I’m sitting in a metal-sided building using a computer during a lightning storm. Is this bright?

And I’m still cold.

While I’m sitting here in the coffeehouse, I have another thought. With customers here talking to one another past the music, the clanging, the televisions, the newspapers in one hand and drink in the other, and the cell phone ringing in their pockets, is it true that we are becoming a society to need loud distractions to focus?  Is anyone here focused on anything at all?

I wonder that that suggests for our children, and for their future. Even, what does this mean for me?  Is quiet and peace passe?

Matt is wrangling C&D this morning while I have a chance to people-watch and catch up on all my half-written blog posts at the city’s newest, hippest Montrose coffee house. People–the hip people, the cool people, the with-it people–supposedly study here, date here, socialize here, write here. Sitting in front of my laptop occupying a tiny cafe table, eating a chicken-empanada-and-goat-cheese empanada, and listening to the thunder outside, I can pretend I’m pretty hip, myself.

But this morning, I’m failing at playing hip-mama-blogs-at-the-coffeehouse. In either case, it’s not working so well. The music is loud, and distracting. Two large flat-screen televisions (said as if anybody buys or even wants small flat-screen televisions) sit at each corner of the space, on mute but distracting us with the bright, blinking colors of a news channel. The music alternates between music I knew in fifth grade and music I should have heard sometime after, if I was cool enough. The music makes me rub my head. I’m feeling fuzzy.  The coffee people are making loud coffee-making noises with grinders and steamers and the cash register drawer. I am considering going back to bed.

It’s a little ironic. When we bought our house, we reasoned that we didn’t need an office because we had spaces all around to work, in bright, friendly, semi-social environments like coffee houses and sandwich shops and the cozy libraries. Now that I’ve bought the tiny-bedroomed house, with no office but the living room with the loud Sistine Chapel acoustics, I want an office with no-one else in it.

Maybe some of it is just the current state of my ears and eyes, observed in posts like this one about the buffalo upstairs.

Whatever, I’m going to sit here as long as I can stand, maybe an hour, trying to edit and write while I distractedly eye the weather man on the television, listen to the  squeaky-voiced lady lady ten feet away rave about her garbanzo quiche, and try to ingore that I’m sitting under an A/C vent and I have goosebumps on my arms in the middle of July.

Bits and pieces, today, that made me think.

Groceries? Above, a picture from my perch. While I was in the kitchen I saw him walking quickly and with intention down the street. The first thing I noticed: the Dos Equis at the bottom of the cart full of groceries. What I realized after I took the picture: the groceries weren’t bagged. It looks like he just raided someone’s refrigerator.

There are Fish in the Water.
Today we took C&D to Sea Center Texas. We needed out of the city.
They enjoyed the fish tanks, but David kept wondering where the water and bubbles came from. We weren’t prepared to answer that question. I mean, we were there to see the fish.
Later David wondered if Gordon, the biggest grouper you’ll probably ever see, ate bananas. Bananas?!?

Outside in the wetland exhibit we looked for bugs, butterflies, birds, and blooms. We saw some of all of those things, but what will they remember tomorrow, next week and next month? What, of these trips, really count? The sense of wildness? The sense of discovery? Or neither of those things? On the way home, they summarized their day and gave us an idea of their strongest impressions. Their recap: water, bubbles, crabs, octopus (so said Carmen, but we didn’t see any), lobsters (again, so said Carmen, but we didn’t see those, either), sharks, big fish, tractor with a scoop, bees drink juice (nectar), and birds.

George Ranch.
The highlight: sitting in the dogtrot cabin, experiencing the smell and feel of rain and the sound of puddles.

Construction Paper, Constructing Ideas.

What I like most about watching C&D cut and scribble is that while they do so, they offer a window into their thoughts, their preoccupations, and their interpretations of doing as we do (well, they try to do as I do).

When I showed C&D how to cut a fringe, they enthusiastically and purposefully cut fringes everywhere possible, on every scrap of paper.


Glitter AND glue . . . how amazing!

Another project, this with roll-on paint. Carmen took advantage of the easy dot motif:
But David scribbled and said he had made a potty (left) being used by Daddy (right).

Stickers:

Cubism?

This one has a belly button. Everybody has belly buttons, so must paper people.

At the playground the next school over from ours:

Uncle John, right before he left for the Navy.

Edited 21 October.

My mirror is full of notes, and I can’t find my notebook. So, let me here record some of this week’s notes:

Six months. Tomorrow, I’m six months post-op. I might celebrate tomorrow morning by watching C&D play “water mountain” with the hose outside. They mean water fountain, but maybe “fountain” is a strange, meaningless word, or maybe it’s too hard to say. Or maybe “water mountain” just sounds like a lot more fun.

Plant-shopping. Monday I took C&D to buy plants for our trampled, still-in-process landscaping project. C&D enjoy going to the garden center because once there we all take time off to ogle the water mountains. They’re almost as fun as the hose in the patio.

Ikea. Yesterday I drove to Ikea with C&D. I felt very proud of myself because to get there I had to merge on and off three different freeways (59, 610, and I-10). I felt even prouder when I found myself actually shopping at one of the city’s biggest stores without feeling nauseous or wishing I could clap my hands over my ears. Granted, the store was practically empty after a long holiday weekend, and I forgot to even look for two of the items on my list of four, but even pre-AVM I probably would have forgotten about the list in my notebook once I walked through the doors. Walking through Ikea is a little like Dante’s levels of purgatory: it’s hard to leave, and time stands still. Fortunately, I know all the shortcuts, and C&D, who are constantly marching forward, kept me on track.

Then . . . I fell asleep last night tired, dizzy-tired, from a week that already felt full and satisfying. Then, C&D woke up at four in the morning . . . and never went back to sleep. At five, we gave up and got of bed. At six, we were watching DVDs in the predawn semi-dark. At seven, we were giggling. And by eight, I thought I was going to melt into an overheated, overstimulated, overtired blob of mother-goo. I called Matt home from work, and I went back to bed. I slept all morning. I ate lunch, and then slept all afternoon. I ate dinner, watched a movie while I contemplated another nap, and now I’m getting ready for bed. After the afternoon nap, I thought I saw a pineapple on the bed. Matt had taken C&D to the co-op to get our shares, and while the bed wasn’t the best place for a pineapple, I didn’t think much of it. Later, while Matt was getting more groceries, I puttered around the house, and looked for the pineapple. I couldn’t find it. When Matt got home, he told me today had been his worst day in a long time. He listed his problems at work, starting with his shortened workday. “And then,” he said, “at Whole Foods a whole pineapple display fell down right down in front of me, and I swear I didn’t touch it!” “By the way,” I asked, “where was that pineapple you brought from the co-op?” “There was no pineapple,” he responded. “Why?” Oh, nothing. Nothing.

This post is probably full of errors because I’m tired, and probably because I’m tired this post grew from a list into a lecture on nothing. It’s a sign: back to bed.

And thanks to the Internet, I get to watch the juicy bits on Cycling.TV and via YouTube on the Tour de France site while I hide in my cave (right now, the master bedroom). I miss my bike. I thought this would be the year I would be back on it. Maybe I will; the year’s only half through.

These pictures are somehow representative of their relationship, at least for now. David is usually easygoing and eager to please, while Carmen would usually rather think she is the one in charge.And no, if you were wondering, David didn’t want to wear his SPF water/swim/beach suit, and he didn’t want to wear his shirt and shorts because he didn’t want to get them wet. He knows we shouldn’t go places “mek-ked,” but I suppose he considers the patio an exception.