May 15

Writing every day is difficult.  Life gets in the way and those moments you most want to write, you are least able.

That is my whining for the evening.

Now on to writing.

I took the day off today.  A personal day, which somehow implies a free day.  Yet it is 10:45pm as I settle in to writing position, considering my time free only just now...

It was a lovely day, if a busy one.  A glimpse into what life might be like if I didn't have to work, and it was an ideal world at the same time.  Nat got the kids up and running as I went down to school to work with a student I am tutoring, and then to the gym on the way home.  He then delivered the children and a large tote bag of swimsuits to me and I took it from there.  We swam, got lunch, and got Jack to preschool.  Little girl and I went to the Botanical Gardens, where she requested that we go first to the "garden house" to see the butterflies and the turtles.  We picked Jack up.  Fourteen 4 and 5 year olds ran in circles around the playground; I nursed Ivy and talked with some of the moms.  We drove home.  We sat in the car while the kids slept.  We watched PBS and folded laundry.  We made dinner, and a banner, for the wonderful Nat who sent off the draft of his dissertation today.  The kids played in the sandbox and had a bath.  We had a dance party at the base of the stairs, read books, and snuggled four people into one twin bed at tuck-in time.

It was a lovely day. A simple day.  A day that leaves me feeling like I have nothing to write about this evening, because nothing out of the ordinary happened.  And yet I could write about anything.  About Ivy sweeping the floor of the little house at the gardens, and playing in the sandbox for half an hour at home, content to just be; about walking my dog around the block, the simplest thing in the world, but so imbued with joy and bright evening light as we greeted and talked and smiled with our neighbors, my beautiful dog trotting proudly ahead; about the pride and concern that mix in my mother's heart as my boy joined his class for circle time, seeing him so grown up and yet so small, wondering how life is going to treat him as he moves on in this world; about the simple pleasure of a a glass of wine and a conversation with my husband over dinner. 

Nothing happened today-- but today was everything.