Newsflash: Only one month until school starts!

Only one month until school starts.  One month.  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  We’re racing through summer like we’re rafting down the white-water of a river . . . just paddling like mad, bouncing through the rapids, hoping we don’t spill from our boat.

I am well aware that this frantic pace will not last forever.  Our young football player won’t always have practice five nights a week.  Our daughter will not always be shadowing me, chatting until I am begging for silence.  The teenagers are approaching adulthood with scary speed.  At some point, our house will empty out and we will be shocked to find the cupboard full of glasses at all times and the milk going sour in the fridge.  The bread will go stale before we can eat it.

Meanwhile, when quiet moments come, like today when I wondered where everyone was–but not enough to search for them–I sit down, put up my feet and read.  My back patio door is smudged with fingerprints and several baskets of laundry need to be put away, but I read half of The Help.  When life rushes you along, you have to take advantage of the calm stretches.

This week,  I have two dentist appointments on the calendar–one for my daughter to get x-rays and one for my check-up.  (I hate going to the dentist.)  Our son has football every night.  Nothing else appears on my calendar, though I am scheduled to work forty hours, of course.

So, now you know.  And now I’m going to bed.  (I know!  It’s 1:22 a.m.  Al Roker is probably getting up about now on the East Coast to start the weather forecast for The Today Show–I know this because often when I do my last “Twitter” post of the night, Al is making his first!)