It’s time for summer to end

All my friends that have children are so funny about August. Half of them are sending kids off to kindergarten and so they have broken hearts and empty houses during the day. The other half are counting the days until school starts back and their favorite commercial is the office supply store one with the dad dancing around to “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

We returned from our week-long family beach trip yesterday and we are happy, slightly tan and rested but exhausted, if that makes sense. We’re exhausted from visiting, from finding things to talk about with people who can’t count conversation as their strong suit, and from filling our bellies with shrimp, crab and fish. (And maybe some cheese dip and margaritas and cookies and lemon meringue pie and tomato sandwiches with real mayonnaise and ice cream…)

We are rested though, because we basically did nothing. The most exercise we got was from hauling our crap down to the beach and back up to the house, and really BB did that. We swam – a lot – and we lolled about in the sand until we got rashy and bumpy, which is an okay trade off. We played shark and pulled our nieces around in innertubes. We people-watched and criticized bathing suits and tattoos (we already know we’re hypocrites, don’t worry). We read books, had deep discussions and tried to avoid olive appetizers and bourbon slushies. (Eww and eww.)

In short, we had a really good time.

Now, though, the real world faces us, as it does everyone who returns from vacation, and for me, school will begin in a week. I will be teaching a class of 75 students (in an auditorium!) once a week, after my regular job. We will register new students, encourage the old ones and smile the smile of this-summer-wasn’t-nearly-long-enough.

I’m kind of with the kindergarten mothers: I’m not ready to let go, even though it’s time this weather cooled the hell off already. I’m also ready for football and for daylight to go away before bedtime. When you live here though, the seasons don’t change quickly, or on time.

Some days I’m really surprised that I’m not in charge of the world. I really am.

Shit that happened while I was snowed in

Interneeeeet! What up? You’d think that while I was chillaxin’ with my homies snowed in for the last four days that I would have churned out post after intelligent post. You’d be wrong. I’m going to make a list now that will enlighten you about what I’ve been doing since Friday night’s crippling dusting of snow major winter storm.

1. I watched the news for school closings, only to discover that our website updates quicker. Go us, because usually our website announces closings about 10 minutes before the work day is scheduled to begin. Fuck ups.

2. I watched most of the stuff on my DVR. I’m down to 42% full. Trust me, this is like empty in my house. I caught up on Big Love – oh! – and I totally should mention this, because if you watch Big Love on HBO, you totally have to read this book. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (do you love how I just correctly titled this book without quotation marks or italics? English majors RULE!) by Jon Krakauer. It’s about this woman and her child who are murdered by two Mormon fundamentalists and it gives this big long history of Mormons. I will mention here that I grew up with a slew of Mormons and those in the regular garden variety LDS church are super nice people. But it’s those Big Love Juniper Creek creepies that this book talks about. Anyway, if you’re interested in that kind of stuff it’s a good read.

3. I started watching The Tudors. Shut UP that shit is good. First of all there’s some hot sex in it, which kept BB interested of course, and then there’s Henry VIII who is eight different kinds of beautiful and then there’s Sam Neill who does a decent British accent and then there are all the jewels and fabulous fabric in the costumes and do you get Showtime? Catch up. RIGHT NOW. They’re showing seasons 1-3 and you should catch it while the catching’s good.

4. I slept. I slept in in the morning, I took naps, I permanently squished the cushion down in my Archie Bunker chair in the den, so now it looks like a butt pancake. I laid around on the couch. I stretched out with the ottoman and listened to BB hand wash dishes because our dishwasher melted. I waited for him to cook dinner. I showered occasionally. I was a ROCK STAR.

5. Our dishwasher melted. So now BB we have to hand wash our dishes and dry them and hope we rinsed the soap off good because I can tell you from experience that soapy Cheerios are not so tasty. Yesterday we ventured out into the scary world of icy parking lots and bought a shiny new Whirlpool stainless dishwasher. It’s so pretty. And supposedly you can put dishes in there WITHOUT SCRUBBING THEM FIRST! That would be a miracle. And BB bought it with his own money that I didn’t have to contribute to. It was a great moment in my life.

6. I made whole wheat bagels. Those fuckers are N-A-S-T-Y. They are hard as rocks, dense as rocks and taste like rocks. I asked my good Interweb friend Ashley Gross to come up with a recipe to replace these things. She’s working on it.

7. I played 1,764 games of some kind of Solitaire variation on my iTouch. Maybe not that many games, but it seemed like it. Once I found myself in the kitchen looking for Diet Sunkist and I couldn’t see the fridge because my eyes were blurry from looking at the screen too long. I need an intervention.

8. I started The Lovely Bones last night and almost finished it. I had to stay up until almost 1am though and by the time I got good and asleep, the alarm went off. Good grief. I have to say though, after all those days of slugging it around the house, it was a little bit nice to get back into a routine this morning.

9. In case you haven’t gathered by now, North Carolina shuts down completely when it snows and sleets. COMPLETELY. Schools closed, businesses on delays, snow plows doing their best but not enough. It’s enough to make an outsider nuts, but it’s what we’re used to. They’re calling for more Friday. I might shoot myself.

10. BB tried to tell me what to do. I shut him down. We’re headed to the beach for an early Valentine’s vacation Friday, and if his ‘tude doesn’t change, I’m shutting him down again. On vacation. In a fancy hotel. You know what this means, people. SHUTTING IT DOWN.

On the Internet, there were good recaps of the Grammys (holy shit Pink!) and there were friends that joined Twitter and Tom and Lorenzo of Project Rungay did some super funny posts about Kelly Cutrone (Kell on Earth) and RuPaul.

OK. That’s the shit that happened while I was snowed in.

Because next year there might not be as many

I guilted myself into going to the family reunion today – and it was ALL FOR YOU, LawyerMom! Well, not really. It was also for my great-aunt Ernestine, who turned 90 over Labor Day weekend.

Aunt Ernestine and Elizabeth

And it was for Daddy and his sister:

Portia and Dad

And it was for Cathy and Burt and Frank and Mack and Marie and Michael and all the Mollies and all the Cindys. (There are more than you might think.)

Elizabeth and Cathy

And even though the crowd was smaller, and even though the food wasn’t as homemade as last year (we’re all too old and exhausted to cook anymore), and even though not all my favorites showed up, I did not have to suppress the urge to tell an old wrinkled person to fuck off, NOT ONE TIME. Incidentally, I noticed at the park this afternoon that the leaves are starting to turn. I also noticed last night that it’s dark at 7:30 now.

You know what this means? This means that the universe has given me reprieve! This means that the air is changing! The heat – DEAR GOD THE HEAT THAT TRIES TO KILL ME EVERY SINGLE DAY – is dissipating! I would marry the fall season if I could. I would even buy it a ring and plan a big fussy wedding with a ball gown and a 30-piece orchestra. And I am so not exaggerating.

Big Rigs & Air Conditioners

8:38 am, BB: WTF? How did we sleep in until 8:30? This is nuts!

9:15 am, Me: Yes, I know he set up his tuition through the payment plan but apparently THE PAYMENT PLAN DIDN’T PAY. So do we owe back tuition or not? Oh. No m’am, we’ll pay it right away. It’s not necessary to report us to THE STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL for collections. Honestly. I have to go now, there’s a murder that needs committing right fast.

10:27 am, Drew: Hey, so I almost ran over a kitten on the bypass this morning. I went back and picked him up but he was right on the white line in between the two lanes and these two tractor trailers came by at the same time and they seriously missed him on both sides. Like for real. Can you and Mom take him to the vet at 12:40?

11:08 am, BB: You’re gonna run errands? Is it because you’re mad at me? I know you’re mad at me. I can’t help it. I didn’t KNOW I didn’t pay my tuition! I swear!

12:30 pm, Mom: Don’t let that cat get pink eye on you. And make sure it doesn’t shit on my backseat.

1:05 pm, Vet Tech: Well, he’s negative for FIV and feline leukemia. And we’re calling him Big Rig back there, because of how he was saved.

2:12 pm, Me: BB, why is it so hot in here? WTF…WHY IS THE THERMOSTAT ON 78?

2:53 pm, Me: Mr. Fred, please call us back ASAP. This thing is still under warranty and IT SHOULD BE FUCKING COOL OFF THIS FUCKING HOT HOUSE. Sorry about that…it’s been kind of a long day. And it’s not even three o’clock.

Where I’ve been

Remember the farm? The one whose house was broken into two weekends ago? Yeah, that one. It came to life Saturday night, as kind of a “screw you” to the folks who stole from us. We had a little party, and we burned a little fire.

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We roasted oysters and marshmallows and made s’mores and listened to some good music and promised to do it again sometime soon. Sunday afternoon I got a nice little visit from a smart little girl, who at almost two years old, knows a crescent moon and how to pose for a camera.

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Today at work, I keep checking weather.com and wishing that the weekend would just hurry up and get here already. I haven’t seen Gena in months and I’ve really been doing good, if you ask me, but that pesky anxiety is starting to creep up on me again. I can’t decide whether I just need a vacation, or whether there are bigger things at work, but my plan in the next week is to get a lot of rest and see where that leaves me.

I finished a book last night written by Jen Lancaster and I have to say that there’s hope for me, yet. She’s 40 (ish?) now and after a giant layoff saga, she took to the blogosphere and consequently wrote some books. Do I reek of desperation yet? No? Take a bigger whiff. It’s there.