Yesterday, while I brushed my teeth and Matt rocked the two sillies before going to bed:

“Do you want Daddy to tell you a story?”
David: “Farmeh Market!”
“About the Farmer’s Market? Okay, what happened at the Farmer’s Market?”
David: “Cookie! Thank you!”

Nevermind the sweet crunchy carrots, the snappy rainbow chard, or the friendly chit-chat with all our foodie friends. The best part of the visit is a piece of gingersnap from the cookie lady.

The kid is smart.

I don’t know where I was to allow this to happen, but whatever I was doing left just enough time for C&D to take all the clothes out of my drawers and laundry baskets . . . and then try to put everything all back.

I’m think I’m back to doing too much. I should slow down, but I’m too busy going fast to go slow.

In the past two weeks I’ve met with the neurologist, the neurosurgeon, hired a roofer, fired a roofer, hired another roofer. Someone started replacing our siding, and I got estimates to replace the siding upstairs, as well. I chose paint colors for the new siding, and am back to working on landscaping our right-of-way (our so-called front yard). I met with a lawyer because our house leaks (hence the roofing and siding work, heh), and am going to meet with the architect soon about his house, and how we might make up for years of neglect from previous owners.

But Kroger nauseates me (the noise! the color! the smells!), Whole Foods makes me feel sick, too (too LOUD!) and by the end of the day I sound like my mother, but worse (“Carmen! David! Toby! Matt! YOU, NO, whatever it is you’re doing!”). Too much reading makes me dizzy (and then nauseous . . . do you notice the trend?). Cooking makes me tired (and, then, you guessed it). A nap helps.

My language is pretty great, and much quicker. But especially with the babies, I still have bumps and slips in my speech. Carmen is on a mimic phase, so everytime I hesitate because I can’t find a word right away I hear myself via her, hesitations included. Almost emphasized, actually. So then, I REALLY have troubles talking. It’s like being on an international call muddled by a slow echo with a little, toddler voice.

They’ll be hard to deal with when I’m with them all day again, but now that they see that I’m feeling better, I can tell that they’re really missing me. They ask for me when I am gone. They cry for me again, even David, who felt confused and maybe even betrayed. Their trust is returning, sure that I will be available to save their day. I think they have a faint memory of normalcy and want to return to it. We’re trying to figure out how to do it; it might involve eating out a lot. The first time I rode with them in the car they were so happy I was in the car with them, it had been so long. They kept looking at me and laughing.

We are still looking at each other and laughing. Where have I been?

From the notebook:

1) Tickled by the way C&D like getting their pictures taken, and then running to the camera to see their image on the LCD. It’s even better than a mirror, a chance for admiring themselves in this frozen image of self and time.

2) Recuperating is supposed to be relaxing, and maybe even a chance to have a little fun, read a little, watch a few movies. Instead I’m spending my so-called recovery fixing my house. That’s maybe just as well; I’m not the kind of person to take kindly to lying around much. I could probably do without the hammering and banging, though.

3) Not so many months ago, C&D snuggled contently in our arms. They still snuggle, but also jump, run, climb. Today Carmen hopped over my lying body in bed. A few days ago she perfected a sommersault off the chair. Wow.

And from the mirror:

1) Crossing 59 (over the downtown gateway bridges) makes me dizzy from the roar of engines, and rapid flow of cars beneath my feet. It’s like standing over a roaring river of cars, and I can’t bear to look.

2) At CVS I bought two pairs of kid-sized nailclippers. We managed to lose the others. Our cashier commented on the fact that I purchased a pair. “One to lose, one to find,” I said. It wasn’t what I meant to say. In fact, I don’t know what I would have meant had I managed to say it. Maybe I hadn’t meant to say anything at all. In any case, the cashier liked it. “Poetic, man!” he said, and bagged up my purchase. I smiled. Poetic.

The back of the facade, viewed from the roof.

March was rainy, April glorious. Our grass has grown, the flowers are in bloom.

That must mean it’s flea season.

They’re in the grass, on the sidewalk, taking rides on neighborhood dogs, in Toby’s fur, and on our clothes.

And the other day I found one in the bedroom. And another in our garage. We were under attack, and we were going to fight back.

I needed something that hurt fleas, but not people. I went to PetsMart and returned empty-handed. Then I decided to try diatomaceous earth (DE), which was well-reviewed per Google.

I found DE at both Buffalo Hardware and the other place on Bissonnet not too far from here. It came in a yellow nonsense-looking bag. I came home triumphant that evening, tired from the shopping. I told Matt to just apply it to one room–the little room–and see how he liked it.

The label on the bag apparently said something to the affect of “sprinkle liberally.” Matt, being pretty much a literal, liberal kind of guy, went to work pouring the dust (note I’m not longer calling it “earth”) out of the bag directly. Then he got a broom and, again as directed by the bag, worked the dust into the carpet.

He came back upstairs. “It’s a little dusty.”

“Well, yeah, it’s silica. Well, wait, how dusty?”

“It’s in the air.”

I ran downstairs. You know the pictures on the news this weekend of places like Crawford and Amarillo and San Angelo getting a dusting of snow this Easter weekend? That was our bed, the walls, the 1×4 baseboards, and oh, yeah, right, the carpet. It collected like a snowdrift on the corners of the bed frame.

We spent the night and Easter morning, red-eyed, vacuuming and running an ultra-HEPA filter.

We’re not even sure if the room had fleas to begin with.

You would think a chemical engineer and ecologist would know better, but I guess we don’t.

So, hey, anybody need some DE?