Around mid-day, I was feeling terrific. I was happy and rested and just generally having a good day. Right now, I feel bitchy and crabby and grumpy. I'm also itchy and achey. I feel like a bunch of Snow White's dwarves or something. Over the past few days, we've gone out in the evenings for walks. The skitters have been eating me alive and it's driving me nuts. The bug bites seem to have turned me into a klutz as well as an itch factory. The other day, while I was cleaning up, I scraped my hand on one of our air conditioners (on the little sliding plastic thing that holds the A/C in place). Today it is driving me crazy. I really want to scratch it like crazy but I can't or I'll have a horrible scar so I guess it'll continue to drive me nuts. Yeah, I know, it's a short trip most days.

Between my scrapes and bites and the fact that I am Pasty McWhitey, I noticed today that my legs are covered in bruises. Really, it's almost as attractive as it sounds. If I actually tanned it wouldn't look so horrible. Unfortunately, I come from a long line of pasty white folks and I'm deathly afraid of skin cancer (my great uncle died from complications caused by skin cancer and my dad get zapped on a regular basis by the dermatologist) so I avoid the sun at all costs. The other night when we did the lawn, it took me almost as long to whack the weeds as it took Mark to cut the whole lawn. The entire time I was doing it, I was tripping over stuff, walking into patio furniture or small bushes. It must have been very amusing to our neighbours. That must be where all the bruises came from. They are mostly below my knees, it's charming. I also did a shit ass job of winding the replacement line onto the weed whacker because I kept having to take the unit apart to loosen the cord (when it gets too tight it won't auto-advance and the weed-whacker can't really trim the weeds without free flowing nylon line). The hardest part of the whole thing was, of course, the side of the driveway. I was conflicted about whether to whack or not. Part of me enjoyed the fact that it annoying you-know-who and part of me really wanted to see them gone. Of course, my anal-retentive gardener (bah!) side won out and it does look nice. For now anyway, it's still pretty weedy. I haven't decided though if I'm going to keep them trimmed or let them go wild for the rest of the summer. We'll see if I get any more snide comments before I make a decision!!

One thing that made me smile today: Ordinarily I hate kids. I shouldn't say that actually, I dislike babies and prefer kids. Well behaved kids or kids who you can actually talk to. I hate screaming bratty kids who hit their parents and are ill-behaved in restaurants. Today was the first day of summer camp on campus. Camp is fun for kids, kind of a drag for those of us who have to get around campus in the mornings or late afternoons. Parents who are dropping off or picking up their kids from the variety of summer camp programs get into this weird mindset once they roll onto campus. It's like, "hey, it's okay for me to stop my big honking SUV in the middle of the road FOR TEN MINUTES while I drop little Johnny off at camp. I have kids, I'm entitled!!" Anyway, around 12:30 or so, I went upstairs to get my lunch out of the fridge. To go up to the kitchen, I have to go up some steps by my office door, outside the building and through the main entry. On my way back to my office, I stopped at the top of the steps and watched the kids running around on the lawn in front of my building. It was kind of grey and dull, humid but chilly and threatening rain. Most grown up folks were moaning about the weather but the kids didn't care. They were playing games and giggling and just enjoying their summer vacation. For a second I remembered what it felt like to be a little kid with a whole summer in front of me and it made me smile.