Ice Cream Saturday

I look at Orion asleep on his bed which I stacked on top of the two remaining boxes in the house.
"I want to go do something."
No response.
"Want to go get ice cream? Then we can go for a walk?" He lifts his head.
I begin texting friends, seeing if anyone else wants a nice social distance walk and evening ice cream. Earlier today I snagged a coffee around 2, sucked it down and then fell asleep for an hour. The logic baffled me but as the night progressed I was feeling more antsy than sleepy.
"Well, no one wants to go. How about we go together?"
He flips off his bed and I trick him into his collar and off we go, as usual, with his chorus of barking the whole way down the now quiet street.
Friendly's is mildly busy. I loop my face mask over my ears and stand patiently with Orion who is thrilled to be outside sniffing poles, peeing on mulch and waiting to see what comes next for our impromptu outing.
"Hi, can I have a scoop of cookie dough with peanut butter topping?" The ladies all crowd the window to ooh and aw at Orion. "He's so handsome!"
"Thanks!" I notice in the window a drawing with the words "Doggy Ice Cream $3.18".
"Oh! Can I have one of those too?" I ask.
"Sure, it's just vanilla ice cream with two dog bones," the cashier says.
"Sounds perfect."
I collect our cups and we sit on the side of the mulch, me making Orion sit before diving in.
It's pretty quiet as the sun is gone and COVID dominates the usual summer crowd. I'm feeling happy to be there with Orion who is oblivious to my mood, going to town on his cup, even as I reach to pull out the mulch that sticks to the vanilla ice cream.
"This is a good night," I tell him. And just smile as his head pops up to temporarily assess my ice cream. Some things never change.

Evening snack party

It's late by my standards but I just returned from a meeting and I'm all energized because it was a fun one. Orion meets me at the door, his collar jiggling as he exits the dark room where Marisa is already asleep.
"Hi buddy," I say, propping the door open for a last night bathroom break. He wanders onto the deck, waiting to be hooked to his lead then does his business while I wait for him then off we go into the kitchen.
"What do we have that I can eat for dinner?" I ask him, as I peer into the brightly lit fridge. I pull out a three day old bowl of pasta and pop it in the microwave. We are moving at the end of the week so the grocery supply is quite pathetic.
"Up, up," I say, gesturing to the couch for Orion to join me in the quiet house. He hops up, butt on the edge, a pile of drool slipping from his lips beside me as he stares in rapt attention at my bowl of pasta quickly disappearing.
Then, after clearing my bowl and the one piece I left him, off he trots, returning with the lid of his food kong... like, "Hey Ma, I want an evening snack too!"
"Okay," I say, and we settle in to another evening snack, him with the kibble, me with the yogurt. Evening snack parties are so much better with the company of your best friend dog.

Day 1 of school

24 tomatoes, 1 pill container and 1 glass down. The boy doesn't like the fact we both have gone back to work. 

Today I rushed home because I wanted to spend my time with this guy. We went for a long walk around the neighborhood, saying hello to the cows, looping down the dirt road and back home to rest on our porch. I think today I was forgiven for the school-day violation.

Tennis

A hot summer evening. A two hour hike in the morning. Six forty-five on the clock.
"You want to take Orion across the street to the tennis courts?" Marisa asks.
"Sure! How about we play tennis too?"
The three of us waltz out the door. I wait with Orion, poised in the middle of street, two feet on the yellow line as Marisa digs in her trunk for tennis balls.
No cars in sight.
Such a different experience than living in Easthampton, where the cars rush by, one after another. Thunk thunk. Thunk thunk over the loose sewer lid.
Shortly Marisa pops up, the champion with two more tennis balls. I've since crossed the street, and turn to see her crossing as well, distracted for just the moment Orion needs to make a lunge for the spilled Ramen Noodles cooking on the pavement.
"NO!" I shout and then think for a moment about how it has been so long since I've had Ramen and isn't it too bad I don't have a pack to cook up upon return?
He is munching away at the bit he snagged and I'm less interested in the idea of pulling his jaws open and shaking it out so I let him have his night time snack.
Across we go and Orion trots happily to the warm-up board where often he and Marisa play in the mornings. She hits the ball, he makes a leap for it. If he gets it, he brings it to her, dropping it at her feet and the process begins again. If he misses though it becomes a keep away game between him, the wall and Marisa.
"Not this time buddy. It's real tennis and you can chase down the balls," I say winding up for my first strike.
I have played tennis during one period of my life. One period. High school gym class, 10th grade. Individual Sports and Games. Can't remember the rules. Can't figure out how hard to hit the ball. The balls go sailing over the net, past Marisa and a little yellow dog is off running after them.
A good way to round out the day.

And he's at it again, selectively.

I step up onto the sunny porch, exhausted from swimming and looking forward to the quite afternoon just myself and the boy as Marisa has gone off to class for the day. I open the door to a sheepish looking boy. Dropping my towel, I examine the shreads of plastic littering the floor. Puffs marshmallow packaging is slowing being pieced together. Oh no. The means s'more fixings. I round the corner, a Hershey's chocolate bar is sitting fully intact on the kitchen floor. Internally I thank the higher ups that he didn't eat that one, but there should be...
three more are sitting still packaged on the couch. Okay... so for some unknown reason, first time in his life he didn't eat something that was available to him.
"ORION!!"
He hasn't followed me into the kitchen.
More marshmallow packaging litters the floor.
"Are you kidding me??"
The pantry door is swinging open.
A spagetti jar lolls about on the floor. Intact.
So the boy is five and a half now. I look at him. He ducks his head and crawls under my studio desk.
"You're lucky it's me that found this and not Marisa. She'd have killed you," I say as I begin to scrub half chewed marshmallow stickiness off the bottom of my shoe.
"You know I was looking forward to just resting and recouping after swimming. Now I've gotta mop the floor," I'm muttering as I start picking up all the pieces of plastic. I'm wondering just how many marshmallows he may have consumed, 15? 20? I think we had all of five out of the bag. Maybe he was too full of marshmallows to bother with topping it off with chocolate.
I close up the pantry.
So much for feeding him rice this morning so he would quit having diareaha after eating his entire auto-feeding jar of food...

Summer is almost here

This little guy has some things to say about being on the far side of the river bank away from where the other humans and their off leash dog are... What he is ignoring is that his mama was so kind to grab him after school for a swim and some quiet time at the riverbend where we could sit and listen to the rushing river and watch the tall trees across the way cling so carefully to the cliff side.

Morning snuggles

This is how it goes most mornings when I can't sleep and don't want to wake Marisa... Orion and I move to the couch which is too short for so tall a girl but we make it work for some snuggle time.