Assessment: (probably) not edible

Nico, through the wall from his bedroom: "Mommy, I found something in my room! Something gross!"

Me, from my bed because it is 6:55 AM: "What is it?"

Nico: "I don't know. I don't think I should eat it."

Me: "No, don't eat it! I will be right there to see what it is."

Nico: "Oh, it's alive! It's moving!"

a pair of disconnected thoughts

1. There's a mom at preschool who is fully committed to early 90s fashion. It took me a little while to verify, but after observing her at morning dropoff for two weeks, I'm pretty sure she hopped off the fashion train at a station she loved somewhere around middle school and never saw the point of getting back on board. She has the big curly hair with crunchy teased bangs, big T-shirts, clunky white sneakers. I think maybe she was wearing slouch socks the other day. Her two nearly-identical blond sons sport MacGyveresque hair that is spiked on top and flirting with mulletdom in the back. They wear little denim jackets and have very 90s names along the lines of Ricky and Danny. Their school bags are even decorated with fabric paint. I find her fascinating, truthfully. First, I'm wondering where one even shops for 1994 clothes these days. (Though I used to know a girl on a message board who was stubbornly hanging onto all her clothes from middle school so she could wear them again when she finally lost weight. And all I could think was, there is no way the clothes you wore in middle school will ever be in style again. Though, I could be wrong.) Second, it's mystifying to me that she either doesn't notice that no one else is dressing this way or loves the look so much that she doesn't care. I kind of love her commitment, though. Fly your flag, preschool lady!

(And my own style is definitely "generic mom trying to find middle ground between looking decent and being comfortable," so I'm sure I shouldn't judge.)

Oh, but I got this really cute shirt at Kohls the other day and it apparently brings all the foxes to the yard. The bibliophile saw one lounging on my front lawn when she arrived for post-dinner hanging out time last Monday.

2. The other evening I got my super classy microwave pesto bowl dinner together and went to sit at the table to read while I ate it. As I was sitting down, I suddenly realized what my completely-unstaged dinnertime tableau looked like, so I had to take a photo:

It reminded me of this one time when Nico was a baby and I went through the drive through at Starbucks to get a drink. First of all, I drive a CR-V in this color. At the time, I had an apple green hoodie and Nico had a lime green blanket that I'd throw over his carseat. Though green is my favorite color, this confluence of green things was a coincidence - I didn't seek out a green car; the hoodie was from Goodwill and was my only color choice; the blanket was a gift. Anyway, the Starbucks drive through dude popped his head out the window to tell me my total and stopped. Then in this perfect Bill and Ted stoner voice he said, "Whoa...everything's so...green." After our transaction was completed, he thanked me and then said, "Stay green!" To this day, I think of that incident every few months and laugh all over again.


Reading:  Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Playing:  a clubby mix CD from evilducky

Here we come to a turning of the season

By the calendar autumn doesn't begin for another two weeks, but Nico officially starts his schoolyear tomorrow and that's the end of summer as far as I'm concerned. We had the best, most fun-filled summer we could've hoped for this year, and I am a little sad to see it end. Of course, fall is my favorite season and we have some really fun stuff planned, so I'm not too sad. After an unheard-of streak of awesome weather, it finally got hot and muggy and slowed us down, but we managed to see the summer off in style. We are ending this fantastic run with two kids who are looking absurdly big and leggy, leaving me with even more of a feeling of moving toward a new and interesting chapter in this great adventure of ours. I'm not in a hurry to see them grow up, but I am looking forward to seeing what surprises they have in store.