A day

I've been surfing incessantly today, looking at the cost of accommodations at the beach. It's ridiculous when you have a family our size, because we need 2 rooms just to have enough beds. In all my searching I discovered that it would be cheaper to rent a beach house or condo. I'm not going to quote any numbers, because they damn near choked me, and I don't really want to do that to you guys... But it should give you an idea of what I've been looking at. And hell, I haven't even been looking at the good high dollar places! I don't know how people do it. But that's ok, we'll make it happen. We deserve it, and we'll make it happen.

A weird thing happened today. We have a glass-top table on the back patio. We've had it for a couple of years and we use it a lot. It's one of my favorite places to be on spring mornings and summer nights, especially nights like tonight, when the breeze is warm and the moon is full, and I want to be, not alone necessarily, but in a quiet place. Anyway, this afternoon, I was sitting at the kitchen table talking to Ma, Terra was sleeping, Tommy and Kory were fishing with their uncle, and Kassi and Bren were out playing on the swings and stuff. It was blissfully peaceful, and unusually quiet, when I hear this horrible crashing noise outside.

I knew immediately that it was the table, and had visions of the two of them horseplaying in the yard and someone getting knocked through the table and sliced to bits. Panicked, I ran through the house, expecting the worst. My mind went through this instantaneous refresher course on first aid, and I was fully prepared for a hospital trip by the time I made it to the back door, where I found my table in a million tiny little pieces in a pile under the metal frame, and not a kid in sight. OK, no blood, this is good... Now where are the kids and who do I need to beat for destroying my table? (It's amazing how fast a mother's mind can switch gears!) Well come to find out, it spontaneously exploded for no reason whatsoever...

Actually, best I can tell, what happened was that the wind was blowing today, and apparently, a gust picked up the sunshade/umbrella and then died down and dropped it, ramming the pointed metal end into the table and shattering it. It looked like crushed ice, not one shard was more than about 1/2" in any direction. The table started out at about 5' x 3'. It ended up filling a heavy-duty garbage bag.
What.a.mess.

So the younger 3 were a little upset that the boys got to spend the day with their uncle. Scott worked all day of course, so there wasn't a lot I could do to balance the scales for them. We spent a lot of time in the yard playing and getting filthy. I weeded the garden for a while - pushed Terra on the swing a LOT. She says, "Higher! Higher! Up Up da sky where baby Nova lives!" It eats me alive every time. She's also told me that 'Dolphalin' is a baby bird, flying in the clouds... Childhood is so pure, so honest, and beautiful... Sometimes it is too bright to look directly into, too sweet to hear without covering your ears.

We went to DQ tonight, just Scott and I and the 3 that were home all day. The night was warm with a cool breeze and we sat outside Terra hasn't exactly mastered a cone yet, but she has mastered the art of entertainment. She kept one couple who sat inside pretty amused by trying to tell them all about her chocolate ice cream through the plate glass window. Bren amused himself by watching the green syrup disappear in those strange negative-space puddles that form when you drink a slushy, and Kassi, well, I think she was just hoping to nab the attention of some cute boys. Much to her chagrin, there were none.

We had fun, it was nice, and relatively peaceful without Tommy and Kory nipping at each other. But it was time to go when a woman carried in a baby boy who was about 6 months old. It was just all I could handle.

Someone that I "met" fairly recently through another website emailed me today. We never really got well acquainted because shortly after I joined that site, I found out that Nova had the heart defect, and just stopped going anywhere much online. She and I have been emailing back and forth lately, she's such a sweetheart. Today she asked what I thought of having a star named after Alexis and Nova. I never thought of it before, and I really like the idea. Of course, between that conversation, and that gorgeous full moon out there, I found myself staring at the sky tonight.

The big dipper was right above my house, full of nothing, and pouring it out over my roof. A big sticky scoop of darkness that smelled like baby powder and tasted of memories, and for a minute, just a second really, I wondered if he's eating well.

How he loved his bottles...