I too got months of errands done. They've been literal weeks of being too tired to cart things over to the P.O. with all sorts of procrastinating rationalizations--it'll be crowded because it's Monday/Friday/lunch hour etc. I ended up there on a Friday at lunch hour and there was one person ahead of me--the person being served.
Also me: freaking out because there was a poster advertising Ursula K. Le Guin stamps. They didn't have any, but I can get them online. And I will, watch me.
So apparently it's National Daughters' Day, and my FB feed is full of lovely people posting about their lovely daughters and I'm loving it esp. as I no longer have daughters this year. (The kids have made Huckleberry an "honorary bro" so I now have four boy-kids.)
Nu has had a cold for a couple of days and spiked a fever last night, so we headed for the drive-through Covid-test this morning. They couldn't find Nu's health records and I was quietly panicking because I thought it was because I'd decided to leave the sex column blank, but it turned out that my tired brain had given them the wrong year of birth (I gave them At's!!). I can't wait to see the AMA's recommendation that sex be removed from birth certificates universally accepted.
So I'm experiencing stress... and rightly so.
And I got a submission declined rejected today too.
But Scout and Huck are always adorable.
I guess he heard Big A and me have a furious, whispered conversation about Scout and/or heard me sobbing in the stairwell.
Anyway, I spent hours at the veterinary E.R. with Scout today. Tons of tests later, we still have no clear answers. But they gave us a bunch of meds; I hope they help.
Pic: Sculpture outside the E.R. (I forgot to take a pic of Scoutie.)
First I had a general epiphany about how nostalgia-fueled decisions to go back to the way things were rarely go well. "Going back" to places, people, whatever... never goes as planned. Perhaps that's the true moral of Pet Sematary. It came up in some conversation with Big A. And then suddenly because we'd talked about Scout's health, he was trying to get me to promise that I would never clone Scout. An option I'd never considered before but seemed tempting. But Big A rightly made the point that Scout is his own person and cloning disrespects that etc. OK? OK.
I was telling the kids this over breakfast some day this week, and I don't know if they appreciated their parents' deep thoughts. But they immediately started a tally of who in the family would put people in the pet sematary. Apparently neither human kid would. According to them, I totally would. And their dad--well... apparently he has a strong sense of medical ethics and wouldn't. But... he'd still probably put me in the pet sematary because he's so attached. And then, they riffed, when pet-semataried mom starts stabbing people and stuff, he'd be all patient explaining things like "Puppy, remember we talked about not stabbing people?"
For a conversation that included so many deaths, including my own, that last line in its authenticity still makes me chuckle out loud.
First day of classes today... I panicked hard yesterday, despite having taught in person all of last year. But the usual combination of over prepping and the endorphin-adrenalin rush of being in front of a class kicked in and all was well. Finished up work with a small reception at the president's house for being on a search committee that met all summer long.
When I got home, Big A was napping ahead of a work-night, At was off canvassing, Nu was in the basement knuckle-deep in a paint project for a class. So I grabbed my Culver's dinner from L's fundraiser for Peacequest, queued up some Felicity on ye olde laptop, and ate with Scout and Huck for company.
A bit of an anticlimactic end to the day, TBH.
As a bonus, we're also celebrating Scout and Huck's Boss Day today (theirs is on the 18th but the rest of us were traveling this month).
But wait there's more! It's also back to school celebration time for At and Nu (actually just Nu, but it felt weird not to celebrate At too).
I guess I like celebrating this little family of mine.
<< I made Nu and At little gift bags with some school essentials, fun reading, and a fresh plant to care for.
I got a good picture of S and J with all the grandkids for the family holiday card. I wish I had gotten the childhood portrait of Big A just behind At's shoulder... but Scout's butt wouldn't fit.
*
Obviously, I titled this post as a riff on Wood's American Gothic, but my capability for normalcy and jokes about American-ness is dimmed by the horrific news from Afghanistan and diminished in the emotionally exhausting aftermath of having just finished Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies.
The human kids frequently "take turns" walking with me. Not in an eager way--but more like one is busy today so could the other step in, etc.
For some reason, it sort of makes me happy because it makes me imagine that when I'm elderly and need their care they'll negotiate a mutually compassionate and equitable way to make that work too.
The puppy kids are, naturally, happy to walk any time.
Scout, Huck, and I hosted bookclub while Big A, At, and Nu did their own thing. I'd planned to have a garden party, but rain was in the forecast and mosquitoes were out in force, so I moved it indoors. And just like that we had our first indoors party since the pandemic started.
Here, Huck, Scout, and I (L to R) are spooning in blissed-out collapse after dinner.
[Pic by Nu, reflected in the glass door.]
Not to be outdone, Nu (a.k.a The Chicken Daddy) titled a group picture of their growing chickies--"dogs."
