Slacking

I love Annie's dance teacher, Miss Amy. She is always happy and smiling, but in a calm, normal way, not a manic too-good-to-be-true way. She remembers Jemma's name and always gives her a stamp after class, too, for good measure. Yesterday, after the dancers came running out mid-class to change from ballet shoes to tap shoes, they ran back in and began spontaneously hugging each other while Miss Amy stood, holding the door open for the last stragglers. "When I see that, I think about how nice it must be for them to hug someone their own size," she said.

I like that perspective, because sometimes I forget that Annie and Jemma aren't just small people - they're coming at life from a whole different point of view than adults are. Things that are a big deal to me aren't even on their radar, while things I would never think to note matter greatly to them. I started thinking about how it would be to be THAT fascinated with everyone else's boo-boo's and Band-Aids, how satisfying it would be to say to myself on the way home from the mall, "And now I'll go home and have gum," and not need anything else for my own happiness for the rest of the afternoon.

We did go home, have gum, eat lunch, rest, and then played outside for the whole of what might have been one of the last gorgeous fall afternoons of this year. I look back at the pictures I took at the beach less than two weeks ago and I can't believe that there's SNOW in the 5-day forecast. Snow! So I sucked all the goodness out of last night: made what I will not-at-all-humbly say was The Best Pot Roast Ever, bundled the girls up for a long walk at dusk, "boo-ed" our neighbors by passing on a ghosty bag of treats after ringing their doorbell and hiding to watch them retrieve it, and watched the girls warm up in a "spooky" bath in the dark with a glow stick.

This morning, it's raining, and Jason took Jemma off to run some errands while Annie's at school. And instead of paying bills and washing the kitchen floor like I meant to, I'm up here on the computer with my coffee, letting my freshly-painted toenails dry, doing some on-line Christmas shopping, and getting down one more memory in the long string of moments I want to remember.