More updates

It's hot. It's summery. I'm in the midst of a bunch of stressful work deadlines, but the kids have been wringing a lot of summer out of the week. Skipper has been on several adventures with friends - hiking on Wednesday, the local amusement park yesterday, an exploratory baseball playdate today.




































She also finally consented to get a haircut* that included bangs! I am really enjoying looking at her face. (She's cuddling Momo in this photo. Momo hates being picked up, but once you finally catch her, she utters a small, hopeless squeak of despair and then surrenders completely to the pleasure of a warm quiet place to doze where Snufkin can't pester her. When I pick her up to put her back in the cage after she's been sitting on Skipper's lap for a while, her whole body is so relaxed that she feels like a warm beanie baby instead of an actual living mammal.)

Duchess started rowing last week - she rows from 8 to 10am every weekday. She loves it. I dropped her off the first day, and walked with her back into the boat-storage/rowing-machine area, and I felt like I had wandered into the Land of Giants. Duchess is considered small in the Land of Giants, and I felt pretty much pocket-sized.

And today Cook dropped her off at an intensive week of ultimate frisbee camp. There's a lot going on around here. And next weekend I will be done with this wave of scary work deadlines, and I will get to wring out some summer!

*Skipper's distrust of my judgement around haircuts is hard-earned.

Updates

We're doing fine.

I continue to half-ass most everything. Cook continues to work too hard (knowing me for twenty years has somehow not taught him how to half-ass).

The girls have their last day of school tomorrow. They're spending the summer mostly home together unsupervised. I expect it'll involve a lot of reading, screen time and resentful bickering.

Skipper, who has been watching the Detroit Tigers games with Cook for years, and read "Summerland" with him this year, is suddenly interested in actually playing baseball, and has lately been out in the driveway alone for half an hour before bed, throwing a tennis ball at the garage door to practice throwing and fielding. She's terrible, and she doesn't want to play with other kids, because they'd see her being terrible. You tell me what to do with this.

Skipper is also very into the Horatio Hornblower books right now, an interest that I doubt is shared with many other 9-year-old girls who have ever existed. She knows what a water hoy is.

Duchess is pretty much thriving, an open-hearted, easy-tempered, ethical, sensible person (in 13-year-old-adjusted terms). She raptly follows all her many friends' social dramas but doesn't perpetrate them herself. She texts and instagrams all the time. She wants to be the flute section leader in band next year. She wants everybody to like her. She wants to wear a little makeup, but not very much. She wants to get all As and have pretty hair. She wants to join the Foreign Service or maybe be a criminal defense attorney (she cheerfully embraces the idea that she would find herself defending guilty people- she thinks she'd enjoy and be good at figuring out how to make an effective argument and use the system on her client's behalf). She wants to be on the cheerleading team in high school. You tell me what to do with this.

I am sometimes torn, when I consider my daughters, between feeling that they are profoundly mysterious to me and feeling that they are uncannily similar to me. I do know, though, that there's nothing much I should do with them, or can do. They are who they are  and they'll be themselves all along (and they both know how to half-ass, which is both irritating and a relief).

Anyway, summer. We're taking one big trip to Maine and DC, and we have some small fun weekend trips planned. I'm still employed, through at least October and maybe through December. Duchess will be rowing every weekday morning for two months, and playing ultimate frisbee (and texting). Skipper will have occasional rollerskating lessons (she loves this). I plan to do some hammock time. That's the whole plan...