243/365 These Days

Days are lighter in the mornings. Girls get up easier, at least Fiona. I think Daisy must be related to me.

Bree, Iris, Eliza come over and play "Little Big Planet" and make their own levels, impossible to complete.

Some sculpey (cook in the oven polymer clay) is getting used.

Bree's bunny died this weekend. At least it was after the camping trip was over and not while we were gone. She wants to make a stepping stone. Once it's warm I'm going to help with that.

The river birch in the front yard looks like it "took." Tiny green buds.

Not all the daffodils were happy about being separated and moved around last summer. But I'll give them another year. The tulips, though, are spent. Time to dig them up.

We're planning the treehouse/play structure thing. I'm thinking mid-April we'll get on that. Debating whether we'll put in an inflatable pool where the galvanized one was...or not. It could be a busy summer in the backyard. And I don't think I trust Billy.

Time to get out my target and bow.

242/365 And then some

Saturday afternoon. Home from a camping trip with girl scouts--the year before, we'd run around in sweatshirts and gloves (it was a wetlands experience, so we were going to be cold and wet), with temperatures in the 40s in the morning, rising through the day. This year it was snowing. Snow. Spring snow isn't surprising in St. Louis but this year has been absolutely ridiculous.

So I took this picture as we headed out to my inlaws for the night and a birthday party in the morning. Gah.

241/365 Just ridiculous

Out my window Friday morning.

240/365 Porch woes

It was windy today. My porch sagged just a bit more. The riser on the bottom step came undone--perhaps it already was and we were just propping it back into place, actually. Hard to recall. Flopped onto the stoop. I saw it on my way out to get the girls from school. Billy saw it too. Said something, pointing. I wanted to apologize to him for the fact that our house was so run down--it isn't, but the porch really is. His brow furrowed and we picked up the board together. Genetics run deep with that one, with my father the woodworker and Mike's father the carpenter (Jeff builds houses, my dad builds furniture). Grunting, he pats it after I put it in place, like he's telling it to stay put.

We're working on borrowed time here.

239/365 Beautiful Day

"Afternoon, ma'am," the passer-by says to me, walking slowly up the sidewalk. Kids move over and watch him pass.

"Hey there," is my response. That's a friendly thing, kind of southern. Not a "hey! you there!" but more like a "hi."

"It is a beautiful day," he fills the time it takes to walk from the oak tree to the sweetgum.

"It is indeed."

"Blessed beautiful day," he continues. "Too blessed to be distressed beautiful day."

"I agree."

238/365 Spring Night Sycamore

237/365 All I Need Is Wheels

236/365 Suddenly Warm

235/365 St. Patrick's

Vague green forms two stoops down.

234/365 Spring Ensemble

I always think of spring and then the next thought in my head is a sleeveless top, short skort, and holey black tights. Doesn't that happen to you?

233/365 Spring Break

At the playground across the main drag.

232/365 Cat

Barb calls my cell instead of my house phone nowadays. I'm not sure of the reason but I see her number come up and I answer. She calls to rant sometimes but other times it is to report something big, like a current emergency that she's just called the police regarding.

"Do any of you over there own a black and gray striped tabby, little thing?" is her opening sentence. The cat is in her bathroom now. Just walked right in her back door when she came home from her walk.

There are certain strays I know around here--obviously Woolly Bear, and his sometimes-friend Tex (see, he looks like Blackjack, but bigger...so we named him Texas Hold'Em). There's a smallish tuxedo kitty that has shown up recently, and I don't think the one that looks like my Bleys is around anymore, which is sad because it means he had a short hard life, but good for my psyche because every time I saw him outside I panicked and thought it was my naive fluffy orange thing lost outside.

But no tiny black and gray tabby.

"Have you called Jen?" I ask her. Jen runs a cat rescue organization and also keeps close tabs on the strays around here. She had--she was waiting for a call back.

"If you could ask around, I'd appreciate it," she tells me.

So I go to the fish fry.

On the way home, she calls again. She was heading over to Jen's because she has a microchip reader, in case the cat was chipped.

"Can I cut through your backyard?" she asks. I can tell by the way she asks that she's already in my backyard. Ah well. See, Barb is a horticulturist or something like that. She works with plants, does landscaping, and my yard? Not.

"Ok, but be gentle--I just started tearing the place up again."

"Oh, don't worry about it. My backyard is all mud right now. Which one is Jen's house?"

I point her in the right direction using landmarks. All our houses look alike.

Don't know how the cat turned out. She didn't call back, so I assume good news.

231/365 Future

Most days I don't have time to worry about the future beyond the immediate future (like, what's for dinner? Do we have Irish dance tonight? How am I going to get the laundry done?).

Other times I let my mind drift, like when I'm driving to Irish dance (just for instance) and wonder about the future. Not worry. Wonder.

I wonder who will move first, for instance. We have a good thing going here, but nothing lasts forever. I doubt it will be us, and I can't point and say "it'll be them" because nobody is looking to leave right now. But jobs take people places. Especially these days.

I wonder about high school and the girls Fiona's age. Will they still be friends? I'm confident she will still be friends with Bree, but I wonder about the others as they build separate lives at school and in activities.

I wonder about the house next door, if Dawn and Judd will convert it to a one-family. If they stay forever, no big deal, but if they move, I want it to be a one-family. I hate absentee landlords and I fear that situation living right next door.

I wonder about the house behind me (absentee landlord) and kind of hope that when it comes up for sale, Jake and I are in a position to buy the dang thing.

The conversation turned this weekend to adoption--adoption of older children--and I wonder if there will be more Paxtons or Kennedys as time goes on. I wonder who they will be. I wonder how that will go. Am I still up for it?

I wonder about our staying power as a group of women who are friends based simply on the fact that we live spitting distance from each other. Zelda I don't wonder about. Gretchen either, for the most part, although her entrance into a wealthier rung of our local society may be hard to overcome as time goes by. Which will mostly be my problem and I should relax. But Tara is more guarded these days, and seems a bit unhappy in general. Valerie, Joy, and then the outer rings of my social crowd...I just wonder.

And I wonder who will buy Bruce's house. That is more immediate and I find myself occasionally worrying. We'll see. Hmm.

230/365 Girl Scout Cookies?

"Are you selling girl scout cookies?" the woman I know to be Gilbert's daughter comes running from her minivan.

"Sure," I admit, even though I don't have extras on hand. Zelda does, though.

She comes up onto my porch and hands me exact change for a box of the peanut butter chocolate ones. "We bought two boxes and they're gone."

"I can dig it," I told her. If I didn't hide mine, they'd all be gone, too.

229/365 Home Again

On the way home from Tara's dad's house, I developed a migraine. I haven't had a migraine in years--like before Maeve was born, maybe before Sophia. I get headaches, sure, but not the weird goofy nausea and pain and weirdness of a migraine. For that matter, when I used to get migraines, I often had them as "aura without headache" which is the way to go, let me tell you.

Gretchen was driving. The sun was shining and I was loopy sick. I'd stayed up with Gretchen until 4 in the morning chatting and now I was paying for it. And it was the real deal. Words on signs expanded and contracted. Letters disappeared, little holes in my vision. And the nausea. Wow. No, I was not hungover, I was just overtired. Way overtired.

Gretchen had tylenol, and Zelda had ibuprofen. I took it all. Within a half hour, life was back to normal. Cold air blowing on my face and pain medication kicking in, I was normal. We chatted all the way home, and as I hit the house, I was met with Jake and his friends and my kids and neighbor girls and wow.

I fell asleep in a living room chair. For 2 hours while everything went on around me.

I'm still not better all the way.

I'm too old now to stay up until 4. It has been decreed. I need to be more careful.

228/365 Mah Jongg Weekend

We're headed away for a field trip. Tara's dad has a cabin in central Missouri and we're going to go and play some mah jongg: Tara, Jackie, Gretchen, Zelda, and me.

I'm bringing a bottle of wine but I'm hoping other people will drink it up. Zelda's got the coffee. I'm bringing eggs and sausage for Saturday morning and frankly, whatever else is there, I"ll eat and be happy with.

so glad to be getting away. And leaving the family here for the weekend. Ah.

227/365 Lost

"What house are you looking for?" I ask the pizza delivery guy who is hanging around Roxanne's porch looking puzzled. He keeps looking down at the order slip.

"Is this Pestalozzi?" he asks, saying it not "PEST-uh-Loze-ee" but "PEST-uh-Lousy". This makes me smile. My parents live on Pestalozzi.

"You're off by a block," I let him know. He suddenly realizes (I think about the biblical phrase "scales fell from his eyes" like the conversion of St. Paul).

"Sorry," he says, getting back in the car. "Got turned around. You're right."

And off he goes.

226/365 Spring Cleaning List

Things to do:
1. Clean up the rest of the garden/tomato cage area to get ready for April planting
2. Figure out how we're going to plant the potatoes
3. Sow greens
4. Take down as much of the swingset as we need to and assess what we need to rebuild
5. Paint upstairs back porch
6. Paint front porch
7. Clean out front garden and assess its needs: is it time for shrubs of some kind?
8. Restack firewood in the back. Clean out the remaining mulch and dirt from the mulberry take down. Till and mulch the border around the parking pad. Plant with something hardy, thick, and sun-loving
9. Rebuild the compost container
10. Weed the fence-line beds. Thin out monkey grass and replant. Mulch.

I think that's plenty.

225/365 Just Say It

"This sucks," Roxanne says across the street to me as we each get out of our cars early in the morning. She's holding Harry and has a irritated look on her face.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"Daycare sent Harry home. Said he had a fever. I have this exam to get ready for and I just didn't need this today."

"Yeah," I empathize. "Maybe if he's feeling bad he'll nap for you?"

"No," she shakes her head. "I take the test today. So I'm taking him to school with me. This is what sucks about living here with no family."

"I can understand that."

"So I have a friend who has a break during the time I have the test and she's going to watch him, I guess."

I think about all the frustrations of dragging kids to places and not having child care. I think about vowing that when my sisters (if my sisters) had kids I would always be there to help out if I could. I look over at Roxanne as she shuts the car doors, and I know I should just say it.

"You know, if you're ever in a pinch," I point back to my house. "I'm around. If my car's here, I'm probably here."

"Really?" she is genuinely surprised.

"Yeah," I decide.

"I will remember that. Thanks. I will keep it in mind."

We both go into our houses.

I want people to like living here.