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The Child Naps A Lot

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It’s not fair that Chas can nap like this without me. But Ford will have none of it. He meets my exhaustion sometimes with sandpaper to my nerves, and I could just cry. So I’ve started taking vitamins more regularly, and with exercise and a little more sleep I’ve built up a better defense against the afternoon slump. Damon has introduced me to blackberry sage iced tea in mason jars. And I’ve taken up painting the sleeping babe.

I signed up for an encaustic painting class. A while back, I mentioned Amy Ruppel and her wonderful buttery paintings. I love this texture. It’s what I’m craving, more fat. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to learn for years, it’s just been hard to find an instructor. Lo and behold, they have one in Austin at the Laguna Gloria. So I cancelled our Vegas plans and am now sitting primly on the edge of my seat, waiting for two weeks to pass so I can start playing with oils and beeswax.

There are no more caterpillars. I keep waiting for a second generation to spill out of the trees but they haven’t arrived. I jogged along the creek today. The white rocks are dry now and milk-green where water trickled down only weeks ago, runoff from uphill. The pools where the big fish swim are coated with pollen and dust and milkweed tufts. Every big patch of sunlight holds a surprise along the trail. I’ve learned to ignore the scattering spiny lizards and squirrels. At the last minute, before my foot falls on them, they dart into shadows, bark and leaves flying behind them. So I ford through the little forest community, knowing it will all unfold before me.

Unless it doesn’t. My foot descends on a fat snake. Like the recoil of a shotgun, I yank back with so much force that I pull a muscle in my chest. But the snake is safe, motionless, and only as I bend down to study it does it slink into a rotten tree stump. Who knows what else I’ve narrowly missed?

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It’s Been Too Long

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Chas wore this dress of mine yesterday. I had to roll it about six times until it was short enough for him to just barely clear the ground in, and he just barely cleared the ground all over the garden as he trampled the runner bean seedlings and bulldozed through the birdbath. Finally, he returned inside with a little wicker basket and a tiny Schleich lamb at the bottom of the basket, declaring his arrival with a wet pattering across the tile floor and up onto Damon’s chest, where he soon fell asleep.

We went out on date last night. This is not something we do often, but my parents were in town and they decided to relieve us. So, after a quick bite and a paint lesson from my dad:

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We left. We drove as fast as we could to make the 7 o’clock reservation. It was still hot outside, and my dress stuck to my legs in the car while I waited to the air conditioning ot kick in. Summer is just getting comfortable; you could see it in the smile of a man in his convertible, sunglasses reflecting the red light: summer is wedging itself back in the seat of the rocker, next to a side table with sweet iced tea and a paperback memoir.

Sunset raked over white table linens at the restaurant. Wine and hands, a sublime filet and the finest long grain rice from Texas; I felt ten years younger immersed in the quiet of our childless space. I mentioned that the restaurant reminded me of the bistro in Mill Valley, the one with the gorgeous hostess, but I realized that the similarity lay not in the setting but the absence of stress. Children have been the bane of our dining experiences. No matter how charming it is when they politely request macaroni and cheese, each good deed is met with an equally annoying faux pas: say, a fork thrown across the table and barely skewering the woman at the table behind me.

We kill 45 minutes atop a parking garage.
And then eat molten chocolate cake a la mode with pints of ale at the drafthouse theater.
My head is heavy and tipping off my shoulders on the winding road home, smiling and satiated but sleepy.