In the mornings, our household ambles. We saunter and shuffle, and get pulled into mini river eddies. We drink coffee for an hour, lay on the floor playing Legos, and put off the day’s start as our work-from-home and school-from-home selves watch the football-field-away school system buses rush kids to school.
We’re a bit out of the norm, and we like it that way.
Our oddities crop up in weird ways. At T-ball, once each kid took their turn fielding three balls and throwing them to first, they sat down cross-legged in the outfield. One after the other sat behind the next. A line of ten formed, all facing the infield.
Not Evelyn.
No siree. That girl does not know this line life. Instead, at about the fifth person in line, she sat across from them as if to start a hand jive or tea party. Soon, seeing the break in the line, others followed suit, and the line turned into a squiggly circle.
I am amidst firsts.
With the spring season upon us, I saw my first billowy butterfly, heard the hooting growl of a Great Horned Owl, and two green frogs have moved back into our DIY frog hotel. The mounds of fire ants are back, and with them come their miserable bites, leaving painful red blisters with pus-white tops.
I asked ChatGPT about the chirps I’m hearing. It’s night, well past birds’ beddy-bye time, and still, every minute or so, I hear seven extra-loud chickadee-sounding chirps. For a minute, I had my Merlin bird-identifying app open, but when nothing registered, ChatGPT came through with spring chirping frogs. And by golly, I think that’s right.
One month until Disney World! Yippee! I need to print out maps of the parks and get mini plans together, as well as get my parents’ and brother’s requests for items they can’t bring on the plane but that I could bring by car. Big beach towels, grocery food, squishy pillows — who knows?
I’ll probably ask ChatGPT to help me with this anyway.
No need to stress, Jaclynn. Love, Me
Going On 40 