A hug of happiness to be home and happiness to have her home marked Jean's return home from her trip.   She'd told me that she was eager to come home, not in a bad way because she was definitely enjoying the trip, but in a good appreciating home way.  I'd read it in emails and heard her tell me via phone, but I couldn't quite believe she'd missed me until she told me so in person. 

Nothing suits me today.  Things must change!

Okay, I'll take suggestions:  what should I do?

The pace of life is picking up as we start the slide into back to school.  Today at school registration, Parker will say "cheese" and get his photo snapped for his new school ID and then skedaddle off to hang out with the other cool upperclassmen. They are really just 8th graders, but in middle school society that's the equivalent of being a senior in high school.  By the time today's photo appears in the yearbook that comes out at the end of the year  these growth spurt years and winter pallor will ensure that today's images will be only vaguely relevent to the kids.  The photos will seem like phantom siblings, younger and healthier, of the kids who page through the books and get signatures in them.

Parker has been living his chosen schedule all summer--that of a bat.  He sleeps all day and arises late in the afternoon to live a nocturnal existance, occasionally cheating sleep to go to movies with friends during the afternoon.  We are to leave for school in an hour and the boy, dressed to impress, fell asleep as I wrote this. 

School starts in two weeks, at 7:15 in the morning.  It's going to be rough going.

Sitting, thinking, next to an open window, cool breeze on my bare arms.

A bus pushed itself up the hill on my quiet street, where few cars pass.

It feels like, sounds like, a back-to-school morning.

Summer break is coming to a close and very soon we'll be back to a life run by clock and calendar.

I had to look around a bit for my calendar which went AWOL early last June when school let out (which meant no work for me) and the thing wasn't even missed.  The few places we had to be in the last couple of months were noted on index cards and tacked to a corkboard;  visual reminders, if indeed anyone bothered to look.  I've run a very slack ship this summer.

But a regulated life will begin soon again, so I hunted up the calendar which had migrated three rooms to the north, and started noting dates for registrations, fee due dates, fall orientations, and all of the other things that snatch me away from the pleasurable life I lead in summer.

It didn't take long to find a problem.  On my very first day back to work,  I will have to have the day off.   I'll be in Minneapolis, moving Jean into her dorm room at 9 AM, attending a reception designed to get glum parents out of their kids' hair,  and then driving six hours home to find it too quiet and too neat, no matter how loud and messy Parker is.

I should have myself pulled together in time to make it in to work on September 2nd.  But only because I go in very late, of course.

The weather today is so cool that the football players practicing out in the field seem appropriately dressed in their padded and helmeted uniforms.