Dreams of ice cubes.

June 6, Columbia (Missouri.)

It’s turned warm. I feel like sitting down on the porch with a cold glass of sparkling water and jingling the ice cubes in it until they melt. I also have to make dinner.
That, and a million other things, or so it seems, and I’m running late.
It’s almost five o’clock on a warm Monday evening, I just picked up the kids on their first day of summer school and we took Annie to the vet, and I haven’t even thought about thinking what’s for dinner, and there are more errands to run, I need to go by the bank, the plants need watering, the dog needs walking and later on there is the gym class for Nicolas to drive to on the other side of town, and there is not going to be any ice cubes tingling on the porch, but rather a mad race to mark the next chore off on my perpetual to-do list.
I’m always running, it’s a condition in my life, like dandruff, or fair skin. I’m a single mother, I'm a photographer, I’m perpetually running to try and not be late. But in all honesty I’ve had that feeling of having to catch up, of having to run in place in order not to fall behind, as far as I can remember. Being a mother has only made it real.
Last Friday at about the same time as it is now I made a wildly optimistic prediction, talking to a friend on the phone, that upon hanging up I was going to mow the yard front and back then reorganize the cabinet in the kitchen and then go to work on my photography business’ marketing plan. Now that the kids have grown they need to be able to reach and get cups and plates out by themselves and up until now they've had to climb up on the counters and balance on a slippery surface in order to do that, so I was going to reorganize the cabinets and of course when you move things around in the house after they’ve been there for three years it is highly likely you’re going to have to scrub everything clean too, and so here I was, wildly assuming that I could go ahead and mow the yard (an exercise akin to fine needlepoint as there are about two dozen trees of various sizes ranging from seedling to three-year-old fruit trees on the property that need to be carefully maneuvered around,) reorganize and clean those cabinets and then still have the time, not to mention the energy, to sit down and look at photographs.
Last night after dinner I did reorganize those cabinets.
The ice cubes are still a dream.