Down

• It’s hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. I don’t like hot. I miss the misty Oregon beach (It seems a bit cooler today but still, too hot.)
• I’m getting increasingly annoyed by all the machinations around the debt ceiling issue. Very unhappy with my representative at the moment.

Ups

• A got a chance to clean the house for the first time in two weeks. I feel much better now.
• My tomatoes are starting to ripen. Like last year, I doubt they’ll be able to keep up with Calvin’s appetite but he’s very intrigued by eating tomatoes off a plant. Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain the “no, they’re not red enough” concept.

Calvin Moment

• I referenced this next anecdote on twitter a couple of weeks ago. However, it’s funny enough that I think it deserves it’s own mention. Calvin usually watches kid DVDs while I make supper. This time, the show had ended and he wanted me to start it at the beginning again. I told him no because it was almost supper time. He insisted but I kept declining. Finally, he became so upset that he literally stomped up the stairs, opened the baby gate at the top and then closed it, ran into his room and slammed the door. When he heard me coming up the stairs, the baby gate is very squeaky, he poked his head out of his room and yelled, “Go way! mommy! Go way!” while gesturing me frantically away. It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time. I’m sure his mood wasn’t improved by my helpless peels of laughter. I went back downstairs and waited for him to cool off, which he did fairly quickly, and then he wanted to cuddle.
• Calvin has started picking his own books. I took Calvin to Pajamara Story Time at the Carbon Valley library last night. Its theme was trains so he was entranced. On the way out, he veered and grabbed a book from the bookshelf and then demanded we read it immediately. Since it feels like sacrilege to deny such a request, I complied. We then checked it out and he’s asked me to read it three times since. There’s a segment in the book where Molly, the protagonist, is being carried away by helium balloons. Each time we come to this section Calvin tries to pinch her friends between his fingers and move them up closer to Molly to help her. I’m not entirely sure what he thinks he’s doing. He does have a sticker book so maybe he thinks he can peel them off the page and put them closer to Molly and everything will be better.
• This evening Calvin decided he wanted to go on an expedition on the path behind our house. I shrugged and hopped the fence to follow holding the book I was reading. Cat5 decided she wanted to join the walk also. When I was a teenager, I developed the ability to walk and read at the same time. So, 5 and Calvin walked side by side with me following slightly behind with my nose in a book. (5 follows us when we walk better than many dogs I’ve seen.) However, once Calvin got closer to the busy road beside our subdivision, I stopped reading to keep a better eye on the two small mammals. There’s a pretty wide grassy area between the busy road and the first houses in the subdivision so I let Calvin run around in circles giggling to himself. All was well until, for some reason, both Calvin and 5 headed straight for the busy street with the fun vehicles. I shoved the book under my arm, scooped up 5 with one arm and Calvin with the other and firmly started walking back toward the walking path. Neither mammal was pleased by my interruption of their run and protested loudly. Eventually, once I felt we were a safe(ish) distance away, I set them back down. I told Calvin that we needed to find “daddy” at which point we started our journey back home. However, it was a very long meandering one, very like the story of the Israelites in the dessert. I’d suggest going one way and 5 and Calvin would protest and run squealing in the exact opposite direction. (Well, Calvin ran squealing, 5 just followed Calvin.) Then I’d catch up and Calvin would reverse direction and run circles around me before falling down in the grass. It was exhausting but Calvin seemed to have a lot of fun.