blessed beyond measure

There's a fine line between pleasant and irritating, and my alarm noise straddles that line every day, though tending more toward the irritating. But this particular morning, in the first lights of day, it's a welcome sound. I have a much-anticipated date to keep. Through the weeding and the tilling and the watering and the pampering, I've known for about a week that today would be the day. Hair goes in a quick bun. It's finally long enough to stay that way, and despite the hour it's sticky and hot out. Throw on already-dirty clothes and early-2000s cheap sneakers now cracked and mud-crusty and smooth-soled. The garden could care less how I look. The newly risen sun peeks through the trees as I walk through the still-closed storm door that will someday get fixed. The hoe gets passed by, and instead my companion is an empty five-gallon bucket. I trudge through knee-high grasshopper weeds that have taken over the yard. "Lord, will you meet me here?...

Aden is eight now. It seems like it's flown by, and at the same time it feels like he's always been with us. The perfect complement to our family, he has such tenderness and compassion mixed in with a super healthy dose of boydom and humor. His energy level may have finally plateaued, but he is always thinking and rethinking, imagining and pretending. Much is the same. He loves dogs and cheese and swinging and airplanes and Legos and making pancakes. Doesn't care for reading or long movies or cleaning his room or board games. Minecraft is the latest obsession, and who can blame him? It's super fun. Until he beats me up with raw mutton or fills my house up with TNT. He can pretty regularly be counted on to eat a veggie or two. Salad is something he actually likes, though the ranch flows freely. Oh well, his tummy is seeing lettuce one way or the other. On green bean night, he gulps down four green beans, one at a time, in the manner in which one would take ...

The floor is dirty. Walk barefoot from the door to the table and examine the bottom of your foot. You will find at the very least all of the following: a leaf, a blade of grass, a dry mud clod, a bb, and water balloon shrapnel. Because it takes longer to vacuum than it does for the redirtying process, that would just be an utter waste of time. There's crap on the floor. Deal with it. Regulated screens. Oh thank goodness. The older the boys get and the more indulgences that become available, the more I resent technology. Sure, it has its perks. My employment, for one. But what it does to the minds and attitudes of my children, Lord have mercy. There is a place in me that positively aches over the innocence and creativity and active childhood life they will never know. At least summer offers a glimpse of it. Pipe dreams aplenty. The start of summer is a lot like New Year's. We make this long mental list of everything we're going to do, both work and enterta...