The last days of summer

Grayson is home again, and I've been taking a couple of hours off every afternoon to spend a little extra time with him. There are two reasons for this: One, I can feel the cold breath of the school year on my neck and I want to wring the last drops of summer out of what time we have left; and Two, I know that if I leave him home alone all day, all he'll do is watch TV in his pajamas for eight hours every day. I thought if I came home in the afternoon, I could at least coerce him out of the house for a while. Yesterday, for example, we went swimming at the Y. Then we came home and had dinner and I gave him a short-course in Photoshop.

He's been obsessed with creating his own Pokemon since seeing a video on YouTube of someone doing it by mixing up parts of Pokemon pictures in Photoshop. So I gave him the basics and let him go to town. I was a little leery of doing this, because Photoshop is a big complicated program that can really be a bitch to learn. But I underestimated the power of the 9-year-old mind to absorb new information, especially a 9-year-old mind raised on computer games and Paint programs. He took to it pretty well, with some simple coaching from me, and spent a happy hour or two cutting and pasting his new Pokemon creations. Like this one. He calls it "The Ultimate Evee evolution." I was pretty impressed by how much he was able to incorporate to create it: Copying and placing elements from other Pokemon, flipping elements horizontally, changing colors, and using the Clone tool to add texture. Pretty cool. He's very interested in digital art and animation. Maybe it will help him to get an early start on design programs. At least he's having fun.

I got my exercise the past two days by mowing the lawn. I've been spoiled all summer because my lawnmower was out of order and my Dad has paid my cousin to mow my lawn since late May. Until now. Now the lawnmower is back in business and I'm obliged to provide the manpower myself. Holy Crap! It's a hot, miserable, dirty job, and I'm waaaaay out of practice. I managed the back yard on Monday – by far the worst because it's bigger, grows faster, and is full of obstacles like the swimming pool, bird bath and garden, to say nothing of the dog poop that has to be picked up in advance of mowing. It took me an hour and when I came in, exhausted, filthy and hot, Grayson and I had a little discussion about whether you would say my face was bright pink or bright red. We settled on red.

By comparison, yesterday's front lawn mow was a snap. Except that I had to bag the grass. In the back, I was able to compost half of it and use the other half as mulch for the garden. In the front, I had to bag.

Let me just say that I'm a rotten grass-bagger. My back doesn't like it, for one thing, and I'm just awkward and clumsy about it. I am always dumping the grass onto the edge of the bag so a bunch of it falls out, usually on my feet, or else no matter how much I shake and jump around, the darned grass is just STUCK in there in a big lump and won't come out, so I end up having to stick my hand up in the bag and pull it out. I felt like an idiot last night because the guy across the street was also mowing, and made bagging look so simple. Also, he could mow while standing upright, whereas I have to lean forward like a mule pulling a heavy load and throw my weight behind the mower. Even with a self-propelled mower! There's one little incline along the front of the lawn beside the driveway on which I'm obliged to mow straight uphill, rather than across the slope like I do on the larger part of the lawn. I must look like Sisyphus with his rock, throwing myself against the mower with my back bent and my arms out, gritting my teeth.

A lawn mowing husband is, in and of itself, almost an adequate reason to get married, I'd say. If I could get a man who would also take out the trash, kill bugs, open jars, move furniture, hang Christmas lights, and could COOK...we might have a deal.

The lawnmowing is part of the reason I'm exhausted today, however. I forgot to close the garage door all the way when I was putting away the lawnmower, so when the dogs got me up at 2:30 a.m. and I let them out, well... off they went. So there I was at 2:45 this morning, driving around the block looking for my stupid dogs. I'm happy to say that I did recover them without too much trouble. They ran right to the car when I spotted them and called. But I was pretty wide awake by the time I got them home and didn't get back to sleep until after 3:30.

Today, I'm hoping to get Grayson out on his bike. I'm thinking we take our bikes to the OU campus and tool around. He's never seen it, and it makes for easy, safe biking for someone as wobbly as he is still on his wheels. I'll try to get some photos if we go.

While the mouse is away...

...the cat cleans his room.

I have spent the past couple of hours cleaning Grayson's room. Actually, going through drawers and baskets and boxes of junk, winnowing out what he hopefully won't miss to cut down on the amazing clutter. His entire floor was covered in books, toys and... Junk. There's no other word for it. Most of what he considers "toys," I consider junk. In fact, he has two big plastic bins labeled as such, and that's what he spends most of his time playing with: little plastic animals, trading cards, plastic cars or boxes, pieces of other toys, things he has made from Sculpey or cobbled together from paper towel tubes and popsicle sticks. It's hard to tell what's treasure and what's trash. I went out on a limb and threw away a bag full of stuff that I was pretty sure was trash. And made a whole box of other stuff disappear. I'll seal it up and move it to the garage, and if he doesn't miss it in a few months, I'll take it to Goodwill.

It was with a heavy heart that I also moved Mambo's empty vivarium out of Grayson's room today, as well. At least it won't be standing there like an accusation any more, but it made me sad to take it away. I know he's never coming back. Probably he's dead. If he isn't, he will be when the cold weather arrives. But it's time to clear away the viv and make way for other things. I'll bundle everything up and put it in the garage. Maybe at a later date we'll get another bearded dragon, or convert the viv into a container for some other pet.

I also had to pull a stack of picture books off Grayson's shelves to make room for more current reading material: Manga books and thick catalogs of stats for Pokemon games and graphic novels. In the past couple of years, all the picture books have gone by the wayside. Soon I'll have to go through them and box up a bunch for donation. For now, I guess I'll just add them to those already boxed and in the garage. It makes me a little sad. Here's Click Clack Moo that he laughed and laughed over. Here's Dog's Colorful Day, that we read endlessly, and he pointed out all the colors over and over with his fat little fingers, wanting me to read them for him. Here's The Story of Ping and Good Night Gorilla. It tugs my heart. Of course I want my boy to grow up and be a Big Kid, and then a Teenager, and then a Young Man. I want to see him mature and develop. I want to see what he will become, what he will love, what he will grow into. But A part of me will always long for that little boy that sat in my lap and wanted me to read the same books over and over and over. I can still feel the phantom weight of him against him when I remember it. The lines of baby fat around his wrists and elbows, the golden curls.

Ah, I wax nostalgic. Already I feel his childhood slipping away from me. But for now I have a boy who still wobbles on his bike, still wants to sit in my lap and kiss my face, still climbs into bed with me in the wee hours of the morning to snuggle up. I am such a lucky woman, such a lucky mom.

Someday, god willing, my boy will have a little boy of his own, and I'll get all that babyhood back one more time. For now, I'd best be appreciating what I have.

And what I don't have anymore: Namely one big box of junk that will no longer get spread all over the floor of Grayson's room.

Toads and Tadpoles

This week Grayson and I went out on Friday night and spent a happy hour catching toads. There's a creek in Norman along which the city has built a lighted concrete walkway. When the lights come on at night, the toads come out to catch the junebugs. They make fat, easy pickins for those who just want to catch and release.

We caught several, as you can see. No really huge ones, but the last one we caught was pretty chunky. Why is it so fun to catch and hold a toad? Is it their soft bellies? Their bumpy skin? I'm a big fan of their funny, long-toed feet, myself. but I think maybe it's just the amazement of the miraculous little alien life inside them that attracts us. They inhabit a world in which we are a bizarre and inexplicable force. Yet they don't seem particularly terrified by us. Maybe these toads were just drunk on junebug juice, but they didn't exactly stampede away in terror when we approached. Mostly they hopped a few feet away sort of lethargically, and eventually seemed to juts resign themselves to being picked up and photographed. Then they went back to being toads. We tried to reward each one we captured by putting him down within convenient tongue-snapping range of a fat junebug.

They can snap up a bug so fast you can't even see their tongues move.

Earlier this week we went back to that spot during the day to catch a few tadpoles. The tadpoles were few and far between this time. Last year around this time we saw hundreds of huge fat bullfrog tadpoles in this same creek. But this year, only a few tiny black tadpoles were to be found. We scooped up seven of them and brought them home. Sadly, they expired yesterday. Don't know what we did wrong. We don't have much luck with reptiles and amphibians, I have to say. Think we'll stick to furry things, and things that can survive a nuclear war, like Triops.

Tonight we have to get Grayson's clothes cleaned and packed and ready for tomorrow's trip to Dallas with his dad. Gray is putting the boy on a plane all by himself to El Paso to meet his grandmother for a week of fun in Ruidoso with his cousins. Last year he had a really wonderful time, and he's looking forward to it... with some minor trepidation regarding the solo flight. He did it last year just fine, though, so I'm sure he'll be okay. Certainly I will be more relaxed about it. I was anxious last year about putting my baby on a plane all alone. This year, just like with the camp experience, I'm more relaxed. I'm sure he will be, too, when the time comes.

And me? What will I do for two weekends in a row without my boy?

I have no idea.