Summer at Last!

Our one-eyed, mangy dog is down to just a winterized rump, garden work is in its early summer lull, and I finished my 2011 summer school stint this morning.

The summertime light and limited school hours have allowed me to work on a number of things around the house, getting ready for the baby and finishing up my free project from last summer, a ten-by-twelve-feet shed with a loft, and I’m in love with it. I’m in love with how it came about, too, since I had to buy only nails, just a few sheets of OSB, some drip edge, some siding starter strip, and a few unwanted shingles. Other than that, all of the materials were donated by friends or my brother-in-law, whose son helped me finish up installing the second-hand siding yesterday. It’s mostly quite solid, and I happily blame any structural imperfections on its reused materials rather than my own miserable ineptitude.

Anyway, knowing that this morning was my last go at summer school gave me enough gumption to avoid complete grumpiness, and as I arrived barely on time I met a student whose ride was just pulling away.

“Good morning!” I called out to him.

He paused and approached me; even though I have to constantly pester him in the classroom to take his hat off, be quiet and get back to work, he seemed genuinely happy to be talking to me.

“I missed the bus,” he said. “That’s why my grandpa dropped me off early. I overslept.”

“That was good of him,” I said with great magnanimity. “Does he live near you?”

“Yes, just twenty yards up the hill,” the student said. “Not like most grandpas. Most grandpas live in Wisconsin.”

“In Wisconsin?”

“Not close like mine.”

The morning passed with fewer hitches than I expected, and after I oriented the teacher who will be replacing me, I went home for a light lunch with M and N.

“She told me,” I said to M, “that baby number two is the hardest transition. After that, you can have a million babies and it really won’t make a difference.”

“Oh,” said M. “I heard that it was after the third one.”

“Way back when I told them we were pregnant,” I said, “the secretaries at school said that after the first one they all get easier and easier.”

“I’ve also heard that it’s all cake after the fifth or seventh kid,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Never mind.”

Any way we look at it, we say the sooner the better for this baby to come out. Last night I put my ear on M’s belly and could hear its heartbeat–around 160 beats per minute. That’s a sure sign it’s a girl, some might say. We’ll see. Earlier in the day the midwife counted 128 beats per minute, which suggests a boy.

To ease into vacation I took a short nap, then played with N while M slept. First, as she has done several times, N pointed out her recent painting that M framed and placed in our living room.

We built with blocks, listened to music, talked to her aunt on the phone, and practiced the alphabet. Later, while M and I sang, N tried out her new watercolors set. I watched as the tray landed on the floor, upside down. N quickly got down from the table and righted the tray. Noting the dripped paint spots on the floor, she squatted close to and then sat on them for a fairly thorough cleaning.

And finally, I also leafed through a new Musician’s Friend catalog and thought about our band, whose new release I turned up loud while making our pizza supper and N practiced belly-dance ballet.

The album is nearly half paid for already, which means we only have to sell 54 more before we can start planning the next one. And the only reason we have to sell that many more is because we gave our recording engineer and producer a hefty gift; he’d pledged his work for free, considering his lack of experience and expertise. Eat that, Rihanna. If our songs ever become hits, it sure won’t be because of our million-dollar roll-out budget; it’ll be because are songs are fun and positive and wholesome and at moments even sound good.