And so it Continues

I usually don’t need help remembering my dreams, but sometimes I get on kicks where I don’t even have a choice. They just sit there and stare at me the next morning till I acknowledge them. This time, Chris Carpenter dug up large gallons of grape juice in the church basement – which wasn’t really my actual church – which he served to a ring of people working on the building, etc. I realized, after drinking, that the gallons had expired in 2007. On the heels of this nonsense, I discovered that Mom was hosting two archaeologists/paleontologists from Africa, who had lugged over a preserved lion for our… “amusement”. The taxidermist had failed to capture the essence of “lion spirit” in his somewhat squashed version of the original noble beast, however, in my opinion. Then I woke up.

So in a thrilling Monday morning venture, I had forgotten to trim Puck’s fingernails on Saturday, so this morning I called up the shears. Puck watched me carefully in this craft. He noted his pinky finger. “I don’t think the little one has to be trained, Mama. It grows very proudly.” I’m sure it does, son. As we transitioned to exploring books about various types of storms, Puck asked to hold onto the book himself following the reading, citing the explanation, “That’s so proplier [proper].” Sometimes I think he just likes to use “big words” to hear the incorrect syllables roll off the tongue.
I blinked and it was noon.

Oddly, the one time I “need” to watch television – all those highly tense baseball games and Olympics smack-downs – the TV signals are all kerfuffles, so all we rake in is a snowman walking through a blizzard. Then the modem goes out, so the internet is kaput half the day. So… there goes my opportunity to watch London, until Wednesday anyway. In the wake of Kenneth Branagh, velvety hobbity holes, glowing hospital blankets, an enthusiastic-charismatic teenaged African-English girl in gold dress and sneakers and wild-crazy hair to punch up the music-through-the-ages texting party extravaganza opening ceremony… A film maker directed the shindig. It was – as with all Olympic celebrations – unique. Fortunately, the internet decided to pop back on before noon, so I wasn’t entirely bereft of connection with the outer world.

Somehow, Puck managed to harvest a paper bucket of two-day-old Penn Station fries to share with his bowl of USA-approved-healthy bowl of lunch. The kid just finds things that were never meant to be found; by him anyway. But the wilted potatoes still seemed to be in decent shape, and considering that if Puck didn’t eat them, the Bear would, I let him go to town on the small stack while he giggled quietly over “Calvin & Hobbes”.
We tried spending some time outside under gray about-to-rain skies. But unfortunately, with the excess heat leaving the city, the mosquitoes were back. You just can’t win.

Meanwhile, the Bear carted himself home under migraine symptoms. Apparently the avocado idea hadn’t settled too great. So the grizzly settled himself down for a long summer’s nap to shake the frustrating defect of his brain cavity.
“How do you feel?” I inquired two hours later at four o’clock.
“I knew I was starting to feel better when I began dreaming about shrimp,” was his Bearish reply.

Into the evening, because I reduced our cupboards to oatmeal and tuna again – I like timing groceries down to the meal – the Bear broke from urgent two-vice-president-of-the-company requests for project completion – with another internet sag – to snag a few sacks of groceries. Because the Bear sometimes somehow always finishes everything he has to finish.

Thought of the Day

So I don’t really know why this year has been the way it is. I realized when tiny Idlewild took a seat at the end of the row from me in Sunday school, like a china doll in delicate red floral dress, perfect blonde hair, blue eyes, styrofoam cup of presumable coffee, and half a blueberry muffin, and asked me cheerfully, “So how has your summer been?”… that I had no idea what had really happened this year. “Good… I guess…? It’s kind of been a blur, really.” She laughed and nodded. “Same here.” Of course, she has plenty more excuse for that than I do. With three girls age five and under and a husband working random police patrol shifts every week, of course she has the right to label her summer as a blur. I guess things just pile up and you don’t even think about it until it’s over. You don’t recognize the stress until it’s passed. I’m guessing that’s a classic sign of ISTJ-ness. But that fad has moved on…
So the old cliché of time passing faster, the older you get. I’m not even 30, but it’s starting already. I realize that 30 is the “new ten”. But maybe the modern age makes it chug even faster than it did for previous generations.
When was the last time I was even bored?