How Life Is

It's 11:30.

I am the lone occupant of my house. Everything is quiet and still.

My husband is traveling so I got up early with him and saw him off, woke the children up, got everyone dressed and fed. I made lunches and packed snacks. I wrote the notes about after-school activities, got dressed, hustled everyone out the door and to the school. I worked for two hours in Jane's class, guiding the first graders in small groups through a letter writing exercise. I came home, took something I'd forgotten back up to the school, came back home, ate a little lunch, unloaded the dishwasher, checked e-mail, broke down all the boxes for the recycling, and went through the house with a garbage can and threw away about six tons of small plastic crap that no one will miss.

Outside, it is cool for the first time since March. Our quiet street is shrouded in a gray mist and I have the windows open, listening to the soft drips of water running off of the trees. I decided to treat myself to the ultimate luxury: a nap on the couch with a big fat orange cat. We settled down.

Suddenly, I heard it. You know: IT. The unmistakable sound of an aggressive mosquito buzzing around me.

It bit me.

It bit me again.

I missed it twice and it disappeared.

But now napping was out of the question! Finally, I saw it buzzing about again and I swung and hit it.

I guess sometimes in life, you've got to kill the darn mosquitoes before you earn a nice nap.

I'm sure this has deep and meaningful implications but there's a big fat orange tabby lying on my stomach who is getting a bit impatient with all this typing (not to mention the fact that he's cutting off my circulation) so I'm going to have to think about this later.