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.