Random Thoughts

written Thurs. May 29

Here it is again, summer time. Almost. Close enough. The pools are open and it's finally warming up. The smell of charcoal grills fill the weekend air, and the sound of kids running around and riding bikes fills my ears.

This past weekend we spent some time at our neighborhood pool. The water was still pretty cold, but the baby pool was a lot warmer. AND the baby pool hadn't yet been contaminated by incontinent little pee-ple. Haha, get it? Anyway, I tossed one of the mini pool chairs in the baby pool, sat back to relax, and proceeded to get fried. I guess if I'd looked at the bottle of lotion I was smearing all over my chest, arms, and legs first, I might have realized that it wasn't even suntan lotion, let alone containing any SPF. I managed to grab a bottle of age-old tanning bed tan accelerator to take with me to the pool. Yep, I spent about two hours baking in that stuff before I switched to the SPF 50 that Aaron and the kids were wearing. Needless to say, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were spent self-medicating with aloe, lots and lots of beer, and a couple of good books while soaking in my Calgon for the whirlpool tub. (The non-bubble formula.) Ouch.

The houses that are going up next door are going up quickly. I was in quite a funk last week when I realized my view of the farm across the field was now obstructed by a blue wall reading "CENTEX." Even though that is only temporary, I know I will never have the same view again. I have decided my only recourse is to plant a tree or flowering shrub in front of my office window, so that I can at least open my blinds again and have something decent to look at. I'm thinking either a dogwood or a dark purple lilac. Anything. I truly do despise living in a neighborhood with people so close, and I've been pretty lucky this far to not have anyone living too close. Those days are over, and it does make me sad and make me miss the spacious yard I once enjoyed back in Anderson. I wouldn't want to move back to Anderson and put my kids through their lackluster school system, but I wish I could pick up my old piece of paradise and move it down here. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't forever, and someday I can live in my own little world without neighbors or construction workers banging at 7:00 in the morning. I want my trees, I want solitude, and I want my gnomes.

I love gnomes. They are my new obsession. I love their funky hats, their cute faces, their frumpy clothes, their kooky little pipes or lanterns or whatever they're holding that day. I want to fill my porch and my garden (whenever it is done) with gnomes. I love my little magical world of make believe and want to wiggle my nose and move right on in.

Summer also means that the boys are here all day. That means more arguing, more yelling, more cries of "Mom! Can I ____?" Fill in the blank; that usually is filled with "have a banana?" "play my video game?" "ride my bike to so-and-so's house?" "have some money for the ice cream truck?" And have you ever noticed that those guys who drive the ice cream trucks kind of resemble what a pedophile looks like? Or is that just the one around here? I apologize if any one reading this is or knows an ice cream truck driver, but don't they have any kind of screening process for less-creepy looking men? It's almost like they're leering down from their music box on wheels with a "Come 'ere, little boy/girl" look on their faces. Yikes.

I've also given up on the flat iron for a while. My hair is a mad mess of tangled curls day in and day out, but the way I see it, I'm not messing with a 400 degree iron just to walk out in the humidity. I'm also not wanting to limit my urges to do a cannonball into the pool just because I've spent 45 minutes combatting the frizzies. Screw that. Bombs away, Linda's going swimming! (But this time, with SPF 50. What was I thinking? I'm soooo not a "tanner.")

So there it is. My rambling for May. End of May. Almost June. Yikes, I just realized that my birthday is two weeks away, as of today. I will be, uh, 28. Yeah! 28! That's what I told the boys at breakfast the other morning. They were busy calculating our ages every year, but I wouldn't let them make me advance past 28, so after a while it sounded a little ridiculous with Aaron up to 40 years of age and me still at 28. I finally admitted to them that I wasn't really 28, nor would I remain at that beautifully even number forever, but it is a nice thought.

Noon o'clock is on the horizon. The weather says it is warm enough to take a quick dive in the pool before work. That's what I love about summer.