To be perfectly frank....

it's been a long, scorching, draining, and difficult summer. I feel like parts of me have dried up along with the parched earth and my abandoned garden at our former home. Try as I may to pull myself up by the bootstraps, I've just not had a whole lot to that I *cared* to write about. Part of that is that my openness seems now somehow compromised by other life circumstance, and some of that stems from wanting just to ride it out without a whole lot of input or extensive navel gazing.

Suffice to say, times have been far from their best.

Slowly, painstakingly, I've been moving us into the new place, unpacking the boxes, settling in, building up new garden beds for fall, keeping my mouth shut as much as I can when sometimes I want to simply holler and keep on hollering from a deep achey place.

Through it all, Ziggy has been a shining light and a source of tremendous joy. Being present for and with him, and staying focused on work and householding has taken the lion's share of my energies and then some.

This morning, I kind of woke us all up with an enormous scream. I'd fished my hand into the bleachy washing machine, the better to aid a thorough clean of our whites, when blam! a mouse (a mouse!!) leapt out of the water, onto my hand and I let loose with a blood curdling scream. I absolutely go all girly and screamy over mice, at least initially. Sure, I can see that they're quite cute, really, but that first sighting, particularly when it also includes the physicality of touch: Ahhhhhhhwwwwwwahhhhhhhhh!!!

Poor Ziggy, standing in the kitchen behind me, his mouth gone to trembling, looked ready to burst into tears and the husband flew past the bed covers and appeared ready for attack. Only my burst of laughter and shout of MOUSE! kept us on a slightly even keel. I grabbed up my Ziggy and hugged him tight.

The remainder of the morning, he has wanted to check out the brand new bleach hand print on my tee shirt and to find "another mouse, Mommy! We have to find another one," as he gazes beyond the sunroom windows to where we watched Daddy Booty loose the poor critter. (It ran, ever so quickly, into the layers of one of my garden beds, ever so carefully lasagna laden with cardboard, newsprint, compost, pine needles and soil.)


Wake up! Wake up. This is it. No dress rehearsal.


Come on, fall. I am so ready for your arrival.