The Cutest Little Thingies

August is off to a really rough start. We returned to Texas from California leaving perfect weather for crappy weather. From the start of the day until long after sunset, you step outside into a sauna filled with cat sized mosquitoes. I went down to water our tomatoes on our first day back, spent at most five minutes hosing them down and walked back into the house with twenty seven mosquito bites. Mattie counted them. On day three of our return home, our nanny and part time housekeeper quit. On day four, our closest friends in Texas moved to Louisiana (separate story to follow). On day seven, we all got a stomach bug. On day ten, our oldest son, who fell head over heels in love this summer announced that he is not going to college but instead is planning to move back to California where he will live with a friend who we are sure is on crank and find a job that will help him find himself. On day eleven, I ran out of gin. I have described my life in my profile as too busy, which is such an understatement that mocks the word busy. Our lives are slammed with demands all the time. Not that I am complaining. I love that we have a big busy family. The problem is that when our support system (nanny, housekeeper, pediatrician) starts to fall apart – the pediatrician was on vacation when the stomach bug came through the house and we had to deal with a mean, stupid, twelve year old replacement who was covering for her – we crack pretty fast. So it is now day twenty since our return from California. Yesterday, we discovered that our septic system was on the verge of failing because someone put too many cantaloupe seeds down the drain. And the fact that I love cantaloupe has made me the prime suspect. The septic had to be dug up and flushed. The backyard now looks like a garbage dump. But even in the midst of the last four weeks, which have sucked more than any string of weeks in recent memory, I can count on the twins to make me smile through my tears as I write a check for $3,000 to Austin Septic Contractors. They were sitting at their table drawing pictures and talking about their day. A close friend of my oldest son (the one who is upstairs tying a few necessary items into a bandana which he will then fasten to a stick before hitting the road back to Cali) is babysitting for the twins this week. She is sweet and kind and the girls really like her. Ella was drawing a flower when she looked up at Mattie and said, “When Carly told us we were the cutest little thingies she has ever seen, do you think she was lying?”