upheaval

After a semi-stern reprimand from a woman wearing onion-cutting goggles and wielding a tom-honed knife, I am back at the blog. I hear the re-entry phase can be cruel, so I'll keep it short. I'm entering a summer of no dayjams, no school, no teaching-related projects, not being on call for the first time in years, and no tiny baby. I am trying to wrap my mind around the idea of gardening in actual dirt-clothes - with my phone lying neglected on the counter in the kitchen instead of cozied up to my twitchy behind ready to ring me into action at any moment - instead of grabbing a few handfulls of weeds on my way from the car to the house after work or class. S-man can help and do things like (seriously!) "Bud will you go into the kitchen and look in the napkin drawer and grab the old blue towel with the stain on it and the spray cleaner and bring it out to me in the car, ok? Oh, and could you ask dad if there's any coffee left?"
For the record; he came back in less than 2 minutes with the right cleaner, the right towel, and the answer to my question (which was, sadly, no.) and I was well into cleaning the last few weeks worth of spilled coffee out of the minivan cup holders before I realized that he's not really a grown up, and is in fact 3 and 3/4.
J-man dug a giant pit in our backyard which will one day soon - with the help of the mysterious "Charlie from sand and gravel" - be a lovely breezeway again.
The constant steam of dirt throught the house would bother me so much more if I weren't experiencing the oddest lightness of being. I would mind the sweeping and the laundry more if I wasn't moving so slowly in my mind. I think this must be what it's like for those kids who get medicated instead of being thansfered to a self-contained classroom.
Everything seems so slow.
and so clear.