Good days, bad days

I was almost annoyed as I trudged home from the bus stop tonight. There was this mom with her kids--they had walked down to the store from somewhere in the neighborhood. Like it was a fun field trip! Like they were slumming! I wanted to yell, "Hey! Some of us do this every day lady! Quit acting like it's a lark!" So I'm having a bad day.

Only not really. As I walked, I perked up. Found a stray tennis ball. Bounced it as I walked. It was kind of like meditation. By the time I got home, I felt better. I thought a little bit about what it must've been like when there was more time. Before people expected you to RESPOND TO MY TEXT RIGHT NOW!! Can you remember? I'm not that old, but I remember a time before answering machines. What in heaven's name did we do? Call back? Madness. What if we didn't get hold of someone on the second call? Call again? Really frickin' crazy.

I have three different e-mail accounts. I can access all of them on my iPhone. I can access the internet from the iPhone, too. You've seen the iPhone commercial, right? You can mow the lawn and cook dinner with it if you have the right app.

This allegedly makes me more efficient, but really it's a nightmare for me. My deepest character flaws are that I'm disorganized and get overwhelmed very easily. I suspect that I have some form of adult ADD, but I'm really too overwhelmed with all of the other crap I'm trying to manage in my life to look into it.

I like to imagine my forced car-less-ness as the universe's way of telling me to slow the hell down.

Earlier this month, the kids and I went to Mother's Day brunch at the nearby golf resort (not as ritzy as it sounds, I assure you). We went to the pool after that, and then strolled home. The boys collected rocks, and flowers. A in particular was fascinated with all of the different colors of pink that existed in the world. We were barefoot, wandering along the main road, not very purposefully. I felt a twinge of shame, like I was mistreating them somehow, or exposing some kind of dirty laundry. As in, call child protective services, that barefoot woman is making those children walk! Barefooted! But then A said,"I like walking. It's more fun than driving."

I'm not making this up.