a dim hot airless room

     I hate a dark house, so much so that even on bright sunlit days I like to have lights on in whatever room I'm working in at the time.  But as the temperature outside climbs to over a hundred degrees again today, I've been walking around the house turning off lights and closing blinds. Doing this has reminded me of my favorite opening line from one of my all time favorite novels, Absalom, Absalom!, written by William Faulkner.  

     "From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that – a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them."


     After reading some less than stellar books this spring, I've decided to pull from a list of old favorites for my summer reading, beginning with Absalom, Absalom!. And because using a Kindle app to read anything written by William Faulkner seems less than kosher, I'm going to make my way down to my cool dark basement and root out my well-worn, note riddled copy of Absalom. What else is there to do on a day when the temperature is expected to rise to 108 degrees?

Shotgun!

Riding in the front seat of the car.
June 2012 

   A few weeks ago, Joel and I divested ourselves of the trusty blue minivan  in favor of a much cuter but still family friendly automobile.  As I left the dealership that afternoon and headed to pick up the kiddos from their last day of school, I was struck with the idea that it might be fun to ask  Owen if he wanted to ride home in the front seat of the new car rather than in the back seat (where he'd been riding for his whole life, at least as far as I knew).  The back story to my "ride in the front seat" idea was that I was a bit concerned about Owen's reaction to getting rid of the big blue minivan.  He loved the minivan with its automatic sliding doors and DVD player and nifty third row seat that allowed him to ride far far away from the clutches of his middle row riding little sister. He also said things like "You can't sell the minivan!" every time he heard Joel and I talk about selling the minivan. He's a person who gets attached to things. All of that aside, I was feeling pretty confident that my offer to ride in the front seat of a car for the very first time was going to be met with such joy and happiness that he wouldn't care that the minivan was on it's way out. Willing the glass to be half full, I dove right in to the conversation.

me: "So, what do you think about the new car?"

Owen: "It's nice.  Did you sell the minivan?"

me: "Not yet, but isn't the new car pretty?"

Owen: "Sure. Are we still selling the minivan?"

me: "Yes. Hey! Do you want to ride home in the front seat today?

You've never ridden in the front seat of the car before!"

Owen: "Okay, but you know dad's been letting me 

ride in the front seat of his car for awhile, 

usually when we go to the comic book store."

PAUSE

Owen: "Do we have to sell the minivan?"

    

     Fast forward a few weeks to yesterday afternoon. Sarah and I were picking Owen up from camp and as he walked past us and headed across the parking lot to the car, he turned around and shouted back, "Shotgun!". I'm pretty sure there's not a place to record "First Time Baby Calls Shotgun" in his baby book, but there should be.  And I know parents say this all the time (mostly because it's true), but I'm sitting here today wondering where does the time go? It really was only yesterday that I was buckling and unbuckling his little self into and out of his Britax carseat.  (Sigh). And now he's riding shotgun. (Sigh again). 

"Stickers" Vallejo in his Britax Carseat in 2003.
On his way home from his first trip to Walt Disney World.
If you look behind him you can see that we were
literally traveling with everything we owned.
It's shocking how much stuff we thought one baby needed.

   As for Sarah, don't think she's been left out of the new car fun. My first stop after leaving the dealership was at Target where I purchased a brand new booster seat just for her.  A few days ago, she took it upon herself to drag the booster seat from her traditional perch behind the driver's seat over to Owen's old spot behind the passenger seat. At first I thought she might just be looking for a change of scenery, you know, to see what things looked like from the other side of the car. It wasn't until yesterday afternoon that I realized there might be an additional motivating factor behind the move. We were about halfway home when Owen said - "Sarah, will you please stop kicking my seat. You're driving me crazy!" And that made me happy, because as fast as their childhoods are flying by, there's a bit of comfort in knowing that the more things change, the more they stay the same - at least where little sisters are concerned.

'

Sarah (18 months) and Owen (4 years) at

 Uncle Vic & Aunt Stacey's wedding in August 2005.

Riding in the back seat of the stroller and

taking obvious joy in pinching her brother's ears.