Almanac: July 16, 2012

96 degrees
8:32 sunset
7 swans a-swimming or 7, 7, I forget what 7 was for
6 AM flight for Mom
5:57 sunrise
4 birthdays-- Victor, Kyle, Tonya, and Unika
3 sixth grade teams-- Dolphins, Owls, and Stingrays
2 movies-- Beasts of the Southern Wild and Prometheus
1 waning crescent moon

Long Days of Summer

We were arriving home from a movie and dinner just a little while ago. The clouds were shreds of charcoal and violet against a periwinkle sky. A single star glimmered in the dusk. "9:15," Heidi noted, "and almost dark. The days are getting shorter." She sighed.

My mom nodded in agreement, but I shrugged. "What are you talking about?" I said. "Summer is hardly winding down."

Before they could object, I continued. "If you were seven and you had to go to bed when it was still light out at 7:30 in your underwear because it was too hot for pajamas, then you would know that July has verrry long days!"

I guess that was a formative experience.

Gracious Isabel

Here's another reason why our dog is great:

We got her a new bed today, a special Sealy posturepedic model for the aging pooch. (Ok, so it was a bit of a splurge, but her birthday is Tuesday. She'll be nine.) When we brought it home and showed her, she was polite enough to roll right on it and then lie down and stretch out with a comfortable sigh.

Now that's gratitude!

Happy Birthday Cupcake

 Tomorrow I'm going card shopping. From July 12 to July 17 we have seven birthdays.

I know that some people despise the greeting card industry. I get it-- set aside all those holidays they have ginned up for their own profit, there's a whole raft of people making their living by basically telling us what we are feeling so that we can send our sentiments to others without taking the time to write them ourselves. (Seriously--who has time for that, right?)

Oh, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the greeting card aisle. Sometimes, those hacks can really put their finger on some string of your relationship that you may or may not have overlooked. Who cares if they are sitting in a cubicle in Nebraska throwing wadded paper at each other? If it's funny, I laugh, and if it fits, I send it. Har, har, har.

Summer Time Zone

During the school year I find that I don't always sleep well. It's usually an early wake-up and trouble falling back to sleep-- too many things on my mind make it hard to drift back off. For a while I thought it might be my age; I took an herbal supplement, and I'd like to say it helped, but I'm not so sure.

We busted out of here the day after school ended to spend two weeks in Maine, and I forgot my supplement the whole time we were there. I also slept fine. Once we were back and there were a few things I needed to get up for, I woke up again in the middle of the night. Call me Sigmund, but that seems pretty psychological to me.

It makes me wonder about internal clocks and every day anxiety. Left to my own devices, I wake up between 7:30 and 8. I eat a few small meals throughout the day and am ready for dinner between 7:30 and 8 at night. It's easy to lose track of the time between the pool, the kitchen, the computer, and the conversation, but Heidi is often reminding me that we really have no deadlines. It takes a while, but I eventually relax.

That's cool, until I look up and it's almost midnight and I haven't posted my blog.

No worries. It's 11:11 somewhere.

Overtime

I was in the pool this evening when our neighbors splashed over. Their daughter will be in sixth grade at my school next year and they had some friendly questions.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not the sort to engage in conversation casually; small talk is a struggle. Not so tonight-- ask me a specific professional question and away I go. I had no problem chatting with them for well over 20 minutes.

On the way home we checked our mailbox, and our contracts were there. Through a series of funding changes and snafus the school system was unable to have us formally commit to returning next year before we left in June; so it was that today we had big envelopes with explicit directions to Open Immediately. I did as I was instructed, and then I did a little happy dance when I saw that my salary would crest a level I never dreamed I'd earn.

Being informally on call at the pool? My pleasure.

And that summer vacation thing? It's not too bad either.

Proveganda

Last night after I went to bed, Heidi and Josh watched Forks Over Knives, the documentary that turned our kitchen upside down. As I drifted off, I heard Josh raising objections, and I appreciated his critical thinking. Try as I might, I don't think veganism is for me.

We were rushing to get on the road this morning to reunite Josh and his full-time family. I offered to heat up his left over pizza for a quick breakfast, and he gratefully accepted. His left over bacon cheese pizza.

"How was it?" I asked on the way to the car.

"It was good, but somehow it didn't seem right eating it," he answered, "all that bacon."

Another one bites the dust.