Flies

Down here in this dusty corner of the country, summer passed by without so much as a whisper of a hot day, let alone a heat wave. My kids spent the first month of school wearing jeans, t-shirts and the occasional sweatshirt. We even had a smattering of light rain, a completely uncharacteristic event for my new home.

Did you know we've been here three years now? Three years! Leaving Ann Arbor doesn't hurt quite so much now, everyone was right the pain isn't so sharp but just sort of stingy and throat lumpy. Thanks all of you, Everyone, who told me I was going to be okay and that time would heal these wounds. Everyone, except Carolyn, that is. Carolyn read some geologic study about how California shouldn't even be here and soon enough it was going to crack off of the continent. She warned me not to buy real estate and she told me to hold on tight in case the cracking episode happened while I was still here. Love that friend of mine, though, I didn't take her real estate advice and second guess it every time we get a little jiggle from being perched atop these big old fault lines.

Now, here I am in my real estate digressing about things. My Coca Cola Zero is sweating, I'm sweating, my kids are sweating and my dog is sweating. I've got sweat rolling down that space between my boobs that most California women proudly call their cleavage (price approximately $10k), but my boobs are still solidly Michigan and so I am fortunate enough not to have a little pond gathering at the apex where my girls meet.

The weather has changed suddenly. It's hot and crispy. You singe your hand on the handle just trying to open the ding car door. And because we don't have air conditioning we have every fan in the house on pointing them at our faces.

I boiled some pasta for dinner while some of the kids were at the neighbors and Tovey was sleeping. There is just no reasonable excuse to cook dinner with everyone in the house on a dry 94-degree day. I threw together a pasta salad and some corn bread and then when I put it in the fridge to set and gather all it's flavors I also shoved my head in there for a quick couple of moments. Until I saw the strawberries sweating. Sweaty strawberries are even less attractive then a sweaty, full-grown mama of four so I crawled off that bowing little shelf next to the left-overs and tried to get pragmatic about it. At least I wasn't having to witness the "beauty" of all those wretched fall colors that old people and people with country kitchens wax nostalgia about. I find nothing fabulous about fall colors. Hello?! Fall. Is. Cold.

Who the heck cares about hot ciders and woolly sweaters and homecoming games? Ugh. Fall means winter and winter means snow and crawling around on Highway 94 in a white out at 19 MPH heading off to the hospital to catch some baby in the middle of a snow storm. One time it was soooo cold that I slammed my fingertips into my old VW hatchback, I didn't even realize it until I tried to walk away from the car but couldn't cause part of me was still in that ding car.

I do feel a bit like an 3rd world: lethargic from heat, a skinny baby at my boob and flies hovering around my face. And what exactly is it about that heat that brings out all those flies? But no sirree, I cannot say that I could swallow another Michigan winter. The milk and honey on this side is just as sweet, thank you very much.

Git tuh gittin' . . .

I know, I know, I whine bunches and gobs.

Thing is, if you end up totally satisfied with your life then what else is there to work for? Huh, huh, huh?

Since I've been in a bit of a hippy phase since I was 12-years old, I am more than familiar with all those songs out there about seasons changing and how it really means that babies get older. There's some peace and love in 'em, too. I do remember those parts. But it's the parts about the winds coming in from the West and blowing yer baby clear up in to personhood with legs that can walk and mushy cheeks that can talk . . . it is those parts of the songs that sting me like hot pokers.

You'd think that with all the peacing and loving we listen to in my little shack that my husband would go ahead and gimme another baby. He, apparently, thinks peace and love also means not overpopulating our planet.

Sometimes I try to get all Holy on him, seeing as that was his fire and brimstone upbringing, but instead he finds some diversion like playing "No Woman, No Cry" on his guitar with his chin pointed up to the stars. Hello? Anybody in there? He's gone and tuned out.

Tova may be our last Viking. I can't hardly believe it.

And then, you know what -- aside from me having all sorts of good baby names left -- you know what?

Today was Tovey Marge's first day of preschool.

The long walk to the front door, giving my baby away to the baby snatchers at our preschool.

Already busy with Montessori work.

Bye-bye, says Mommy.

Don't let the door hit you on your back porch on the way out, says Tova.