I had plenty of time to go to the grocery store. Grace and I had time to meander, in fact, lingering over birthday candles and sprinkles while she chose what she wanted for her cupcakes. Even though I’d gone for just a “couple” of things, I ended up with a full cart–hey, pop was on sale! (That’s “soda” for you Midwesterners, and “coke” for you Southerners.)

I arrived at the check-stand at noon, an hour before my work-shift began. I opened up my small purse and discovered I was missing my debit card. I took every item from that small compartment and it still did not appear. The purse is small and there was no doubt. I had no debit card.

“Uh, we have a problem,” I said to no one and everyone. “I have no debit card.”

The guy rang up my groceries ($120, though it turned out to be $96 after the coupons) and said he’d put them in the cooler for me.

I raced home, hoping I’d accidentally removed my debit card when I took out some expired coupons. Nope. I never found it.

I remembered that I had some checks to cash, so I grabbed the checks and sped to the bank to cash them. When I had almost reached the store again with cash tucked into an envelope, it occurred to me that I might have just taken the checkbook to the store and paid with a check rather than taking checks to the bank to cash. Duh! The checkbook solution would have taken twenty minutes at the most. The bank solution took forty and made me late for work.

I think I used to be a lot smarter.

I had to cancel the debit card and order a new one. It will arrive in five to seven business days. I can’t begin to imagine what happened to it. Perhaps it’s cavorting with the red GameBoy we lost so many years ago or the cell phone that disappeared one day and never returned.

Have you lost anything lately?

I have to admit that I have a lot of chemicals in my home and I’m not really all that concerned about them.  I’m a big fan of bleach, though I’ve been known to use vinegar for cleaning, too.  My brain is just too busy worrying about other things (finding enough time to read Freddy and Fredericka, for instance) to worry unduly about harsh cleaning products.  (My biggest concern is not cancer, but dry, cracked fingers when I get crazy with the bleach.)
However, Clorox has made it super-easy to “go green” with their new line of products made from plant-based ingredients.  (I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds friendly, doesn’t it?  Like soap made from earthworms or a scrubber made from tree bark?)  Anyway, this line is called Green Works and you can find them on store shelves already.

I received some dish-soap to try.  I have enjoyed squirting its green soapy goodness into the dirty dishes and swishing it around until everything was all sudsy.  It smells great and I have no complaints about its power to cut through grease and make all the dishes shiny and clean.  I even enjoyed the shape of the bottle.  Very pretty.
Apparently, I don’t need chemicals to get my dishes clean.  Just Clorox Green Works.

* * *

(Yes, this was a commercial.  Believe me, my life is boring, but not so boring that I must resort to talking about cleaning products without compensation.)

My 10-year old son does not want me to escort him to school tomorrow on his First Day of Fifth Grade.  He just wants to be dropped off.  I had to tease him a little, pretend pout:  “You don’t want me to walk you to your classroom?  And kiss you good-bye?”  He’s so over me.

My daughter doesn’t start kindergarten until next Wednesday.  The divide the kindergarten class up and have only a few kids a day arrive for the first few days.  They call it a “Slow Start” and it’s new since my last child was in kindergarten.  I think it’s a good idea and will make the first day of school easier for my little girl.

And the teenagers?  They are still awake and it’s nearly 1:30 a.m.  We await their curriculum which is somewhere between here and there.  Can’t wait to make them get up early and break this horrible cycle of late nights and late mornings.  I’m the only one who should be conscious at this hour!

Why?  Because of my sometimes-fall allergies which don’t care that it’s still August.

It does seem like autumn already, though.  Our sunshine is weak and overpowered by low clouds every morning.  It rained hard yesterday.  Or was that the day before?  When we drop by the pool, only a few others are swimming and I wear a sweatshirt while I sit poolside.

Tonight, after work I attended two school Open Houses.  I’ve sent three children to the Primary school before and so this is my fourth child.  The PTA moms don’t know me because my son’s been out of that school for two years.  Yet, I refused to accept their folder because I’m not going to join the PTA.  Let someone else have that fun.  I put in my time years ago.

My daughter met her teacher, a fabulous, friendly, tall, pretty mom of twin babies.  I offered to give her my private stash of Lincoln Logs and she gladly accepted my offer.  (I tried to sell that at a garage sale, but no one wanted to buy them.)  My daughter will turn six the day before she starts kindergarten.  I’m so glad she missed the cut-off last year–because last year at this time, she expressed how much she hated school and would never, ever go.  This year, she is excited and ready for action.

Then we drove to the other school, she and I, to meet my son’s teacher.  My son was at football practice, but I met the teacher, assessed her and asked her a bunch of questions.  I think she’ll be a good teacher based on my fact-finding mission.  I just want her to adore my son as much as I do.  How can she not?

One more day and my son heads to school.  My daughter starts kindergarten next week, on Wednesday.  My teenagers will start whenever their curriculum arrives.  (Should be within days.)  We’re doing independent homeschool this year, rather than affiliating with a virtual school.  This will be our fifth year doing school at home, the teenagers and I.  They went to public school through fifth grade, but weren’t thriving and so, for a variety of reasons, we pulled them out of school, thus ruining my chance to ever enjoy having all my children GO AWAY to school during the day.

For the first time in 15 years, though, I will not have a child aged five or younger with me at home during the day.  I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.  (Okay, I am sure.  I will laugh with glee!  Two and a half “free” hours every morning!)

And yet, I know I will cry like a baby when I leave her at school that first morning.

1)  Raw tomatoes

2)  Country music

3)  Haikus

4)  Tattoos (oh, but your tattoos are cute; it’s all the others I don’t like)

5)  Jan Karon novels

6)  Kool-aid

7)  Other people’s feet

8)   Flocked Christmas trees

9)  Sleeping with a nightlight

10)  Expensive purses

Did I mention my recent experience with utter humiliation?

A few weeks ago we vacationed at Long Beach, Washington for eight nights. However, my husband and two of his college buddies had to leave the ocean after two nights. One of the buddies needed to return to Bellingham to work and the other needed to fly home (stand-by) on Alaskan Airlines. The Bellingham guy dropped off my husband at our home, then continued on with the Alaskan airlines guy to the airport.

Alas, the Alaskan airlines guy couldn’t get on a flight that night, so Bellingham guy called my husband who met him halfway and transferred Alaskan airlines guy to my husband’s custody before traveling north up I-5 to his home.

That was a little confusing, but important to the plot of this story.

Remember, I’m at the ocean with my four children while my husband is back at our house. (He caught a ride with Bellingham buddy because he needed to participate in a charity golf tournament on Tuesday and an important work meeting on Wednesday. He and Bellingham guy were going to return to the ocean–and their respective family vacations–Wednesday night.)

So, I’m at the ocean and now . . . Alaskan airlines guy is at my house with my husband.

When I leave for a vacation, I always try to leave my house in respectable condition. However, right before this vacation, I worked 21 hours in two days, laundered all the laundry, packed provisions for meals and endured a crisis that I cannot bear to speak about. (Hint: teenagers, lost item, injustice in the world, tantrum, enough said.) So, having worked on Thursday from 8 a.m. until midnight with two short breaks between shifts, I did not get my house as clean as I’d hoped.

For instance, my bathroom sink was coated with the scummy remains of shaving cream. The master bathroom toilet was unscrubbed. Piles of unironed clothes and discarded outfits sat on top of the exercise bike. Underneath the exercise bike were overflow books without permanent homes on the bookshelves. . . plus more. (An empty purse, 10-pound weights, an old newspaper, an empty shoebox, for instance.)

The room was cluttered and certainly not fit for company. The kitchen floor was unmopped, every wooden surface was dusty. As a matter of fact, it sort of looked like we’d packed in a hurry, then been Raptured without expecting ever to return. Thus, the yellowed newspapers on the front porch. (Who has time to read the newspaper? And do you know how difficult it is to cancel a newspaper? They pretty much say, “No,” when you try.)

And when our friend couldn’t get a flight, he stayed at our house for two nights.

That is mortification. Also, motivation to deal with the under-exercise-bike piles and closet. I even vacuumed my ceiling.

I did learn something from this experience. Mortification will not kill you. Who knew.

(Does anyone else store a collection of cassette tapes underneath their bed? What is wrong with me?)

What’s under your bed?  Come on:  Group participation!  You know you want to leave a comment!

I miss the days when my twins were small and took a nightly bath, put on fresh pajamas and watched “Rugrats” on television before going to bed at 8:00 p.m.  They were so cute and followed the plan without deviation.  I liked that control.
They are talking now–I can hear their man-voices in their room, discussing whatever it is that 15-year old boys find necessary to discuss at 12:30 a.m.  They haven’t showered in over twenty-four hours and they haven’t worn pajamas with zippers in many years.

I no longer have a complete inventory of every thought in their heads.  I can’t control every thing they see and everything they hear.  I do, however, make them sit on the bottom stair from time to time when they make me so angry I could spit nails.  They are taller than me, so I’m always a little bit surprised and relieved when they actually obey me.

I miss their soft skin.  Their legs are hairy and their chins are sprouting whiskers.  I can’t imagine trusting them with razors, but that day is fast approaching.
I don’t have to remind them to wear deodorant on most days.

They can lift heavier loads than I can.  I remember toting them both in my arms as I walked down the stairs, so this seems incongruous that they are stronger than me now.

I remember the time they ate ketchup for lunch.  Just ketchup in a bowl.  Now, they eat vast quantities of everything, including ketchup but only on other food.  A gallon of milk disappears in a day.
They once seemed to be mine, but I know they never really were.  They are separate and distinct people and I just hope that I’m preparing them to be successful human beings.  I can’t imagine setting them loose in the world in three years when they are 18, legally adults.  I have friends whose children have gone off to college and I just can’t imagine it.

I still hear their rumbling voices in the next room having a private conversation and just like I thought they would be in footie-pajamas forever, I think their voices will fill that room forever, but of course, one day I’ll look back on this with shock at how quickly it all ended.

And I will have to apologize to their wives for being unable to teach them to lower the toilet seat and take their dishes to the kitchen sink and their balled up socks to the laundry room.

We arrived Friday night, in dripping rain, and waited for our friends to arrive. They own the next-door cabin and were bringing the keys to our cabin with them. (Our friends’ parents own the cabin we rented.) My conversation with her led me to believe she would arrive very soon after we did. . . but still, we waited for maybe an hour. My sister and her husband and two kids drove up soon after we did, so we mingled and huddled on the porch until the keys arrived.

The opening weekend of our vacation was filled with people: our friends, AC and Cari, their two kids and their two nieces; a mutual friend of ours who flew in from Alaska on stand-by as an airline employee; my sister, her husband and two kids; my mother. . . and then, of course, my family of six.

Our friend, AC, works for a fish company and escorted us on a tour of the processing plant in Astoria. We watched the women shake crabmeat from the crab-legs (what a job!), the people package shrimp after it cooks and rides various streams and conveyor belts before being instantly frozen, and the forty people on the hake line working together to process the white fish which is then shipped to Eastern Europe. One guy’s entire job was to slide the recently beheaded hake to the other side of the belt for tail-removal. Imagine doing that for eight hours a day. (Better than being a crab-shaker, if you ask me.)

Grace and I (and the other “girls”) went thrift shopping where Grace realized that you can try on clothes before you buy them. This was a secret I’d been keeping from her, but now she knows.

When I saw AC and Cari assemble a large trampoline in their yard, I knew that someone would be hurt. Sure enough, within twenty-four hours, my husband lugged a wailing Grace to the cabin where I ascertained that no bones were broken and in fact, the blood wasn’t coming from her lips. . . but her teeth. One of her top front teeth was pushed back to a ninety degree angle and a baby tooth on the bottom wiggled. Her gums bled, but we were both thrilled that her brand new shirt remained blood-free. I held her until she stopped crying and bleeding.

The upper gum bled and looked bruised, but the tooth remained firm and as the days passed, moved back close to its original position. And by the end of the day, she wanted to jump again on the trampoline.

The men all left on Sunday night (to work or to fly home) and so Cari and I and our six kids managed without them. Her nieces also left. My sister and her family and my mom gallivanted on their own on Monday, then my sister and her family left the cabin to go camping (my mom drove with them to their campsite and was gone the whole day). My mom left on Wednesday to visit family farther down the coast.

Cari and I took the kids down to the shore where we had glorious weather (though cool, because it is the Pacific Ocean in Washington we’re talking about here). The kids dug a giant moat around a mound of a castle, working together. Sandcastle building is the great equalizer, letting all the kids work together no matter their age or expertise. And sure enough, the tide came in and the kids reacted with horror and determination to shore up their sand walls against inevitability. (Such a metaphor for life, I must note.)

Then they abandoned their castle and began to frolic in the waves and recline on a sandbar as waves rolled over them. As the sun set, a giant flock of brown pelicans descended just down the beach and soon they soared around the kids, settling into the waves just beyond us. I’d noticed them earlier, swooping in low lines just above the water, but for whatever reason (some delicacy in the ocean, I imagine), a giant flock swarmed and bobbed on the waves.

This particular stretch of Long Beach has few shells on its sandy shore. And, in fact, cars are allowed to drive its thirty-mile length, which always strikes me as odd. But despite scanning the sand while Grace ran and ran down the beach, I found no unbroken sand-dollars and only one small shell the whole time.

Our husbands returned for the latter part of the week, arriving on Wednesday evening. We spent the rest of the week on the beach, though it was never as sunny as earlier in the week. Sometimes when it’s hot in the Puget Sound, a fog bank hangs over the ocean and that happened our last few days. So we viewed some lighthouses, shopped in little shops, played in the arcade, rode go-karts (I was lapped several times by 11-year old children in my efforts to NOT DIE) and ate too much. And we roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. Cari and I completed a 1,000 piece puzzle while watching the Olympics on television late at night.

I also read one book: The Elevator by Angela Hunt.

And then, on Saturday, the sun shone brightly–after a couple days of fog and low-hanging clouds–and it was time to clean the cabin for the next guests. The downside of renting a cabin from a friend is the lack of maid-service. So I sent the family away to get them out of my way and tidied up. So much sand everywhere!

We were away eight nights and now it seems like it never happened, just like that sandcastle which was erased by the tide.

However, I still have sand in my shoes.

So, there’s a new parenting blog called “5 Minutes for Parenting.”  I’ve contributed a post (August 17) that originally appeared here.  I’m just one of a bunch of bloggers contributing to the blog edited by Stephanie.  While you’re waiting for me to write a real post (I know, I’m trying), why not pop on over and leave a comment or two?

I’m back.  And exhausted.

Go here for pictures.