Momentum and inertia
Summer is rapidly approaching. The kids have reached the point in the school year where everything is pointing toward end-of-year performances/tests/celebrations/field trips. The weather is leaning hard toward shorts. The trees are leafing out. Cook is mowing the lawn right now.
I find myself even more than usually lazy. I literally lay in the hammock yesterday and did nothing but lie there and grow my ennui. It was pretty nice, but I do recognize that weeds need pulling and dishes need washing and dinner needs cooking, and it's probably not a great marital-maintenance plan to just let Cook do all of it. Last weekend I forced Skipper to accompany me to the library and grocery store, and she objected strenuously. I said she needed to leave the house and do something other than loaf, and she said "WHY!? What's the POINT? Why can't I just read books and do word searches?" and I didn't really have a great argument for that. So maybe she's just persuaded me to give in to the sloth.
It just seems like there's so much schlepping; a classic middle-class middle-aged person's complaint - orthodontist appointments, dentist appointments, eye doctor appointments, regular doctor appointments, vet appointments, roller skating lessons, grocery shopping, hardware store trips, bike repair appointments, car repair appointments. Plus, you know, work and housework and the normal slog of shepherding everybody through the day. It feels like A Lot, even while it also feels like a great stroke of luck to be able to have this particular bag of A Lot.
We're all doing the same old things. Skipper is walking herself home from school every day and latchkeying it. She likes that a lot. She instant-messages us when she gets home to tell us she's home, and then she just reads for hours. The third day she did it, I was at a meeting when she normally arrives home, and didn't look at my phone till a little later when I was alarmed to find no message. I got a text pretty much right away from Father Blond, saying that Skipper was at his house and that she was "Wet. Unhappy." Turned out Skipper had run home in the rain (she had no raincoat, due to poor planning) and couldn't find her key in her backpack, so she left her backpack on the back steps and walked to the Blonds' house. She knows she's not allowed to cross the major street between our house and theirs except at a controlled intersection, but she got disoriented and walked much further out of her way than she needed to to get to a light. She walked 16 blocks in the rain, terrified that she was going to get arrested (she actually saw a school friend of hers and hid behind a corner until the friend's family was out of sight because she was afraid that they would call the police if they knew she was unescorted), and arrived at the Blond house weeping and soaking wet. She was upset, scared, embarrassed and uncomfortable. After I retrieved her, I pointed out that she had in fact just demonstrated her coping skills by solving the problem in a fairly sensible way, and she made a bunch of good decisions. I felt a lot more confident about the whole thing after that episode. I'm not sure that she shares my confidence; as always, she was pretty focused on the stressful and humiliating elements of the experience. I did reassure her that the police are NOT going to arrest her for walking alone in the rain.
That's pretty much the news.
I find myself even more than usually lazy. I literally lay in the hammock yesterday and did nothing but lie there and grow my ennui. It was pretty nice, but I do recognize that weeds need pulling and dishes need washing and dinner needs cooking, and it's probably not a great marital-maintenance plan to just let Cook do all of it. Last weekend I forced Skipper to accompany me to the library and grocery store, and she objected strenuously. I said she needed to leave the house and do something other than loaf, and she said "WHY!? What's the POINT? Why can't I just read books and do word searches?" and I didn't really have a great argument for that. So maybe she's just persuaded me to give in to the sloth.
It just seems like there's so much schlepping; a classic middle-class middle-aged person's complaint - orthodontist appointments, dentist appointments, eye doctor appointments, regular doctor appointments, vet appointments, roller skating lessons, grocery shopping, hardware store trips, bike repair appointments, car repair appointments. Plus, you know, work and housework and the normal slog of shepherding everybody through the day. It feels like A Lot, even while it also feels like a great stroke of luck to be able to have this particular bag of A Lot.
We're all doing the same old things. Skipper is walking herself home from school every day and latchkeying it. She likes that a lot. She instant-messages us when she gets home to tell us she's home, and then she just reads for hours. The third day she did it, I was at a meeting when she normally arrives home, and didn't look at my phone till a little later when I was alarmed to find no message. I got a text pretty much right away from Father Blond, saying that Skipper was at his house and that she was "Wet. Unhappy." Turned out Skipper had run home in the rain (she had no raincoat, due to poor planning) and couldn't find her key in her backpack, so she left her backpack on the back steps and walked to the Blonds' house. She knows she's not allowed to cross the major street between our house and theirs except at a controlled intersection, but she got disoriented and walked much further out of her way than she needed to to get to a light. She walked 16 blocks in the rain, terrified that she was going to get arrested (she actually saw a school friend of hers and hid behind a corner until the friend's family was out of sight because she was afraid that they would call the police if they knew she was unescorted), and arrived at the Blond house weeping and soaking wet. She was upset, scared, embarrassed and uncomfortable. After I retrieved her, I pointed out that she had in fact just demonstrated her coping skills by solving the problem in a fairly sensible way, and she made a bunch of good decisions. I felt a lot more confident about the whole thing after that episode. I'm not sure that she shares my confidence; as always, she was pretty focused on the stressful and humiliating elements of the experience. I did reassure her that the police are NOT going to arrest her for walking alone in the rain.
That's pretty much the news.
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