July 11

Last night I told John not to wake me up when he leaves in the morning. Just for the summer, I said. And I asked him to take the dog out before he left. I also told him he didn’t need to make me the tea he usually makes in the morning, which I thought would be a relief. This did not sit well with him though and he’s been jostling between the silent treatment and stomping around, ranting about unrelated topics every since. We are laying in the dark, him reading, me typing, in complete silence.

Today while Henry was in his guitar lesson and I was waiting for him in the lobby, two of the other moms started up a conversation next to me. Actually it was more like one of the moms took the other one hostage and held her by forced conversation. It went on for the entire 50 minutes, even after the nice one tried very politely to get away by saying she had to send some emails. The odd one, wearing a tye-dye t-shirt and a backpack filled to the gills, loudly told everyone within ear shot about the details of her life. It turns out that she is “visually inconvenienced” so she can use all the low cost bus and cab transportation to get she and her daughter around town. The daughter was diagnosed as autistic in 6th grade and as dyslexic in kindergartner. Her own visual impairment began 12 hours after birth when her visual cortex became starved for some reason. I guess this is the part where I feel bad for them and count my blessings but the truth is that I spent the first half of their conversation wishing the woman would just shut up so I could read in peace, and the second half transfixed by the horror of it all.

On the way home Henry pointed out a handwritten sign on a telephone pole that read “College Hunks (303) xxx-xxxx”. We laughed.

 

July 13, 2017

Gavin came in to our room yesterday evening and asked me to come get a spider that was in the living room. I had told him he could sleep on the couch, which for some reason loves to do. I told him I’d be up in a few. When I got up there five minutes later I found him hysterically crying and wandering around the kitchen. Apparently, the spider had weaved its way down and landed on Gavin’s pillow sending him into a full-fledged panic. I told him to go sleep in his own bed tonight and I went up to see about the spider. He was no where to be found. So I grabbed the pillow and brought it back down to Gavin’s bed. He wouldn’t touch it until I had changed the pillowcase, which I did. I assume that the presence of the cat made on his bed m feel safe enough to go to sleep, because when Henry came down and hour later Gavin was sacked out next to the cat.

My husband doesn’t understand why our kids are so afraid of spiders, but I kind of get it. When I was little I saw a show on TV about how insects are all around us, all the time. They climb on our eyelashes, and they live in our mattresses, sustaining themselves on our discarded skin flakes. I was at my dad’s house when I saw the show and that evening I did not want to get into bed. I swear I could feel the bugs crawling all over me and I began to itch. These aren’t bed bugs, mind you, these are just the mites that live on mattresses. I went to my dad, who thought I was being ridiculous and told me to go back to bed. “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite”, he said.