Me? I’m totally lethargic today. I had a whole list of chores to do and have I done any of them? Well, maybe about 25%, I guess. I didn’t vacuum. I *really* need to vacuum. At least the carpet in the front of the house. I don’t think I am ever going to vacuum the carpet in the back room again. Ever. That’s right. Because in a matter of weeks, there will probably be brand new carpet back there at long last. *That* I will vacuum. Occasionally. Not nearly as often as I should. I do hate to vacuum. I did clean out the microwave. It needed it. I can’t think how long it’s been. I did not do my homework. It’s okay. I’m not taking the class for credit. Good call, Kayak Woman. Somehow I knew I would be too mentally tired to spend my every non-working hour doing homework. Actually, I began the homework. I like to code and I usually jump at any opportunity to write code. But right off the bat, I got hung up trying to make some simple CSS positioning work the way I wanted it to. I just could not force my brain think it through and my fingers were not very cooperative either. Uncharacteristically so. But I have been spending so much time on a Windows machine lately that about two out of every three times I went to save my file, I would hit <fn><s> instead of <cmd><s> and then when I refreshed the browser, nothing happened. Of course. Because it was still interpreting the old, unchanged file. So I would flip back to TextWrangler and save the file and then refresh the browser again and depending on where I had managed to insert the wayward “s”, there would either be an “s” sitting out there in some weird place or I would have an even worse looking page because the “s” rendered some important piece of code useless. So I gave up and drug the GG out for a river ride.

Anyway, I was thinking about Lizard Breath’s comment from my old cabin post a couple days ago (see title). I remember very well being in the skin of that kid with the ugly glasses (I *hated* glasses) and sometimes I am amazed that I ever even *had* children. I mean, I was more interested at that age in running and jumping around like a mad person, swimming in virtually every kind of “summer” weather that old Gitchee Gumee could throw at us. Snowflakes on Labor Day weekend? Just lemme go get my bathing suit on. And I was, well, not a particularly nice person! Nosiree. I remember The Commander dragging me down to my friend Kathie’s cabin one time expressly to apologize for giving her a snake bite. I went through the motions of the apology but I didn’t really understand why it was such a horrible crime. I mean, I learned it from my older boy cuzzints. It hurt but it didn’t hurt *that* much. I thought she was just being a crybaby. And then there was a time that Pooh, through indignant tears, declared, “Well I *hope* you can be more *ladylike* at the 50th!” We were playing around in this brush pile that was around for a few years and had a couple of sort of room-like structures in it. (In much later years, the always observant Grandroobly advised me not to go back around there because, “That’s where Sam goes to crap.” He meant dog, not archaeologist, of course.) I can’t remember the argument at all. I just know that I got off the track somehow and wouldn’t quit. I’m sorry, Pooh! Although you have to know that Pooh has gotten me back for that many times over by being umpteen million times smarter than me and stealing whatever book I happened to be reading, FINISHING it, and returning it before I even noticed it was gone. The old biblioklept!

Anyway, I managed to survive to adulthood and through my twenties (and we won’t even talk about that era, okay?) and I had some kids! Two of them, as you can see. When I was pregnant with my first one, I can remember various people reacting in horror! *You* are having children?!? My own mother even expressed some reservations but not exactly to my face. She admitted that she had wondered aloud about my mothering capabilities to my doctor-uncle Don and he replied with something like, “You would be amazed at how well some of these young moms do.” In truth, as I have said before, I often wonder how the heck my girls grew up so gracefully with me for a mother. Maybe they could sense that I was, well, not very good at this parenting thing and just did an end run (or whatever you call it) around me.

Kids. Don’t worry too much about missing out. We all miss out on one thing or another by virtue of being born in one decade or century or another. You may have missed out on the community dinners. We have those, after a fashion, still. They’re just different now. You guys grew up with actual hot, running water. Not the kind of running water that Grandroobly remembers which was, “you grabbed a bucket, ran down to the lake, filled up the bucket, and ran back up.” And flushy toilets. Sheesh. I had to go out there and pee with werewolves and vampires and luna moths and whatever. And there was no damn door on our outhouse! And we have internet on the beach!!! When I was a teenager, the only way I could communicate with my crappy boyfriend in town was to go next door and ask to use my doctor-uncle’s phone. And that’ll be a whole ‘nother blahg entry someday.

If I could change anything, it would be to not have developers encroaching at the other end of the beach. Every time I even think about that, I feel like I’ve been punched. I still think it could’ve been stopped. I didn’t have the knowledge. Or the power. Or the money. Or the chutzpah. Or the stamina. I will go to my grave feeling infinitely sad about that. Sigh.

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