Slip sliding away

I just wrote half a post about the weather.

Someone needs to save me from myself.  (I saved you from me.)

Here’s the summary:  We people in San Diego are weather wimps.  When it’s cloudy for four days in a row–maybe five–we get a little twitchy.  “Where is the sun?” we cry as we scan the sky.  When it’s down to fifty-five degrees, women don puffy coats and gloves and knit hats and boots and scarves.

(Not me.  But them.  Some of them.)  I know this is nuts because I know what type of weather so many of you around the country have been enduring.

I’m starting the countdown to summer, mostly because I am so completely over supervising school at home.  Ten years, people.  TEN YEARS.  A decade.  A tenth of a century.  I just want to sit in a beach chair and read under a beach umbrella.

I don’t want to hear about the War of 1812 or the probability of picking a purple sock out of the dryer if there are ten socks and seven are purple and two are yellow and one is green.  I don’t want to discuss Don Quixote or explain why it takes more than one draft to get a Final Draft right.  I don’t want to give a spelling test or ponder past participles.

Tomorrow we are going on a field trip to Sea World.  (No, I haven’t seen “Blackfish” and I don’t think I want to . . . but I am familiar with the controversy and I’m conflicted but on the other hand, when we go on field trips, we get the day “off” from schoolwork so you can bet your bottom dollar we are going to Sea World.)  We are scheming–my 11-year old and me–about ditching Sea World and driving up the freeway to Disneyland (we have annual passes).   My daughter makes a fairly good argument for doing so.

We’ll see.

The thing is, I am acutely aware of how fast she is growing up . . . how fast these years are passing.  You know when you’re driving down the freeway and you don’t think you’re going all that fast until you look down at the speedometer and see that you’re somehow driving 85 mph?  If you look out the  side window, the scenery flashes by so fast you can’t even really focus, but looking straight ahead, you’d swear you are driving under the speed limit?

(Maybe that’s just me.)

I just know that we are going much, much faster through this life than we realize.  And why not drive to Disneyland for the afternoon if you can while your 11-year old still thinks it’s fun to hang out with you?