sugar water bee

a warm and sunny day.  maybe the last, if the forecast is to be given credence.  but even if you didn't look at the forecast, you've heard enough about denmark by now to know that warm, sunny days are not necessarily one of summer's staples.

in the morning i ride to the realtor's office to pick up the key to our soon-to-be house.  on my way home, i keep going, past our house, to the new place.  to test the key maybe.  or to see what it feels like to pedal past our current, lovely home.  when i get there, i have nothing to do besides walk through it for the third time.  i open all the cupboards and closets.  i see that the bathroom light has been left on.  by us?  i walk around, trying to decide what walls need painting and decide they all do.  i look out on the huge lawn.  like a teenager or a four year old who already knows he's in trouble, it flaunts its unruliness.  and like a parent in unchartered territory, i have some hesitations over the fact that the responsibility for putting things back in order is mine.

i looked at greg sharing his popsicle with william tonight and thought how strange it is that we're parents.  didn't we just meet?  and now we're trying to find the right way to raise not one, but two little guys to adulthood?

but that's parenting, not gardening.

in the afternoon i submitted two job applications and got a call from william's school telling me he'd been stung by a bee and wanting to know if he'd ever been stung before and did he have any allergic reactions to stings.  a picture of applying a baking soda paste to a sting, in the laundry room of our old house, flashes into my mind.  but no, that was for me.  or it was for him, but not a bee.  he used to get awful, gigantic mosquito bites.  no, he has never been stung by a bee, so i hope he's not allergic.  and he's not.  they apply sugar and water to the sting, which william really likes and swears by now.  "mama, the next time i get a bee sting, you have to put sugar on it."  he tells us how he tasted some of it and i have to wonder if that's part of the value of this home remedy.

and now it's close to ten.  and the opening ceremony of the olympics will be starting and airing on the one basic channel we do not get.  i have good memories of summer olympics.  as a kid at age 12 and as an adult at 28.  i must not have paid much attention to the ones before or the three in between, but now i am in the mood to see them and i can't figure out a way to do it.  beginning tomorrow, one of the stations we do get, will air olympic events, but i am a little bummed out that the lineup for the first few days consists almost exclusively of handball and badminton.  two very, very popular sports here.  not the ones i was hoping to see.  perhaps they'll throw in some more events for a little diversity later on.  i hope.