Global warning: This post was committed by an extravagant person late at night. It was 2:00 a.m., to be exact. It had been 2:00 a.m. all day, but now it was 2:00 a.m. with a vengeance. Some people with a long day should go to bed.Last night we had takeout from Foo Kin John (name dear to wised-up local schoolchildren), and I had a startling and memorable fortune: You are in over your head. It is time to get professional help. Since I received Happiness is a new home on the day we bought our first home, and Good news will come to you from far away the day before I was invited to a faraway interview that led to a life-changing faraway job, I am forced to consider the possibility that the Higher Power occasionally chooses to speak to me through dratted slips of paper stuffed inside curls of dough.
He seems rather direct in this message.
Moreover, it is a highly important date in my life, one fraught with fraughtnesses.
However, this is the busiest summer of my mother-of-three life, and I hardly have the time to consider the implications or the fraughtnesses. Moreover, I promised not to blog about anything until September, so nobody will be reading this, or counseling me as to whether I really ought to spring up, rush out, and clutch assorted professionals to my bosom. Does that message mean a nanny, a head-shrinker for the mama, a head-shrinker for the children, jolly pills for me, relaxy pills for the zooming-about children, a chauffeur (lovely) and general ferryman or ferrywoman, a lady in white squeaky shoes to take me on a nice long spa visit to the funny farm, or what?
Hmm.
Don't feel impelled to embrace any of those, but maybe I'm deluded, and the cookie is sneakily pointing out my delusion. Here's my opinion: what I could really use is a spectacularly efficient yet affordable cleaning lady. Doing one's own cleaning is definitely over-rated.
If you find your way to me, despite the fact that I have sworn off blogging due to the frenetic pace of a summer with certain adorable but overly-busy children, consider the implications of The Cookie, as I cannot, being too busy to consider, render, or even plop the problem into the waiting vessel of a blog post.
In stray moments, if and when they arrive, I'll hang around the shores of Glimmerglass, looking for a message in a bottle.
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Morning questions: Does God have a sense of humor, and what sort? How busy is too busy? Am I there yet? Why are we having such fantastic-for-a-Southerner hot weather? When am I going to finish those stories? When am I going to reread the novel I wrote at Yaddo one more time? Where's my dang datebook?
I'm missing R, who is at camp. Time to go commit a letter. Unless the datebook says otherwise. When I find it, that is.
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Bookish: Ben Steelman, the books editor at The Wilmington Star-News, has started a blog on his newspaper's website. Bookmark http://books.starnewsonline.com/ . His "veries": very amusing; very smart; very well-read. That's a good combination.
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Kiddish, trala:
N, age 10, to small cousin: So where's your birthmark?
C: Mine's at home.
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Dervish wheel: Credit is due to David Ritter and www.sxc.hu for this photograph that so accurately described the whirl of summer: from the Arizona State Fair, 2006.
