A Good Day

The clock this morning greeted me with a red 5:56. Rus seemed to relish pushing me out of bed and pulling my pillow close enough to spoon...a mirror image of what I normally do each morning. I made it blindly downstairs, let Colonel out of his crate, took an allergy-barricade-the-snot-pill, and sat on the couch waiting for Grace. Grace is in first grade, like Bekah, and stays with us in the mornings so her mom can head in to work. This morning Grace got to sit on the couch and tell me all about the Jillian workout she and her mom did while I did pilates (mine was not as hard, in her opinion.) When my twenty minutes were dutifully done I headed to the kitchen to immediately make up for all the hard work I just did. Rus was going to be home for breakfast (since he had to catch a flight to CA later), so I wanted to make him something delicious and buttery, something quite exactly resembling the blueberry muffins with a crumb topping from the sacred Yellow (aka Gourmet) cookbook. Later he enjoyed no less than three of those wonderful things while I doodled on post-it notes to hide in his luggage (one of them a sunshine with sideburns).
As the clock edged closer to schooltime, Grace's stomach faked(?) illness and did it well enough to stay home from school for the rest of the day. Her mom was relieved that I could watch her, while Grace just sat there crying for her own home and couch and mother. I decided to make it a good hooky day.
We dropped Bekah off and headed to the Walgreens Redbox...Jacob picked out the Super Hero Squad and Grace chose Alice in Wonderland. When we got home Rus popped a movie in but I wasn't quite ready yet.
"Sick Day means we need a Cozy Tent!"
So Jacob and Grace and even Beau collected all the pillows and blankets they could find. I outdid myself making a tent that enclosed the TV and the two couches like a big triangle. After being finally situated we started Super Hero Squad. (Jacob won paper-rock-scissors.)
I kissed Rus goodbye, good enough that he'd miss me for the next four days.
I put up some tomatoes while they watched their movie. (I love saying "put up" instead of "canned", it makes me feel wonderfully old fashioned). Two hours of hard work yielded four pints. It might sound like a waste of time, but I think of it as preserving my garden so that it lasts months after the green turns brown.
Grace's mom called around one while we were watching Alice and Beau was taking a nap. I told her what we'd been up to.
"Don't make it too fun!" she said.
Too late, I thought.
Afterward I tried to teach Grace to ride Bekah's bike. Don't wait until your child is six to teach them to ride a bike. They are much too heavy. But Grace was super brave and concentrated really hard. A few more tries...
I picked up Bekah at three-twenty. Grace's mom picked up a happy and healthy looking Grace. I loaded the kids up and we drove to Albuquerque for some library books that were on hold for the last day for me. We stopped at Sunflower Market (*happy sigh*) and bought some beautiful and cheap fruit. I bought some Blueberry Yogurt Dipped Pretzels. I ran into a girl that I had taken a motorcycle training course with and wound up showing her my crooked toes and laughing embarrassedly about my misfortune. On the way out to our van I noticed a nice new minivan with its side door wide open, carseat and diaper bag greeting every passerby. I knew that van. It reminded me of the way my van had greeted me after a quick run into a store when I had forgotten to push the button to close a door. After putting my kids and groceries in my van, I walked nonchalantly up to the open van and gave the door a tug. It whirred into action and shut itself and I couldn't help but wonder if anyone had ever had to do that for me.
I munched on some pretzels in the van on the way out of town and glanced at the nutrition facts. Serving size: 40 ounce. Servings per container: 246. WOWZA! This was a half a pound of pretzels and I had just eaten six! Apparently that was something like thirty servings, at least! The kids asked for some and I gave them each three. What could I say? "Here you go kids, one serving [handing them a quarter inch chunk each]."
Yikes. Watch out for those.
Tonight when we got home the sky was angry and beautiful. We sat out and watched it and I tried so hard to capture the moment forever in my head...Bekah twirling and singing barefoot in her plain blue school dress...Jacob singing about rock and roll in his deep voice, orange spiderman shirt and penguin boots...Beau sitting next to me barefoot, letting his toes get kissed by raindrops and smiling, laughing, and talking incoherently. It was a beautiful moment, almost as great as the one an hour before when Bekah told Tyler on the phone that yes, it was okay for Gina to be her aunt. In fact she wanted them to get married so she could have more cousins! (He said he appreciated her thoughtfulness.)
Right now the kids are all in bed. Sort of. Rus is gone, so we can be silly and the big kids can sleep in their tent downstairs by the TV. Sshh...don't tell Rus.

Some days just wind up being great.
Thanks for this one.