The basket of chalk has been busy the last few days, and my front steps and sidewalk are full of colorful drawings.
Speaking of chalk, there is a cement retaining wall just down some steps from my neighborhood, and since the pandemic, each summer someone has been leaving a bucket of chalk next to the wall for passersby to draw on the concrete. I love walking past the wall so much! Sometimes people leave encouraging words. Sometimes they draw humorous pictures. Kids leave their art. It’s colorful and cheerful, and hardly ever has something mean appeared on that wall.
I say it all the time, but I’m saying it again. The local fruit is truly spectacular this time of year: crisp apples with a zesty and sweet bite, local grapes with a punch to them. We just finished up a wonderful blueberry season with blueberries that have a zing unlike anything found in a store. I’m savoring fruit.
We bought an ultrasonic retainer cleaner, and it’s lovely. Multiple people in the family wear retainers or mouth guards at night (mine resets my jaw) and I finally just decided it was time to try a cleaner pod since the retainers just get gross. Having a clean retainer is just terrific. I feel much more motivated to actually remember to put my retainer in my mouth before I fall asleep at night.
Fewer children in the house makes me sad almost every day, but there is indeed a lot less laundry. It’s almost disconcerting. Seeing that I’m caught up on the laundry when I walk down into the basement makes me smile, because it has been a very rare phenomenon over the past two and a half decades. Also, the mudroom stays astonishingly more clean.
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