In the carpool line at T.'s school yesterday, L. suddenly broke into song. The lyrics were a little catchy, and set to "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz:

I throw my Xbox at my mom sometimes

Singing ay-oh, buy me Halo

"Where'd you hear that song," I asked, curiously. 

B., a boy in his German class, apparently set the entire "Dynamite" song to alternative lyrics (and very clever ones, too), and L. couldn't get it out of his head. He sang the song over and over again, all through the carpool line, all the way home, all through Blockbuster when we ran in there to check on a movie I needed for class, and all the way back home.

I was pretty tired of the tune by then, I tell you.

Later, when he had retreated to his room after homework, I sat with T. at the kitchen table while she finished up her math. She paused at one point, pencil in hand.

"You know Mama," she said. "It's funny to hear L. singing, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Instead of yelling in the car," she said. "It's funny that he's singing, instead."

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We had an amazing dinner/evening with friends on Saturday night. It took nearly 10 years of living in North Carolina before we met friends we really connect with as a couple--and as a family. I have many good friends I connect with just wonderfully on my own, and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but I think you know how rare and fulfilling it is to find those couple friends--you're good friends with the wife, your husband is good buddies with her husband, and your kids actually get along and play together--if not perfectly every time--perfectly enough.

My friend also gets L.--in the ways that count. Knowing his issues with food, and his love for all things lo mein, she planned a dinner that was truly custom made for him, but that was also a great dinner idea for any get together involving kids: a fix-your-own vegetable lo mein bar. She cooked up pans of cabbage and fresh basil and sprouts and set up two large serving bowls of cooked lo mein noodles. She also had small bowls filled with all those lo mein staples: mini corns, water chesnuts, fresh sprouts, and more just-picked basil from her garden. Bottles of soy sauce and spicy chili sauce lined the counter and she poured cans of lychee fruit into a large pyrex lined with ice cubes for a refreshing accompaniment to the meal (very welcome if you doused your noodles with too much red chili sauce). The kids each started with a bowl of noodles, and then "built" their lo mein just the way they liked it. For the first time in I don't know how long, L. not only sat at the dinner table with everyone else but he ate a large bowl of lo mein, washed it down with root beer and declared it "the best dinner ever." She sent us home with a large ziploc bag filled with cooked noodles, and he polished off two more bowls for lunch yesterday.

At the start of Day One of faculty development workshops yesterday we did an ice-breaker activity. Everyone  in the room had to organize themselves into groups based on their birthday month but—here was the one rule—you could not speak to anyone while doing it. After a few chaotic minutes, the groups were all set and I looked around at my August crowd and felt surprised, for some reason, by how many people have August birthdays.  Everyone in my group seemed to have that special glow about them, too—that glow you can’t help but wear when it’s your birthday month. No one, wisely, asked anyone how old they are turning this month.

My fingers are double crossed so I don't jinx things, but Night One of the Power Down Plan worked pretty smoothly. L. made some grumbling noises about how powering down his computer each night would damage it over time, but he shut it down on his own. I fully expect it NOT to go smoothly some point down the road, since L. has trouble grasping the impact rules, etc. will have on him in advance, so we're keeping the hatches battened for the time being, and treading carefully.

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Last summer, right around this time, I became obsessed with cherries. But up until yesterday,  hadn't bought a single bag of cherries. I did eat a handful of the ones my neighbor brought to the pool the other day, and they reminded me that I have been neglecting cherries lately, in favor of apricots and lots and lots of watermelon. There's only so much you can do with watermelon, though, whereas cherries are filled with possibility. 

It's been cold here this weekend, and snowy and icy, too, which is fine by me. I think I can stand one more snow storm, or "snow event" as they call it around here, and then I'll be about ready for winter to be done, and for spring to begin to move in, slowly but surely. I never paid as much attention to the seasons as I do now that I'm a parent. In fact, I remember the first fall that L.

On Wednesday, when T. came home from school, she told me gleefully that the teacher said it would be very cold on Thursday and Friday. "Very cold" around here, of course, means 58 degrees. The first day the thermometer dipped into the low 60s this fall my students showed up to the morning classes in their winter parkas, rubbing their hands and exclaiming over the cold. I winced, because to me, real cold weather is what we used to get in upstate New York, and what I often miss, crazy though that might sound.

Someone asked me my age recently (how could they?) and I told them I was forty. The word still doesn't roll off my tongue well, and I still wince when I say it. In my mind I'm still stuck somewhere around age 25, or maybe 26, at the oldest. Sometimes I'll have flashes of my nine-year old self, too, or me at sixteen. I'm sure, twenty years down the road, I'll think about forty-year old me and wonder how I was ever bothered about being that age--forty will seem so much younger, of course, than sixty.

When I was a child and we'd make the trek to Greece in the summer to visit our grandparents, my favorite part of the arrival was rushing into the bedroom my sister and I shared when we were there and finding, like lost treasure, the books my grandmother kept on the shelves above our beds. It was an odd collection of novels for children--my favorites being the "Famous Five" books by little known British writer Enid Blyton. Oh, how I longed to be tomboy George and to have a faithful dog companion like Timmy!

Porshai did the "pee-pee" dance while we waited in the cold and nearly empty subway station.

When Porshai had to "go" where there was no bathroom I told her to distract herself with dance.

A homeless man who visited our church noticed me.

"Hello," he said.
"How are you?" I asked.
"I'm hungry. Can you get me something to eat?"

Usually I'd buy a sandwich but I had no money.
I invited him home. "I can fix you something to eat."
The wind whipped against us as the subway train arrived.
Porshai danced and sang, "Mommy, I still have to pee."

This past weekend was rewarding, yet jam-packed and exhausting. It was one of those weekends when you know you've over-scheduled your family, but you just couldn't help yourself when all the planning took place, because it all sounded so fun and doable. We started off the weekend with Box Day on Saturday morning. It was a huge success, as far as T. and I were concerned.