I suppose you're long gone, Cat, but when I saw this today I thought of you.

You knew it years ago.  Why did it take People so long to notice?

Despite chilly showers today I went to my favorite riverside park to get resource photos for Wednesday's class.  This one doesn't make the grade as a landscape shot, but the gang of four here made me smile.

Saturday.

During the long summer off you can forget how exquisite Saturday is.  You can forget how a chill breeze through an open window charms you awake, whispering tantalizing promises of the delights a free day offers. 

The first week back to work was excellent, though one woman's last-minute departure for greener fields made for scurrying to fill the gaps in staffing, a problem that will remain unsolved for a "while".  After a summer of following my own schedule and inclinations, getting in step with the rest of the world has been playing hopscotch, patterned hops and pauses that are familliar and easily managed if I just concentrate a bit and don't go wandering back to my own ways.  To keep my mind on the business of the work week, I've sent the things that I wanted to do to Saturday where they've impatiently waited for me to show up and keep my promises to them.  They've been quarreling a bit among themselves and some have been snuffed out in the crush.   No Sheep and Wool Festival today--it's too far and I'm still drive-weary from last weekend's wedding and Minneapolis trips.  No early morning outings today either.  I'm going to sip my coffee in leisure this one morning this week and take my time with a second cup, too.

It's going to be a fine afternoon to go sketching, though.  I'll be out getting resource sketches for Landscape class which begins Wednesday or as I have begun to think of it, "Saturday Jr.".  I've dug up a substitute to work for me for two months of Wednesdays and though I'll be out of the house even earlier than I would be for work, other than that Wednesdays will be for that westward drive I enjoyed so much over the summer, for playing with color and line, and for good company while I play.

(New information:  The substitute will be offered the job left vacant by the woman who left and the pool of substitutes is so shallow this year that her leaving will leave the pool empty.  I'm certainly glad I won't be at work on Wednesdays when the place is really short-handed.  I will be at Landscape class, of course.)

Occasional whining from this quarter notifies the reader that I am a lone woman living among men, young and not-old-yet.  I believe the men I live with are no better and not much worse than men in general.  Heck, I like men--not always these particular four men--but men in general are fine fellows and fun to be around.

Though I've heard the legend of Felix Unger, the Man Who Cleaned, I can only take it on faith that such a man really ever existed.  The men I have direct experience with are as helpless as babes where household upkeep is concerned.  Frankly, nagging was more trouble than just cleaning up after the herd, er, the Guys.  I bowed to the task and did the work myself.

Maybe my rebellion against the chains of domestic oppression was raised by cleaning in August's humid heat while the Guys slept off exhaustion earned by relentless messing through the night, only rising late in the afternoon to mess some more.  Maybe it's feminism, but more likely it's just common sense that finally held me back from again simply shrugging off irritation that the Guys don't do anything for the common good, not even taking care of their own needs.

All I knew was that I could not replace the empty roll of toilet paper with a new roll one more time!  I'd demonstrated the intricate (yawn.) steps required, I'd offered tutoring to anyone who didn't quite grasp the five step process of:

1. remove roller
2. remove empty tube
3. throw tube in waste basket
4. put new roll on
5. put roll-holder-y thing back in

I've done all I could.  I reminded, nagged, teased, scolded.  The only thing I hadn't tried was to seriously ignore the need.  In the spirit of if the old approach doesn't work, try a new one, I simply didn't do the little task.  I usually use a different bathroom, anyway so the inconvenience was really more to them than to me.  I continued daily basic cleaning in there, but didn't refresh their papery supplies.

Nor did they.  To call attention to the glaring need, after several days, every day I added one roll of toilet paper to the single roll on the back of the toilet.  They'd been using that and returning it there.  Really amazing coordination, when you think of it, but not quite a habit that will ingratiate future daughters- and nieces-in-law to me.  I know what those women of the Guy's future lives will say--they'll wail, "Didn't your mother (or aunt) teach you anything?"  I know that's what they'll wail because I've wailed it myself a few times.

Anyway, every day a roll was added.  And how is it working?  Take a look for yourself.  This is the situation today.

"How long have you painted?"

It wasn't the question.  It was the looks on their faces when I answered, "Since the first class", the surprise they voiced, my realization that they thought I'd been doing this difficult frustrating thing for years.

It didn't take away the impatient irritation I felt with myself today after muddling a white oak into a form the teacher and I agreed was best described as a melted tree.  It certainly doesn't clear up the confusing graphite maze that is supposed to become a photorealistic rendering of a place I loved--I still look at the crazy mixed up scribblings on the watercolor sheet stretched on the board as if I wasn't the one who drew every molecule onto its surface.  No, that question can't perform magic.

Well, in fact, maybe it did.  The question was spoken and confidence bloomed where discouragment and impatience with myself had been.

Photorealism class is tomorrow. 

Everyone is registering shock that summer is almost over.  According to the buzz, July never showed up--everyone remembers June, the crazy wet month around here but after that it seems that August just showed up on the chance that no one would notice that we got only four days of July.  Yeah, everyone agrees, there was an Independence Day.  We have vague memories of the town's parade--the little kids riding their decorated bikes, our finest firefighters on their always-clean fire engine making the crowd stick their fingers in their ears to avoid being struck deaf by the siren the driver sets off time after painful time, and the firemen from the town just to the south who bring their rig up to drive down the main drag, too.  Those guys cheerfully taunting our townsfolk with insults about the firefighters' willingness to go slumming to lend our parade some class.

And after that, we draw a blank.  That's all the July anyone can remember. 

Now I suspect that we did have July.  There's no way all the mosquito bites itching up and down my arms and legs could have appeared if July hadn't happened.  I remember driving west to art classes, I remember a woman who looked just like my mother-in-law being in the house for a while.  Jean's shown up for a couple of quick visits, two days every month or so, and there's quite a pile of mail that's grown in the space general neglect left it.    The colony of envelopes and magazines reminds me of a petri dish loaded with bacteria that I grew in my sophomore biology class.  I couldn't stop the bacteria from populating the agar-agar (or whatever that jello-like stuff was) and I had nothing to do with all that pesky mail either.  But I do recall that growing stuff like that takes time.

So I won't demand a re-do of this summer or a recount of long lazy days.  It's time to direct efforts towards returning to work and having students go to school.  This week I'm getting Nephew equipped for dorm life and urging him to buy some clothes.  He'll be competing with a lot of other grubby students for laundry machines.  I think of how his life is going to change at the end of August.  He's going to be challenged to live life on his own terms;  I hope the past year and a half here has given him some experiences that will help him stand strong.

Parker manfully faced summer school and did six hours of math each day, catching up with where he would have been if he'd worked during the regular school year.  He's been sad and close to home for about six months now.  I don't really see anything that will come and lift him back into happiness, but I hope something will.  He's my baby, you know, my baby who towers seven or eight inches taller than I am, my baby who is angry and sad.  This is a tough end to my childraising.

Jean will move from her summer digs to her schoolyear apartment three days after Nephew is moved into his dorm.  I'm casting about for some help with these driving and lugging chores, but it looks like I'm on the moving crew.  She's a sweet daughter still, far from home as she is.  She's looked after her mama a bit this year,  calling and emailing her care instead of being here to offer it.

As for her mother, she's chasing interests she's been saying she wanted to for years.  While weeds overgrow the flowerbeds,  I seem to have gotten myself endeavoring to do things that I have ample experience failing at.  That's okay.  You can't always work on things you can already competently do and expect to grow.  At this point, I'm willing to work and fail and learn.

Maybe the reason I have the impression that lazy summer days didn't show up this year is because I was too busy and unlazy to notice them.    Even so, I do know they've been pretty amazing.

But before we break into song, let me tell you why we're singing this particular song. 

At first it seemed that it wouldn't be too hard to find what I was looking for:  stationery to write a letter on.   Not stationery to write a tiny note on, not stationery that acted over-familiar with the recipient, seeking to share a sly wink  by having naughty little jokes on it, not stationery that was all design and no room to write on it.  Just writing paper that could carry a newsy letter to someone and wouldn't make too big a deal about it.

By the time I checked the stores in my town and found nothing I knew I'd have to pull out the big guns and go to the Impossibly Chic paper store in downtown Big City.  Though it meant leaving my visiting mother-in-law in the care of her son for a few hours, I did drive eastward on the freeway of neverending construction, missing only one vital, but ever-changing exit point.  Once I could get off the freeway there was festival traffic to crawl along with--this weekend is the big Irish Fest hoopla at the lakefront grounds.  Finally I unstuck my car from the hoopla-bound and went to the shop.  Now you may start warming up your voice, because the singing will commence soon.

The Impossibly Chic shop has all kinds of paper goods, nice paper, hard-to-find goods that are sold by a sales force proud to work at the place.  Besides the trendy salespeople, the place was crowded with brides-to-be and their long-suffering mothers, sisters, and best friends.  The long suffering were being dragged through a huge torturous stock of things that only brides-to-be are interested in.  If you're interested in the bride-to-be or feel that you at least have to act like you are, you lash yourself to her and get dragged along.  By the looks on the faces, some of the younger sisters and even some of the mothers were bored silly with the whole wedding planning project.  There were mutinies brewing in Bridal Land.  Luckily I could go to the stationery aisles, safe from impending cat fights.

But here's the thing I learned at the shop today.  Apparently people do not write to each other anymore.  They may sign their names on a card to put onto a present and they might write very brief thank-you notes, mostly it looks like they fill in blanks on invitations and announcements or have them printed,  but people definitely do not write letters. 

The only writing of any length that they do is only done in books called "Journal".  The store was stuffed to the doorways with these "Journal" books.  Apparently in this Journal thing the writer writes to herself or to himself and the writing is read only by himself or herself.  It's an interesting step in the progress of human communication;  Human beings now write only to themselves, thereby sparing other human beings the bother of wading through  misspellings, bad grammar, and ideas that may not be just like theirs.

After a long search I did  find nice big sheets of stationery on a low shelf stuck back in a dark corner and I'm looking forward to filling them with my misspellings, bad grammar, and odd and wispy thoughts.

That calls for a celebratory song and  I have the perfect song.  It was written back when people knew how to write letters, when missives flew back and forth between people the way emails do now.  It's been recorded by the biggies who do not need first names: Sinatra, Martin, Waller, Manilow, Haley (and the Comets, of course). 

Ready?  Let's do it!  Put some pep in it, people: