Sometimes I am too aware that my blog is on the Internet.  I am tongue-tied with sudden shyness and want to duck into the other room so I don’t have to talk to anyone.  I want to type something here before I go to bed, but as I scroll down the list of potential topics, I discard each one.  Too personal.  Can’t talk about that.  Wouldn’t want to mention that.

I’m aware of eyeballs watching, afraid of silent judgments, unwilling to discuss the real life I’m living right now.

So.

Hmmm.

What do you want to talk about?

I know!  Let’s talk about shopping.

Last night at about 1 a.m. I started shopping online for a dress to wear for an upcoming occasion.  I’d like to know why almost all the available dresses are sleeveless?  What are middle-aged women with mushy arms like me supposed to wear?  And the necklines . . . hello?  Am I the only woman in America who does not want to reveal my cleavage to the general population?  Let’s not even talk about belts that hug the upper ribcage which make you look like you’re wearing a maternity smock.

I shopped and shopped and shopped . . . and gasped a little at the dresses that cost more than my couch . . . and finally ended up with a few things in a virtual shopping bag.  I am going to go check tonight and see if I still think those dresses would work.  If they don’t, I’ll return them.

And on Saturday, I’m going to the mall, which is probably the dumbest place to go on an August afternoon.  The guys at the kiosks accost me every time.  I feel like I’m walking down a metropolitan sidewalk, avoiding panhandlers. But maybe I’ll find something that makes me look cuter than I feel and will make a good first impression.

Where are Stacy London and Clinton Kelly when you really need them?

Before summer ends:

1) Picnic at Mt. Rainier
2)  Ride Bremerton ferry to Seattle
3)  Buy shoes for kids
4)  Lament end of summer
5)  Sleep in as much as possible

We have only have three weeks . . . time’s running out.  Time’s always running out, if you really stop to think about it.  But who has time to think?  And why would you want to ponder your mortality when there are things like mountains and ferries and shoe stores?

Tell me, please.  What would you do with $20 and a free afternoon?

My sister helped me clean out my closet.  And by “helped” I mean she laughed at my fashion disasters, kept her judgments about my shoe collection to herself and gave me permission to get rid of old clothes that have no stains or holes.

My daughter has been sorting through her stuffed animals and toys and clothes, purging her belongings.  I did not prompt her to do so and so I’m amazed at my pack-rat daughter.  “Mom, I just can’t believe I had so many ugly toys!” she said.

I have a scary storage room that will need my attention, too.  And closet shelves and dressers and cupboards and drawers full of the accumulation of twelve years in this house.

This is the longest stretch I’ve ever lived anywhere.  My childhood years were spent in many houses, but during my school years (kindergarten to graduation), I only lived in two houses.  After I was married, we managed to move every two or four years . . . until we landed here.

So, not only do we have roots, we have clutter and stuff and too many boxes of Christmas decorations.

The start of every school year feels like the start of the year to me . . . so it’s time to sort, purge, clean, organize and get ready for another year to begin.

Anyone need a Halloween costume?  A lampshade without a lamp?  Eighteen thousand Golden Books?

When I was ten or eleven, I started babysitting.  The penny-pinching people I babysat for would count out my pay in nickels and dimes, never, ever rounding up.  I made twenty-five cents an hour.

From the time I was eleven until I was eighteen, I worked in the church nursery as the helper.  I earned a dollar per church service, which ended up being three dollars a week (Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night).  Sometimes we’d have twenty-some babies under the age of two.

When I was twelve, I started picking strawberries.  A dollar a flat.  We’d wake up early, ride our bikes down the street, then up the hill, then around the bend.  We’d get our punch-cards and be assigned a row of strawberry plants and begin picking.  We could stay as long as we wanted, but I rarely lasted much past lunch-time.

When I was thirteen, I was chosen to plant strawberries.  The strawberry-farm people thought I was fifteen and that’s why I was offered the job.  I rode in a pick-up truck to the field near the freeway where I saw on the back of tractor where I plugged baby strawberry plants onto a wheel that automatically stuck the plants into the ground. I made minimum wage, which was $2.65 an hour (I think?)

When I was fifteen, my stepmom helped me get a job at a health food store.  The owners left me entirely in charge sometimes, which was a mistake since I told a customer looking for vitamins, “Oh, I don’t know.  They don’t tell me anything here!”

When I was sixteen and a half, I was hired by Taco Time.  I worked there until I graduated from high school and moved away.

When I was eighteen, I worked as a nanny for a family in Branson.  They lived on Table Rock Lake.  For the first time in my life, I met a child who hated my guts.  That was a long summer.

In college, I had several jobs: babysitting, cleaning the dorm, assembling the salad bar in the cafeteria.

The summers I was nineteen (and twenty), I worked for Heritage USA, the place Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker founded in Charlotte, North Carolina.  I worked in the children’s department the first summer and the youth department the second.

When I graduated from college, I worked for a women’s healthclub in the childcare room.

After I married my husband, I worked for a law office.  The practice handled real estate law and personal estate planning.  The office was a mile from our apartment in New Haven.  I walked to work many mornings and wandered the New Haven Green and the Yale campus during lunchtime.

When we moved back to Washington, I worked for a non–profit agency.  I managed the (very small) office.  I had an amazing boss, but I needed more than thirty hours of work per week, so I got a new job.

I worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Washington in the Customer Service Department.

Then I worked for an office supply store (retail at Christmas, totally fun).

We adopted our kids and I did childcare in my home off and on over the years.

I did some legal transcription.  I did some medical transcription.

I sold some articles.

I wrote a blog for a now-defunct website.

Now I work from home from a great company.  I feel really lucky to have fallen into my particular career.  You just never know where life will lead you.

And I am super grateful that I no longer get paid in nickels and dimes and that I don’t have to scrub giant refried bean pans or clean the bathrooms in a fast food restaurant.

——————

How many jobs have you had?  What was your favorite?

I no longer wipe noses.  Instead, I drive kids around in my mini-van.  They don’t even have to be my own personal kids.  No.  I also pick up friends of my kids and sometimes friends of the friends.

Tonight, I had to drive to the nearby military base to pick up a teenager at the Visitor Center.  His family rather inconveniently moved on base.  (How dare they!)  Since it was 6 p.m., I thought I would outsmart traffic and avoid the freeway as long as possible.

When I emerged from my short-cut, I entered the freeway heading south.  I noticed and then passed Exit 18, which was problematic because I needed to reach Exit 20.  I’d unwittingly merged onto the freeway at Exit 19. Wrong direction!

Drat.  I needed to immediately exit so I could head north instead of south.  I began to swerve into the exit lane and nearly side-swiped a motorcycle.  (Sorry, Motorcycle Guy!)  I missed that exit completely.

By now, I was approaching Exit 16.

That’s when the semi-truck ahead of me blew out a rear tire.

It sounded like a little bomb exploding and immediately the tire flew off in a rectangle of black rubber.  I veered into the left lane without even checking my blind spot and screamed OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD, which, yes, is cursing, and NO, I should not curse, but DID YOU FEEL THAT EXPLOSION?

I exited (barely ahead of the semi-truck which pulled to the shoulder) and turned right.  However, the entrance to the freeway was not there.  So I made a fancy u-turn and circled around to enter the freeway going north.

At that point, I noticed a stricken face in my rear-view mirror.  My poor 7-year old sat in the center back seat with a look of abject terror on her face.  I said, “Hey, are you okay?  Everything’s fine!  I’ve never had an accident in my life!  You are completely safe!  Everything’s fine!  You were never in danger!”

And she wiped her eyes and whimpered a little.

My 17-year old said, “Well, at least you have something to blog about now!”

Indeed.

August has arrived.  You know what this means, right?  Only a month until school starts.

Time to start hoarding school supplies.

Time to sort through clothing that no longer fits the kids.

Time to buy school shoes.

Time to begin mourning the loss of long sunlit evenings.

The green grass has turned sharp and brown.  The spider webs dangle in every corner.  The leaves on the dying tree in the backyard already litter the patio.

My inconsiderate daughter insisted on being born on Labor Day.  This year, her birthday is on the first day of school.  I have to start planning her birthday party.  Soon.  Today.  Yesterday.  Tomorrow.  Soon.

My husband is flying to California on Friday.  He is in the process of interviewing for a job.  In California.  One day soon I’ll be able to explain more, but in the meantime . . . well, I can’t say a thing.

I took the kids to see “Despicable Me” in 3D today.  I hate how much 3D movies cost.  I feel like a grinch opting for the regular movie . . . but yikes.  It cost me $57 for tickets.  That’s nuts.

Anybody want to help me sort through and purge the closets?

Anybody?

My life would be greatly simplified if my closet contained only one size of clothes.  Seriously.

I saw a young woman eat a Kit-Kat in church yesterday.  She broke off one piece and then nibbled the sides off, up one side and down the other.  I found the sight quite distracting and so did the woman sitting in front of me.

All I really want is to be alone in my house for a few days.  Is that so much to ask?

Well, that’s not really all I want.  I also want a Honda FIT.  And I want some red, white and blue Chuck Taylors.

I bought a Food Saver for $10 at Value Village.  They are on sale at Costco for $150, so I feel quite smug about this purchase.

The end.

Grace is going to soccer camp this week from 5:30 to 7:30 each night.  As she runs onto the field, I stroll down the sideline and set up my folding chair slightly past the fifty yard line.  The other parents sit on a distant metal bench or even farther away near the entrance to the field.

I take a book and a Rubbermaid container with some sort of dinner and enjoy the sunlight on my back while I read.  Every once in awhile, I glance up to see what my blond girl is doing.  But mostly, I read.  (I started The Time-Traveler’s Wife.)

So tonight, my third night, a woman walked past my chair.  I’ve been sitting facing the end zone so the sun is entirely to my back and not in my eyes.  Some people run around the track which is a few feet to my left.

So this woman walked past me–I didn’t notice her at all until she stopped somewhere behind me, close enough that her shadow was in my line of vision.

She rustled around and clattered about and made more noise than you’d think necessary.

I wondered what she was doing and then realized that she had unfolded her own chair and settled in, six feet behind me, right on the track.

Maybe that would be normal if I were sitting on a crowded sideline but there were literally no other parents sitting within yards and yards of me.  Not within spitting distance.  Until she arrived.

It was awkward.  She was too close to me.  And since she was directly behind me, I couldn’t even swivel around to sneak a peek without it being a super awkward moment.

So, that was odd.

Then her phone rang.

And she said these words, “So.  Is it a staph infection?”  Pause.  “That’s very contagious, you know.”

I just don’t know what to say about that.  But, please, if you see a woman sitting all by herself far down the sideline of a football field reading a book, please assume she wants to be alone.  And don’t sit in breathing distance of her and start talking about a staph infection.  I’m begging you.

Please.  And thank you.

Last weekend, we drove past my old house.

My dad bought that house in 1977, when I was twelve years old.  I had my own bedroom with a door that locked.  (You could easily unlock that lock with your fingernail, but at least I knew no one could burst into the room without a moment’s hesitation.)

I lived in that house for six years.  When I left for college, I boxed up a few mementos and abandoned them in the closet.  I sent my clothes and other belongings ahead to college.  I had nine boxes.  Imagine!  Nine boxes contained the essence of my life.  Back then, I could move across the country by post office.

When I left for college, I left.  I hardly looked back.  I returned for Thanksgiving that first year, and then Christmas . . . but not summer.  The first summer, I worked as a nanny for a family that lived on the shores of Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri.

I went home again for Christmas the next two years, but I found jobs both summers.  I worked in Charlotte, North Carolina, the summers of 1985 and 1986. I didn’t go home.

I never really missed home.  Unlike many of my peers, I never felt homesick.  How can you miss a place where you felt like you needed to lock your door all the time?

I moved back home six months before I got married.  My husband-to-be and I each went back home to live with our families and prepare for the wedding.  (I can’t imagine what we were thinking.)  I lived with my dad and my teenage sister for those months and worked at a daycare.  My sister and I ate a lot of homemade brownies.

I sewed my wedding dress in that house.  The kitchen had an eight-foot long island counter-top which was perfect for cutting out fabric.

My dad decided to tile the main bathroom in the house that spring.  He barely finished it before wedding guests arrived to stay in the house.

My husband and I loaded up a U-Haul trailer after our wedding and moved across the country to New Haven, Connecticut.  Two years later, we loaded the U-Haul again and returned to the house where I’d spent my adolescence.  My husband and I stayed with my dad for a few weeks until we found our own apartment.

Quiet months passed and then my dad invited us to move back in.  He was alone in that five bedroom house.  He worked nights and we worked days.  We could share the house and save money to buy our own house one day.

We agreed.  We had no idea that a week before our move-in date, my dad would be diagnosed with terminal malignant melanoma.

We moved in anyway and thus began four stressful months.  My husband lost his job.  My dad quit his job.  I went to my job every morning, leaving the two men I loved to muddle through their days without me.  We watched my dad decline.  I worried non-stop.

At the end of summer, my dad died in a hospital bed we’d pushed into the bedroom at the end of the hallway, the bedroom that I’d painted lavender so many years before.

That Christmas, my husband and I had a live Christmas tree.  After the holiday, we planted the tree in the front yard.

Not long after, we sold the house.  We moved to follow my husband’s career.  We left the house and I didn’t miss it at all.  How can you be homesick when your life is finally unfurling?

Four babies, two apartments, a townhouse, a parsonage, a house and twenty-three years later–and there we were, driving past the old house last weekend.

It’s beige now, instead of brown.

My husband drove by slowly.  “Take a picture!” he said and I declined.  The garage door was open and I didn’t want to be caught snapping pictures.

But I wanted to step into the garage and look around.  I wanted to run my fingers over the walls.  I know the new owners tore down the room my dad constructed in the garage.  But was there any trace of him left behind?

The courtyard was intact with its brick archway leading to the front door. Was the lilac bush still there?  I probably still have a key that unlocks that front door.

Have they replaced the flooring?  Figured out a way to fix the bricks in the ugly fireplace?  We could see they added some windows to brighten up the dim living room.  But was the tile still there in the bathroom?  Is the kitchen counter-top still green or is it fancy granite now?

I didn’t get out of the car.  I just stared through the window.  The Christmas tree we’d planted looms high above the roof of the house.  The little evergreen bushes I planted along the front of the house to improve its curbside appeal looked green and lush.

I wanted to press my nose against the window of the bedroom where I spent so much time dreaming of the future.  I wanted to tell my husband to stop the car so I could circle the house on foot.

But we slowly drove away.

I would give almost anything to knock on that door and find my dad on the other side.  I’m homesick now because I understand that you can never really go home again . . . and once you close the door on it, your key never unlocks the past again.

And even if you don’t box up your life and mail it to another city, the present shoves the past farther away until you can hardly remember a time when the Christmas tree was small enough to lug into the front yard for planting.

By nine this morning, I had dropped off my last two children and headed home.  I was alone, gloriously alone, but alas, I was also sleepy since I’d gotten about six hours of sleep.  So I spent my glorious time home alone napping.

My teenagers have attended CreationFest for the past few years.  They wanted to go this year, but their youth group only planned to attend for one day–but the whole festival lasts four days.

As is their typical approach of life, they waited until the very last minute to figure out a solution to their problem.

And, because I knew how much they wanted to go, I intervened and worked a miracle.  How?  I did a Google search, figured out that a local church was taking a group and had one of the boys call the youth pastor directly to ask if they could tag along.  (They’d attended this church’s New Year’s event, too, so they knew the youth pastor.)  I ordered tickets online and printed them out.

The youth pastor agreed to let my boys join them–and someone in their church happened to volunteer to drive a car–and thus, twelve hours before the departure time, it all worked out, thus reinforcing for them the idea that you can wait until the last minute and things will be fine, just fine.

My younger kids are going to VBS all week.  The 12-year old is an enthusiastic and cheerful helper and the 7-year old has amazed me with her independence.  Last year I had to convince her to stay several mornings and she cried when I left.  This year, I don’t even have to walk her all the way in.

I realized today that I have truly turned into the mythical taxi driver.  I used to be all about wiping noses and making snacks and now I’m all about driving people around and passing out twenty dollar bills.

Is this progress?