Four Things, Last Day of June Edition

1. Sinus infection has kicked me more literally than not in the head. Ever since the cold while we were on vacation, I have just not been right, and even now, even now, after a 5 day run of azithromycin or whatever the generic name of the wondrous Z-pack is my temple is still pounding. At least it's the other side now, eh?
   
   
2. Thankfully the June heat wave is over--today the high temperature was a delightful 82 degrees, which is to say cool enough that I didn't want to be sprayed even a little bit while the kids and I washed the Mustang this evening. They, however, wanted to be drenched, absolutely drenched, and they danced in the mist from the sprayer and splashed happily in the foamy pools of water gathering in the low spots between the car and the drain. It wasn't the best wash job the car has ever had, but I did carefully wash out the door rails and wash the debris out of the trunk gutter, and for the first time in memory, Armour All-ed the dashboard and other interior surfaces. The kids delighted in fighting over the toothbrush to shine the various chrome emblems on the car. It's clean enough to photograph now. No more excuses.
   
   
3. Summer school is going better than expected. The Boy likes his teacher--probably mostly because Mr. B is a Mr.--and they're doing Science lab work twice a week. The Girl seems to be progressing, more comfortable now with her chapter books. They seem to have adapted to riding the bus together, if not to attending the same school quite yet. And it's so easy, so criminally easy, to take them out and put them on the bus--the same bus, not having to worry whether both will show up--and the reverse in the afternoon. On Wednesdays I pick them up and we run errands on our way to Maplewood for the Farmer's Market at Schlafly Bottleworks, and even that is easy because I'm going to one school, not two.
   
   
4. Otherwise, life is pretty typical. The drain pump failed in the washing machine; luckily, I found one on the internet and the Husband installed it and it works. However, the dishwasher is making funny noises, and the refrigerator is keeping things only nominally cold. I keep looking at Mommy Blogger Refrigerator giveaways but unfortunately all the refrigerators they want people to write reviews about are the big ones, 4-6" too wide to fit in the spot where our svelte 32" side by side lives now. The Miata needs to go to the body shop and the RX8 is due an oil change. Work is work--we both have enough to be employed. The Husband is off somewhere out West on his only trip scheduled thus far this month; I have invoices out for last month's jobs and proposals out for this month's, and in the meantime I'm teaching myself Wordpress and redesigning my website, which might account for some of the headaches. Speaking of which, I give up. I'm going to bed.

Time for Lunch

Yesterday the Girl went to Tower Grove Park for the Girl Scout Taste of World Friendship--an all-day field trip. As we walked across the street from the bus, I asked her about it. Oh, it was fun but I'm hungry. I didn't have any lunch.

What? Why didn't you have lunch? She didn't want to pack her lunch yesterday, and typically she buys a sack lunch at school to take with her so I didn't worry about it.

Well, there were 15 of us and only 8 bags, so I decided I wasn't really hungry anyway since we had just eaten nachos and snow cones and I don't know who has food at home and I knew I could have a nice salad as soon as I got off the bus. So I just got some juice.

I'm partially taken aback that there weren't enough lunches--every field trip I've ever been on, we've had enough for everyone to have seconds, never too few to go around. I will be talking to her teacher about it today, just to get the other side of the story. But on the other hand, it's good to see my Girl--I sometimes feel like I'm raising a Hobbit because she normally eats two breakfasts and two lunches--thinking of others and putting her needs and desires second. I don't see that very often.

Maybe I'm doing something right.

A Quick Glimpse into Last Week

The first part of our trip was a jaunt down to Texas (via Granny's house in Little Rock), to baptize R-less's twins and hang out by the pool for a few days. Lots of good food and fun with friends.

R-less, E & the Girl read a book.

Baptismal Font of the Church in Texas
(the Boy took this)

Ceiling of the Church in Texas
(the Boy took this)

with the Babies
(the Boy took this)
(I was surprisingly fine with giving them back. Yes, the factory is closed.)

Next, we headed into the Ozarks to pick up the Husband's parents (and their minivan) for what the Husband calls the "Tour de Ark"--visiting family sites all over the state. First stop: Fort Smith, where the Husband's grandfather was born. It's not an S family trip unless we do some training, too, so we stopped at the Fort Smith Trolley Museum.

Gate

Next stop, Pine Bluff, Grandad S's birthplace and where his grandfather (the Husband's great-grandfather) practiced architecture for many years.

S Men

Flames on Top
(Arkla Gas Building, Pine Bluff, by the Husband's great-grandfather.)


Open Book
(Lakeside School, Pine Bluff, by the Husband's great-grandfather.)

There was, of course, a train stop, at the Arkansas Railroad Museum:

Gauges

Lounge Chair

Then, the kids wanted to go dig for diamonds, so we drove through the storms to Arkadelphia to stay the night. Saw this:

Mid-Century Modernism + Deer Head
(Bank in Arkadelphia, Arkansas ... phone picture.)

It was a cool morning right after a rain. Children were everywhere gleeful in the mud, digging, sliding, sifting. We didn't find any gemstones--just a piece of quartz and a piece of calcite, both of which got lost during our picnic lunch. On the way back north, we visited with the Husband's Aunt and Uncle, and went by another cemetary.

Visiting Grandpa Mike

Then it was back to Mountain Home, to unpack the van, pack Rexy, and head for St. Louis. We made a long detour east to catch another couple of buildings:

Pediment, Poinsett County Courthouse
(by the Husband's great-grandfather.)

Bracket, Mississippi County Courthouse
(by the Husband's great-grandfather.)

There are more stories to tell, but this is all I've time for right now.

Lucy, the Girl, & Me

Today was a driving day, up the Interstate from Dallas through Little Rock, then shifting north through Conway, up US 65 through Marshall to Mountain Home, listening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader almost all the way, having finished the first two books on the way down.

Stopped at Starbucks in Conway for a clean toilet and caffeine. As we washed our hands, she looked up at me in the mirror. I want to be Lucy. she said.

The eyebrows of the me in the mirror furrowed with momentary confusion. Then I figured it out: she's identifying with the character in the books. Why? I asked.

She's just so nice--and smart. And Aslan always talks to her first.

I always wanted to be like Lucy, to have that kind of open kindness, that sort of moral clarity. But I suspect, in truth, I'm more like her brother Edmund, always treading the line between justice and treachery.

I Want Them to Remember Me

The Girl got up early on the last day of school.

I blinked in the light streaming from her bunk as I walked into the hall at 5:30 in the morning. Her bed was strewn with notebook paper, her blue pencil box open on the floor next to her. She was writing.

What are you doing? I asked.

I'm writing letters to all my friends. I want them to remember me even if I'm not coming back next year.

I smiled. My daughter has always seemed almost like a rock star in her school, always greeted with hugs in the halls by students of all ages. People shout her name across the grocery store, across Target, run up to her and hug. Who's that? we always ask. A friend from school. she always says.

I don't think there's much chance of that happening, dearheart. I say, and she looks up at me, desperate uncertainty in her eyes.

And then I remember. I changed schools after first grade too, from the small private school I had attended since preschool to the large public elementary, two blocks away.

And what do I remember about first grade?

• The room, with its long green chalkboard and cold beige vinyl tile floor, and the brown vinyl accordion partition between us and the second graders that shared our building.
• The conical cups of Hawaiian punch served at recess with Jackson's Lemon Cookies, with the tiny hole in the middle that we all stuck our index fingers through and nibbled around the edges.
• The Cub Scout den mother who screamed at me for stealing someone's cap then realized that all her charges had theirs. It was my father's cap, my favorite hat, and I never wore it again.
• The tiny lunchroom in the preschool building, and the tinny taste of the chicken patties.
• The May pole streamers weaving around the flag pole as we danced on the black asphalt of the driveway.

Not my teacher. I'm not even certain of her name.
Not a single one of my friends.

I won't tell her.

One From the Road

Finally got on the road today at 3:00, after getting everything together and running all the errands on the way out of town. Pointed the red car south down I-55, and before I felt like I was settled into the driver's seat we were at the exit for 67 South, Farmington Fredericktown and all points beyond.

Typical of driving alone with the children: drive and stop. Empty the car, fill up the car, test the facilities, choose beverages, whip out the credit card at the cashier. Get back in, repeat for seven hours, interrupted by a carefully plotted stop at the Polar Freeze in Walnut Ridge for dinner. I discovered that the copper wires on the charger for my phone were bent so it didn't work, and using a paper clip found in the floorboard as a tool, completed the job of breaking it completely. We listened to the entirety of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and some five chapters of Prince Caspian.

Driving over the I-30 bridge, feeling the familiar pangs of coming home. Every exit has a meaning, a memory, that I recite to myself while half singing Cuyahoga. This is where we walked this is where we swam I pass County Line Road, still thinking Red Gate to myself, and finally come to the exit where for the Hampton Inn where we have a free room, where we're staying for the night.

As I come down the ramp, sliding the red car into the right turn lane to pass between the WalMart and the fast foods, the Girl asks, Is this a Town?

I mentally stopped for a minute, asking myself the question.

I looked around, searching for something that might describe urbanity. Parking lots, sodium lights, dryvit buildings little thicker than the paper the architects drew them on. I remember when we'd pass this exit at 60 mph on our way to the Lake every weekend of my childhood, on our way to Hot Springs for summer vacation. Brown's Country Buffet has been here forever, but there were woods all around its oversized parking lot back then. Take a picture here take us through the years.

The view of the hotel from the stoplight saved me from having to answer.

It's Raining Again

Morgan watches the rain.

The National Weather Service says we're dead even on average rainfall for the year, but it doesn't feel like it.  Saturday night, sitting in front of the Soldier's Memorial in the drizzle, the Husband handed me his cell phone, the web browser on the 10-day forecast:  Rain. Rain.  Rain.  And that's what it feels like, since sometime in April or maybe even March.  

So our attentions have turned indoors:  to planting herbs and lettuce and strawberries in the windowboxes and terra cotta pots;

to finally painting the end of the hall hot orange to match the Orangina poster;

and even, in the Husband's case, spending a rainy Memorial Day sorting through four boxes of papers to finally keep one, plus a box of sheet music and a roll of drawings.

I've been cleaning obsessively and selling stuff on eBay, because I just feel too sodden to write when it's rainy, and I'm outside playing in the fast-growing, ever lusher grass when the sun shines.