(I guess I like photos of ice cream.)

Somehow, today came out even. She sang “Three Little Birds” while we made our beds, after a long undercover snuggle-up. I made a list of dinners for the week. I drank my coffee warm and the egg yolks came out medium-soft and she ate everything on her plate. I did not take personally her thrashing protestations over going with me to the grocery store.

I did forget to make the sushi rice and nearly forgot ballet lessons and that blue laundry basket is still sitting by back door, full. Which brings to mind yesterday’s photo of the fox caught in his cottage under a laundry landslide … there is a lot of laundry. Laundry and ice cream.

I spent my earning hours wisely, clickety clicking my way through an assignment, efficient. Every now and then, I get a project that gladdens me. That surprises me in its organized and clear direction, its ease.

Just now, I can hear the pained tones of a Mary Poppins audiobook drifting from the treehouse windows. Across the counter, soft shine of Pyrex bowls, upside down and drying. A tiny pot of lemon balm in the window. (It used to grow like a weed in my childhood backyard, that and mint. I would pick them both in bunches and tie the stems with twine, hang them upside-down in my dusty playhouse to dry. Pretending to be an herbalist witch, mason jars filled with water from the hose, making murky teas.)

A stack of receipts and paper scraps tallies everything we owe to friends, a nasty little snowball of small, incidental, but personal IOUs. I am forgetful when it comes to three things: listening to voicemail, paying people back, thank you notes. Anything that involves phone calls or stamps. A lifelong wicked splinter in my personal integrity.

Turns out, she can blow a party noisemaker with her nose.

It’s very quiet. The house hums softly–refrigerator, cat purr, the spouse pacing through the house to check the chickens in the box in the laundry room, lock the front door, look for his phone. It’s dark and time for bed. I tucked her in with sticky, unbrushed hair but managed to wash the mud from her feet. Now she’s loose-limbed and warm to the touch, deep asleep.

All day the light shifted between sickly orange to clear and bright. Uneasiness, everywhere. It’s hotter than it should be and the fitful breezes smell like smoke. The city shut off the surface water supply, everyone is on well water for now. Six thousand acres burned. We’ll sleep with the windows closed.

I’m participating in a creative challenge by the new-to-me and very lovely writer/artist Christina Rosalie. There’s only one thing to do, to soothe the itch in my fingers that begs me back to the writing board every day — write. This will be a fun kickstart. And maybe it will finally force me to store my 3,233 photos somewhere other then my phone, for the love of god.

The 5/5 Creative Challenge has two pieces: five snapshots that represent your day, five minutes of writing words that represent your day. You can find more detail and read about Christina’s recently PDX-transplanted family on her blog. Meantime, here’s my first go …

She always asks me back for one more hug. Mama, mama, huggie. She still says that word, even now at seven-almost-eight. (She still loves her own freckles, still eats noodles with her fingers.) I escape her bedtime room, leaving daddy on the floor in the dark to talk her into dozing. Out here, the dishwasher is shushing and through the patio door I can see a stray fork on the picnic table, forgotten when we cleared dinner. It’s warm enough to eat outside, most nights, now.The juniper are stamped out of the dusk sky. I keep thinking, in two days it will be summer vacation and we will wake up at 9:00 and sometimes eat popsicles for breakfast. In front of me are packets of wildflower seeds, waiting. For mulch, for me.

Our first CSA bounty arrived from the valley, smelling of mud and honesty: small potatoes, carrots, lettuce, kale, garlic, a massive onion, a little treasure box filled with dark red strawberry gems that we sliced, sluiced with cream, and ate immediately.

By the kitchen door is the blue laundry basket piled carelessly with towels and the crumpled picnic blanket from our weekend day at the river, with friends from out town. I miss them. I miss their girls and the full, right feeling of a flock of children wandering through my house, someone needs to pee, someone is hungry, someone won’t eat that, someone is bored. I love all of that delightful mess, like a mother hen. The oldest made us meringues from scratch and they tasted like toasted marshmallows. Which reminds me, somewhere we have weird vanilla taffy candies from Chinatown. It’s 9:49, see. This is when I scrounge the back corners of the pantry for hidden sweets and wonder if he’s fallen asleep in there, on her floor, again. The cat (the fat one) scratches on the glass to be let in for the night.