Y'all, I am sore as get out today. My upper back feels like a finely delineated landscape of stiffly tender peaks and mesas. I think it was the spontaneous till-and-toss through the compost pile I jumped into yesterday when I found my pitchfork. I've neglected my pit, and roots had taken hold and spread, deep in the pile, tethering it firmly to the earth below. I dislodged about four pounds of roots, picked out and discarded the identifying labels -"94025" Hass, for example; (I'm always too lazy to peel them off out the outset)- that had come unstuck from now decaying avocado skins, orange peels and so forth, and tidied up the border around the whole thing. It felt extremely productive, but then I went to the gym, and now I'm just tight, like a board. T made the greatest marinade for the chicken last night, and our fajitas were scrumptious. Lime, arbol chiles, freshly ground cumin, salt, a dash of soy...Perfect. I'd also bought some extremely cool red-yellow corn so made a salad with that. After a lovely dinner, I actually read about 50% of the Sunday paper which was positively dreamy and then called it a day.

This morning I awoke with a burr in my butt to clean my closet, an onerous, 100 years kind of task that I've put off for oh, about a year now. 20% of the way in, I was psyched. Now 50% done, I'm dragging and have managed to clear but eight square inches on my bed. I'm wedged and perched in that little spot, looking with some dismay at the flood of hangers and clothing still to be rehung or tossed.

Know what? School starts tomorrow- officially less than 24 hours from now. Who's excited? This girl!! And the boys too! Oliver is primarily excited about his new backpack which is kinda funny, and Jack about being a 2nd grader.

2nd grade seems very big and grown up to me. I remember 2nd grade clearly. Ms. Gay Aday was my teacher (it always killed me that her name rhymed), there were two "mean girls" in my class, Janie Hays and I loved to play kiss chase with Charles Fenet (who we called Chopsticks Fenooty even though we had big crushes on him) at recess, and I still hadn't cut my hair like Mary Lou Retton (a horrible decision I'd make in 3rd grade). As Jack has already cut his own hair, perhaps we can cross that experience from the list.

Funny aside, when J cut his hair earlier this summer, I suggested that it looked vaguely serial killer'ish. Though it didn't occur to me then, of course he didn't know (thank god) what a serial killer was. He later told my mom that "Mom is so silly because she said I looked like a cereal killer. Like I kill Raisin Bran or Puffins. HAH!" Isn't that priceless?! I've never corrected him.