The heat is on!

I had to turn on the heat today!

So much for summer. We’ve been doing all sorts of indoorsy things this week, including going through our toys to donate the outgrown ones and also throw out the broken, dog-chewed ones. Because now that we have Sham-Wow, we don’t really need all those excess toys.

The rain, thunderstorms, and high winds seem to have resulted in the boys actually losing their minds. They are crazy people. We went to the grocery store today to pick up a few items, and they were practically spinning around in giddy, Co-Op enhanced glee. The birthday cake display! The free samples of water! The sight of Guardian cereal! It was all cause for a hysterical case of the giggles. While I was in the check-out, I suggested they sit on a couple of chairs near the door. I looked up to see them taking turns putting their faces in the nearby garbage can and shrieking “I think my nose just died”. Then they would laugh. And laugh. A woman in the next check-out had a daughter of about six, sitting silently in her cart, drawing on a doodle pad.

When the boys were three and two, I was at the hair salon and another woman was there with her daughter, about Mark’s age, and she was getting a cut and colour, a two hour treatment. And her daughter sat quietly with her two dolls, her colouring book, her package of snacks. For two hours. Occasionally she would announce that she had finished her picture and was going to start another one. Or she would talk quietly to her dolls. I felt like I was viewing some strange native ritual in a foreign, exotic country. I could envision the scenario in which I bring the children along for a treatment and subsequently never get another appointment. I could just imagine them, burning themselves on the curling irons and shooting each other with the hair dryers, knocking over displays and spraying water on the floor. I could picture myself in this scenario, forehead furrowed, grey hairs popping up through the application of hair colour, constantly admonishing and grimacing. “Are the boys at your mom’s?” my stylist asks me at every appointment, at which question I nod thankfully.

I’m hoping for summer to reappear. Soon please.