freezing my a** off and not getting a whole lot of work done. It's paint-the-window-accent-color day, so every window in the house is wide open in the hopes that the red paint dries by late afternoon, despite the very damp weather. I am about to ditch work and head to Target, since a little trip to Target never hurt anyone (and it has a Starbucks!).

I got a fancy-pants pair of shoes that I feel compelled to show off, because - wow - they are red/purple, the color combo that I just love so much. And despite them being somewhat pricey shoes, I didn't pay a cent for them. Instead, a rep from PF Flyers that B. knows scored us some freebies, and we got to pick a pair out. La Journa  - tres chic!