Scenes from the first full day of summer break

...or rather, the first full day of summer break without puking or fever: yesterday. We couldn't attend our planned playdates for fear of contagion, so the kids played around the house while I tried to keep my usual telecommuting hours.

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During a call with a new vendor I had to ask my children to stop singing along with the movie "Snow Buddies." Or maybe it was "Space Buddies." The new vendor, luckily, also works from home and also had a school-aged child at home luxuriating in these halcyon schools-out-camp-hasn't-started days. The vendor lives in California, however, so his child was playing outside. (Here in Bend it was cold & raining.) We talked for awhile about what's apparently been a nation-wide decision to save money by closing schools early.

Working parents, unite!

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Child: "I'm thirsty."

Me: "You know where the water is."

Child: "I'm hungry."

Me: "You know where the food is."

Child: "I'm bored."

Me: "You know where the toys are!"

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Sasha built a fort. No boys allowed, she said. Boys destroy forts.

Oh Sasha! said I. Not all boys destroy forts. Let's see if Blake wants to play, too.

No!

Please?

So I invited Blake downstairs and he destroyed her fort.

"Way to fulfill stereotypes!" I shouted.

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One hour and fifteen minutes into an hour-and-a-half conference call/Webex session, my daughter tossed her lizard onto my keyboard. Yes, I screeched. Much laughter on the other end of the phone.

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My daughter draws. Have I mentioned that? She draws all the time. All. The. Time. The only items I send through the mail these days are Sasha's drawings: they go out to all the relatives. (She gets her feelings hurt if I recycle her drawings, but folks, we haven't enough storage space in this house for them all.)

When she realized I was communicating with my friends at work, some of whom she met on our recent trip to Portland, she drew a picture and asked me to send it to them. It's an archaeopteryx with very colorful feathers. In the upper right corner she drew the dinosaur beside a human, for scale. This archaeopteryx is so small that she drew just a human hand; it's the size of my thumb.

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At the end of the workday I closed my computer to discover that the house was totally, irrevocably messy.

Or so I thought. For 75 cents the two children cleaned their rooms, made their beds, put away the fort components and for good measure put away the laundry I'd folded. And I only had to yell once.

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First day of summer 2010: CHECK.