Every day now, for the past two weeks, Scott has been dropping L. off on campus on his way to work. I meet the van in the parking lot by the college chapel, and L. springs out, happy, and usually ready to start telling me about his latest idea/obsession/book he read. We walk the path to my office, and he waits in there, surfing the internet, or reading, while I make photocopies and do odds and ends to get ready for the next morning's classes.

Yesterday afternoon T. and I sorted through the big plastic bin where I keep all the bin-worthy school work and art projects from the school year. You do know, of course, that it's impossible to keep everything your child makes, no matter how much the hoarder in you wants to. At the start of each school year I buy a large, flat, plastic bin--long enough to hold large posters and oddly-sized artwork. When I pull a particularly charming or wonderful or brilliant piece of school work from her book bag, I put it into the bin.

In the middle of our three-day weekend, L. woke up one morning and told me his throat hurt.

"Oh no!" I said, the strep throat alarms going off in full swing. I am terrified of strep throat. While it has never affected my kids too badly, it knocks me flat out.

"Well," L. said matter-of-factly, "my throat has been hurting for weeks now."

Yesterday morning I sat on the low, stone wall at the local park where my son's school holds their end-of-year talent show. I was early--45 minutes early, to be exact. But I dropped L. off and rushed over to the park so I could get the best seat--the same spot where we have parked ourselves now for five different years, and watched all the kids perform songs and dances, and where I have always--every year--smiled and clapped through that big lump in my throat. Scott was going to be a little late, since he had to drop T.

Our toaster gave up the ghost this past week, and on Saturday we threw it out. Then T. and I watched The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars--it seemed fitting, somehow.

"But what if the toaster feels sad?" T. asked me after the movie was over. I thought about the toaster, languishing at the bottom of our green garbage bin in the garage. I had cursed the toaster several times last week when it burned waffle after waffle, and even set off the fire alarm one weekday morning.

I was going to try a new recipe/experiment yesterday, and then post about it for today. Last night, while I was falling asleep on the couch waiting for Law & Order: SVU to start, Scott and I flipped channels and watched the end of Man v. Food. Have you seen this show? In a nutshell, super-eater Adam Richman travels around to famous food spots and then tries to set records by downing massive amounts of food within a certain time limit.

Last night, at bath time, T. was fussy. She's rarely fussy, even when she's at her most tired she tends to get punchy and silly, not fussy. But last night I bent over to shampoo her hair and she kicked her legs out in protest and caught me square in the face, soaking me with water.

I was a little mad. Well, really kind of mad.

Mama then became some kind of swooping alter-mama figure, all crazy-haired and glittery-eyed and angry.

On Saturday morning, a spectacular day by all counts: cool like a March day, but the sunshine was warm--summer sun, not early spring sun--I sat on the back porch with my dad and watched the kids painting. My dad brought out a few blank “canvases” for them (pieces of flat boards you can buy from Home Depot—they’re really meant to put under vinyl flooring, but my dad buys them, cuts them to canvas size, and they are perfect for painting on) and the kids were creating abstract art masterpieces. I watched L. dab on stripes of green, blue and orange paint. He gave T.

I sat in a workshop session yesterday, one that started a little too early for my taste. But still, I was there, right on time, early though it was. One of the speakers, however, was not. He was running late, we were told. When he finally did show up, breathless and a little rumpled looking, he made several jokes about being on "dad duty" while his wife was out-of-town. He'd managed to get the kids fed, and off to school but he conveyed--willingly and in a comic way--that this had been a major feat on his part. The audience laughed along with him.

If I can Mommy brag for a moment, L. made the most wonderful Mother's Day haiku for me at school. When he gave his poem (set against a backdrop of blue and green and purple watercolors) to me at breakfast on Sunday I was touched and surprised and the tears sprang to my eyes immediately. I have come to expect lovely cards and pictures made at school from T., but I haven't received anything like that from L. since he was in first grade.