Good Times

So today I went in and got my hair cut. It was at the cheap place, you know the one, where you don't need an appointment, and you don't have a special person who always cuts it just so and you ask for him/her by name. It was just the hey, here's my fifteen bucks or whatever a haircut costs, please don't make me want to leave here with a paper bag on my head.

I didn't leave with a bag of any sort on my head, and in fact I'm pretty happy with my short cut. I tried to take a self-portrait to post, but I was having some trouble with the exposure so close to my head. Here's the best I got, which really shows you absolutely nothing except that I did also dye my hair a reddish color which is honestly not too different from the color it was before.

So as I was sitting in the chair, forcing myself to engage in small talk with a very nice but compulsively apologetic young stylist (she kept reassuring me, over and over, that it was going to be fine, while I just smiled the whole time saying I trusted her and it's just hair and whatever), I looked in the mirror and saw a familiar face in the chair behind me. It was a student, or almost. Actually it was the daughter of our office manager, who will be a sixth grader at our school very, very soon (but not so soon that I need to start panicking or anything). Long and convulted parenthetical way to say that I ran into the office manager from school at the haircut place.

Then, there was the question, the one that always sort of throws me. "What have you been up to this summer?"

Hmmm. Nothing? Doesn't seem acceptable.

I wrote a novel. That gets a weird smile, like wtf were you doing wasting this beautiful weather scribbling away at some novel, and so now what, will you be getting it published soon?

We went to a parade, and friend Shana took this adorable picture of Jabber and her daughter, Gwen.

The kids and I also took a little road trip on Saturday and visited David's parents for the day. That was fun. Here is Jabber and his Granny enjoying the cool pond, feeding the coy. And here are two sequential pictures of Monkey sitting in the wonderful high chair that Granny's sister painted for her when her first grandchild was born. I had to post both because they show two of my favorite faces that he makes.

Thoughtful and angelic

Mischievous as can be

So...now we have my summer boiling down to writing a novel (which I admit to being hugely proud and happy about this), seeing a couple parades, and getting a haircut.

Truly, our summer has been so nice--full of lots of cuddling, wagon rides around the backyard, library storytimes, small road trips, afternoon naps, family walks around the neighborhood, and other quiet pleasures. Not really much for exciting conversations at the hair salon, but satisfying in their own way. And tomorrow Jabber and I are going to take a drive up to visit our good friend Mary at her summer home. Good times.