Wednesday

I was in a contentious and stressful meeting today when my cell phone rang. Not only did it ring, but it was LOUD and rang right in the middle of my presentation. It took me a minute to realize that the reason that no one was silencing the ringer was because it was, in fact, my phone.

A mad scramble and furious blushing ensued.

As I reached over to turn it off, I saw that my the phone number was my parents' house. Uh oh. My Mom picks up Bee after school and if she was calling in the middle of the afternoon, then something was amiss.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." Today proved my own intelligence falls squarely into the second rate category. I finished the meeting, but was utterly distracted. Then I almost walked into oncoming traffic while outside trying to return my Mom's call.

Miss Bee's okay, but it turns out she is allergic to penicillin.

Reason no. 5,392 I love Spring

Everything is blooming at our house.

Hot cross buns

I'll be making these hot cross buns tonight so we can eat them early tomorrow morning. Not only do they rise overnight in the fridge, they are ridiculously good.

Walking the dog at dusk

The sun is staying up later and I can walk the dog before its full dark. We headed out a little before 8 pm. Passed a crazy man with two beagles who kept repeating in a high pitched voice, "Look at the big puppy! Look at the big puppy!"

He was talking about Max. Maybe his beagles were vicious and he was trying to prevent them from attacking my dog. I have no idea why he was acting that way, but it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

I picked up my pace, but then chided myself for being so paranoid. It's not like an axe murderer would be out on the prowl with a pair of beagles. Unless it was a really good ruse.

Safely away from the potentially vicious beagles/axe murderer, I slowed down as we walked past the library. I love the library, and would stop in every night, if just to breathe that musty book smell and hear the rustle of contented readers turning pages. But since dogs aren't allowed in the library, we just walked slowly by and stared in the windows.

And then I saw it. The sunset. Tonight it was a perfect, glowing pink. There were swirling clouds the color of cotton candy. And streaks of blue for good measure.

I don't think Max noticed the sunset. But I stopped for a minute, just to soak up the last rays of departing light. I wish I could write that as we walked quietly on, the sunset led to some big spiritual revelation, or caused me to realize something very profound, but nothing like that happened. It was just beautiful.

Milkshakes and basil

I went on a date with my husband on Sunday. For us, a date happens pretty much any time we manage to convince someone else to watch the kids.

Week before last, we went on a date at the cafeteria in the building where I work. Not so romantic, but thrilling just the same to have uninterrupted adult conversation.

But on Sunday, we had a real date. My wonderful sparkly little sister is visiting from Germany, and she and my mother volunteered to play with Cheeks and Bee while dear husband and I went to the garden center.

Not the movies. Not to a fancy restaurant. We went to the garden center.

It sounds awfully boring, I know, but I can't tell you how excited I was at the prospect of browsing the aisles without worrying about a pair of little hands decapitating a prize peony.

On the way there, my husband turned to me and said, how about we grab a milkshake? Now, I can't remember the last time I even drank a milkshake, but before you could say banana split we were walking into the little burger place near our house.

I ordered vanilla with crushed oreos. Dear husband decided on a root beer float.

Back in the car, we slurped our milkshakes in companionable silence. Just being at ease together is probably one of the nicest things about being married for almost nine years.

On Saturday, I went wedding dress shopping with my little sister. We went to the same small store where I had bought my wedding dress at the tender age of 21. I proudly told the owner of the shop that I had brought her a new customer and related my warm memories of picking out a dress nearly a decade ago. She laughed, and then asked, "So, how's it going, the marriage?"

"Very well," I replied.

I reflected on this as we walked through the nursery and picked out herbs to grow on our back patio. Two kinds of basil for homemade pizza margherita. Mint for my husbands' mint juleps. Sage for roast chicken. Two strawberry plants, just because. Dear husband also bought me new clay pots and big bags of potting soil. What I know, after nine years, is that love doesn't have to be flashy. Sometimes its as simple as fresh basil and sweet as cold vanilla ice cream.

When we returned home, we found the girls happily playing in the front yard with my Mom and sister. I set to work filling the new pots. Cheeks McGoo loved digging with a child sized spade. Miss Bee took wearing her garden gloves very seriously.

Dear husband watched my gardening with great bemusement, knowing that my black thumb will no doubt inflict calamity on our purchases. I will surely forget to water one plant and accidentally another. I checked on my green charges after work today, and, surprisingly, all seemed to have recovered from being transported and transplanted. Perhaps this will be my lucky year in the garden.

Thursday

Clothes spinning in the wash;
Children sleeping in their beds;
Herbs growing in the kitchen;
Stack of books on the nightstand;
Bowl full of ice cream;
Peaceful, quiet, house.

Thank heaven

for hand me downs. All of Miss Bee's too-small clothes are in boxes in the garage. Poor, deprived McGoo doesn't realize that pretty much her entire wardrobe was previously worn by her big sister.

Earlier this week, as I dressed McGoo in her second-hand windbreaker, Miss Bee started to whine that she wanted a new jacket too. I laughed, and explained to my very equality-minded daughter that the jacket in question had been hers.

I am starting to understand why my sister and I, still, to this day, receive similar or identical Christmas presents from our parents. (Although I would say the odds of us fighting over them at our respective ages of 30 and 27 have significantly diminished!)

My dear husband took the girls to visit their great-grandmother today (always a popular occasion because they get to eat lunch at the retirement home, which serves french friends and ice cream) and I spent a very happy hour going through 18-24 month old clothes that used to belong to Bee. Most of those clothes were bought when we lived in Latvia, from my all time favorite children's store. Let's just say that it's probably a good thing there is no D.P.A.M. store in the USA.

I always write this, but every mother will know it's true--my girls are growing up too fast.