I have the little nephew this week, while my sister is at the Inauguration. We had a wonderful day here. It is unseasonably warm, gorgeous high blue skies and enough sun to cure my soul of that unendurable couple weeks of rain. Anand's friend Michelle Obama wrote to him, suggesting we do the National Day of Service. Good thing she reminded us. We went to a shoreline clean-up, where we took out invasive fennel bushes. This was nearly perfection for my men. Fennel stands are mostly light dried sticks, and three years old Miles thought that everyone had come to their senses. Finally, everyone in the world understood the importance of carrying sticks around.* Anand loves fennel, so hacking around in a fennel-scented world was good by him. I liked watching them be happy, and seeing Maria and Scott and their babygirl.
Today went well, and I am establishing my strategy for the week. My strategy is the path of least resistance. I am fighting no fights this week. Not cleanliness, not propriety, not nutrition. It will be mac and cheese three meals a days. My sister will come home to find her malnourished son using an outdoor voice indoors, wearing shoes in the house and saying bathroom words in any room of the house. Fortunately, he loves baths, so she won't have to scrub a week's worth of grime off him. He's mostly cheerful and shout-y, a little shaky without his mom. That means I'm getting more than the usual cuddles, now that I'm the familiar grown-up. I like it. I think we're gonna do fine.
*That's how I feel about this video, when people jump in at fifty seconds. That's how I would feel. At last people are dancing to good music on bridges in public. Finally the world has righted itself, and the inexplicable lack of dancing on infrastructure has been set right.