1. It has been four long months since my oldest son has been home. Mason got a summer job that landed him a permanent position in Seattle and he came home this weekend for a short visit. It’s impossible to hide my pride in him. All of my kids share my sense of humor, but Mason seems to make it a goal to make me laugh. My cheeks hurt from all the laughter we’ve shared. It’s been many years since my house had this much activity and, to my surprise, I missed it. Whether it’s running around to do or get stuff, making cookies, or sitting down for a family meal followed by whatever movie we can find on tv (To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar was an excellent choice because it doesn’t get any better than Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo in drag especially when Vida takes away Chi-Chi’s “princess points”) everything we’ve done so far has, for obvious reasons, been heightened since Mason’s visit will be short. We’re packing a lot of fun into our time. This week we are going camping. Rather, my version of camping which means there’s no room service. I’m not one for sleeping in a tent on the ground with spiders and bugs so we rented a cabin for the week up north where we’ll boat and horseback ride and, God help me, eat a lot of food. I am beyond thrilled to go away with the kids and The Cuban and the dog. It makes me feel normal.

2. Oddly, Mason is very outdoorsy and while I worship the sun he worships the dreary rain. Whenever he spots rain clouds, he jumps at the chance to go for a walk or a run. He is lucky that, at his age, he has packed up and moved to a place in this country where he delights in the weather. For all the things left he has to figure out in life, I’m happy for him that he’s figured out that part. He is wise beyond his years for that one.

3. Work has been extremely satisfying lately. Sometimes I am too careful with that work and I pull back to a comfort level, but this year I feel myself stretching and growing in a new way. I am open to it, that vulnerability, and I revel in the being scared of failing. People in my position rarely share those kinds of thoughts with one another. Most of the time, we are an island because we can be seen as untouchable in that “don’t be friends with the principal” kind of way, but there is a new balance I am experiencing with brilliant and compassionate colleagues and I have nothing but good things to say about that. Admitting all of this is scary. It’s like when you try not to say that you’re happy with your life because you fear that something awful will befall you, but I wanted to say it anyway. Why? Because I’m not ever going to apologize for showing my human side in my writing, so if you’re here monitoring every word I say in an effort to derail me personally or professionally, go away. You should find better things to do with your time. I know who you are.

4. Most of the time, I hate passive aggression. Embarrassing people publicly isn’t my thing. That’s why number three ended the way it did and I’m okay with it. Moving on.

5. My book is coming along. There’s no deal yet, but I have no fears about that and I think it’s because I’ve come to to terms with the sense that I’m really writing this for myself. That doesn’t stop me from daydreaming about going on a book tour, though. I’m wearing fabulous shoes in my daydream.

6. We have a winner for the Donors Choose/Sonic gift card! Morgan picked a number between 1-10 and came up with 7, so congratulations, Suzanne Mini! This is what she had to say about her classroom projects:

I am from Florida, and I do a Florida project with my 4th graders every year. Each student had a different topic on Florida (a city, a lake, attraction, animal, famous person, etc) and had to put it all in a file folder. A report, picture, cover and model. Then, when all 20 something students turned it in, we all know about many different things in Florida. Lining them all up in the hallway looked great! It was very attractive, and the students learned a lot about their home state.

7. Dang. I should have saved the winner for number seven since that’s the winning number. I won’t waste this one, though. I will just casually and nonchalantly mention that I’ve lost twenty pounds. My clothes fit better, I feel better, and the bone spur in my foot feels better without that extra weight. That purple dress from Nordstroms? I need to have it altered now.

8. Yesterday, I was supervising a 6th grade girls basketball game and made an observation to The Cuban who accompanied me in the wee morning hours of a Saturday morning when he could have stayed under the warm covers on a cold, Fall day. “It’s funny, isn’t it? How you coach your child and tell them what to do when you’re alone and then suddenly they’re on the court with 20 other kids and every parent is trying to coach their child from the sidelines and it’s a chaotic cacophony of voices that no girl out there can hear, but every parent is SURE their daughter is listening to them?” Honestly, I could only observe this because I’m not one of the parents trying to sideline coach. I thought it was rather profound of me considering I hadn’t even ingested a full cup of coffee yet.

9. Speaking of supervision, I also went to a cross country meet this weekend where I saw my friend Jane and her daughter, Grace. Grace is an absolute hoot of a child. She’s still in elementary school, but this precocious little one is destined to be an actress and I love watching her mom mother her. There’s something refreshing about seeing a mom not stifle her daughter’s creativity because Jane takes it all in stride. Grace walked up to us as we were talking and asked, very seriously, as if she had been pondering this for some time and she could no longer figure it out, “Mom, is it true we’re in a comedy crisis?” Jane and I both look confused as we tried to understand just what she was saying and yet, comedy crisis was kind of a hilarious faux pas to make. It took a few minutes for us to figure out as we wondered where she heard such a thing. We decided that she must have meant an “economy crisis” and then her mother assured her that she would never be in a comedy crisis.

10. When I sit on my back deck I can hear the conversations of the people who walk, run, or ride on the trail near my house. It’s a weird echo-y sound that is very clear even though they’re far away so I can only imagine there is a hollow space that carries the sound all the way to where I’m sitting. Mostly, I just hear snippets of what they say and have to imagine the rest. Some of them leave nothing to the imagination. This morning, I heard three older ladies (probably my mom’s age) having a spirited conversation as I enjoyed my hot coffee and waited for my dog to do her business in the yard and one of them said, “Daisy, when you get older, you accept that your shit might be different.” I don’t know if she was speaking literally or figuratively as she was lecturing her friends and it doesn’t really matter. I just love how older people talk so plain like they don’t have time to mince words.