'without the help of a margarita or ectasy'

As I write this, the sun's setting on the first real day of summer vacation, and as you can see, I toasted this period - also known as The First Day Of The Summer Vacation Where I Don't Tell The Boys No! - with a spectacular glass of wine from a bottle I picked up when the boys and I ran to the grocery store this afternoon. I'll note here that, when I said we were going to the store, the boys responded with a chorus of negativity, but oh, if mama don't play that way, neither do mama's boys, thank you very much.

Anyway, I think it's a rule if you are a mom and you blog, you're supposed to drink wine from time to time and I'm nothing if not a stickler for rules. I'm also quite the wine aficionado, which if you saw me swirling the inky depths of this red poured from the five dollar bottle from within which it aged, you'd definitely agree. Oh, yes, I quite think this wine bypassed the pesky barreling stage. Suffice to say, if I indulge in another glass (oh...hahahaha...IF!), I'll be a buck and a quarter away from leaning over, touching your thigh, and going on about how much I love you. I mean really, really love you. I put the cheap in frugal dating, my friends.

So you're probably wondering how this whole putting the kibosh on saying no business went today. It went excellent! The only time I so much as eeked out a sound that could've been confused with the word no was when, at 7:30 a.m., I was opening the front door to let the cool summer air in (wanna play in the sunshine? too damn bad because it's June in the Midwest and we barely broke 60 degrees today!) and there, his tan little face pressed up to the screen, was the neighbor kid. His grin and my scream was a damn near perfect re-enactment of Jack Nicholson's and Shelley Duvall's "Here's Johnny!" from The Shining. I then screamed some more as a means of suggesting there's no real reason to be anywhere near my house before 8 a.m., and more preferably 9 a.m., and yes, these ARE pajamas I'm wearing because some of us aren't vampires who rise with the sun, now why don't you scoot on home and come back later. Or call the house in 5 minutes because that's what he did. This? This is what I dread about summer vacation.

Other than that, there was a chorus of positivity flying through the air here today. Do you want to throw the football with me, Mom? You bet! Can we make Kool Aid, Mom? Totally! Want to shoot hoops with me later? You better believe it! Can I eat lunch at Ryan's, Mom? Why not?! Is it OK if we just have peanut butter sandwiches for supper tonight, Mom? Sure! I don't think I've ever gone more than 12 hours being this upbeat and positive! Do you want to draw with sidewalk chalk? Yes, yes, a million times yes!

So we did:

You're probably thinking, "Wow! That's a really impressive snail your young son drew, Fadkog!" but I must tell you, as it was told to me when I exclaimed at the beauty of this work, that this isn't, in fact, a snail, but an earthworm whose lower half has been smooched while making an ill-timed slither through a rock quarry (not pictured - the trailing entrails stretched out the length of the driveway) while coming home from a party for his friends (thus the wacky party favor antenna atop it's earthwormey head. The kid's got an eye, I'll tell ya. It's not all pens and penis arms for this talented master!

Anyway, in the unlikely event you've not figured this out yet, I don't really have a point to this post. I just wanted to drink wine and say stuff, so here's some stuff I've got bouncing around in my head:

• Why didn't anyone warn me I was going to be doing the silent ugly cry withing the first 15 minutes of UP?
• Furthermore, why didn't anyone tell me I'd weep tears of boredom while watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? By the time it was over, I felt 70 years older. If there was a lesson to that film, I missed it between all my whining. Real shame I didn't have actual wine at the time.
• As you can imagine, I'm a real joy to be married to.
• Not only am I a joy, but I'm not a heartless person, either. However, I cannot I stop laughing every time I watch Bret Michaels getting clotheslined at Sunday night's Tony Awards. Maybe now he'll consider the bandanna and cowboy hat atop the finest hair extensions Europe has to offer a wee bit of overkill if it impedes his vision. The man don't need nothin' but a good time and perhaps some extra-strength Tylenol. And apparently a few stitches:
  
  
  
• I woke up last week to find a bunch of ducks mingling with the usual assortment of rabbits and songbirds that have taken up residence in our backyard. There's not a body of water anywhere near my neighborhood, but the ducks hung out for quite awhile. It felt very much like I'd been transported into a Disney movie (minus the ugly crying), so I spent the rest of my morning on the lookout for a tribe of tiny whistling men or bitchy women wanting to curse me.
• I emptied backpacks last week when school ended. Each boy came home with more unused school supplies than I remember sending with them last fall. Glue sticks, unsharpened pencils, perfect markers. Elementary school desks are like weird Thunderdomes. One pair of kid-safe scissors go in, two pair come out. I think we're good through college. So why the hell am I buying $5 bottles of wine?
• I read in the news last week that Nelson Mandela will be celebrating his 91st birthday soon with a special concert where one of the headline performers will be...Jesse McCartney? (don't know who Jesse McCartney is? Check that link for a Jesse hit featuring Ludacris out! Or not. I mean, really...Luda?). I usually have a lot of words. I don't have many more than 'really?' for that one.
• The other night, my youngest son and I were hanging out in the kitchen and picking up after dinner when he paused briefly to bestow upon me the highest compliment he could for the meal I'd prepared for him - a burp. "Oh, that one? That one was one creamy burp!" he said with delight. Pretty impressive since we'd had barbecued hamburgers and homemade oven fries for dinner. Equally as impressive was how his belch made me blanch. Of course, I don't know why'd I'd expect anything less from a kid who can feel the stench of his shoes.

Oh, this post is long and boring. So very so. You know what's not boring? Cheap wine. And my love for you. Not necessarily in that order. Now, how about you go fetch me a refill, we love each other for awhile longer, and we agree not to be all freaky about it in the morning, OK?