It’s midnight and I can’t sleep. The shelf above my desk retains a wall of towering fabric scraps, folded in assembly and ready to be all cut and sewn up. Into what? Perhaps a glow-in-the-dark circuitboard horse? Why not!

Cutting through thick wool felt is so satisfying, like the slow and steady joy of learning to cut through paper in preschool. And the way it sounds, like horses chomping on warm hay.

The surplus yarn in the office here is Fall-friendly and begging to be touched, wishing it were warm enough to get all knit up into scarves and pants and hats. Otherwise, it makes great manes and tales. But do you notice that Chas is wearing fleece?? After eight months of flip-flops I found myself wearing wool socks under my Air Jesus’ and I felt so…back in northern California. Layering is fun. 60 degrees F feels so nice, so much better than 90 degrees in mid-October.

A circuitboard made of white foam and leftover yarn that Ford’s friends made during his birthday party; Chas’ wild volcano painting, originally with volatile sound effects; A featherwreath adorned by Betty and Boo; Ford’s rock collection: “magic rock,” amethyst geode, coral from Galveston, birthday geode from CZ…

Our Fall nature table. Little Ivy Elizabeth Walker, Ford’s favorite character last year from The Village, sitting on the resting rock in the middle of a little Hill Country glade; Burr oak and Post oak acorns from around town; Edwards limestone; Ball moss from everywhere around town; chickenfeathers and unknown native grass, what I pretend is a White-Tailed deer…

at Ivy’s feet: “HEXAGONS!” that Chas found on our walk through the neighborhood (courtesy of a sunbleached, long-dead armadillo skeleton)…

Gretel, another storybook favorite, plays cavalier atop Big Billy Goat Gruff; and no nature table in our house is grounded without a chicken.

It’s mid-August and we’re roasting under happy white hot skies with evenly-spaced, cottony clouds. And it’s dry. Natives hark back to the 1950s and dust storms and hectic farming, and they get giddy about gray clouds on the horizon but are too supersticious to predict rain. When the clouds pass overhead, they spit fat droplets that pat the pavement and vanish magically, evaporating before you can call it rain. And then you sigh and shrug your shoulders.

In the morning, I crawl downstairs to start a pot of coffee and let the hens out for the day. Almost immediately they run for respite in woodier shade, and I start watering the deer-picked, rabbit-picked, chicken-picked truncation of a summer garden: wrinkled and dark green, prostrate. Within minutes, the cicadas start humming a low, warm-up drone. Like dry beans shaking in a parched pod, the cicadas rattling trance intensifies as the heat sets in. I slink back inside.

Chas wants to be outside at all hours, so for him it’s all a matter of being buck naked out there. I have no choice but to follow him with a tube of sunscreen in my back pocket and a narrow set of eyes, since the job mostly entails shepherding him out of direct sunlight. Which is difficult, really, because our yard is mostly sun. He glows in the sunshine, his white back reflects the entire spectrum of light as he examines a pillbug in the brown grass, something the hens must have overlooked; they’re busy meanwhile under the boxwood, flinging dusty mulch onto the walking path as they burrow six inches into the landscaping. I re-pave the path with the broom as I return for cover, my feet now dusted with roasted umber dust. Chas runs in my wake, the chickens flurry from the hedge to follow him, but the door closes. From inside, Chas laughs at the unaffected triplet standing on the doorstep, wasting little time before they start scratching again and picking at the potted ferns.

Last weekend, the kids were so thrilled with the new chicks at the grandaparent’s house that they insisted we get some of our own. So we did! Three Auraucana chicks. And when I get more sleep, I can talk all about them: Abby, Boo, and Betty. The kids named them i the car on the drive home.

It’s really too hot to paint outside during that quiet time of the day when the kids are centered. If I leave Chas to paint alone on the floor in the kitchen, I begin to prickle with anxiety, because it’s never long before paint begins flying across the room towards the wool rug (which, being wool, easily stains. And which, for the record, I refuse to live without.) It’s a high stakes gamble, but one I can avoid if I sit him on my lap at the kitchen table.

So there we sat, yesterday, and I found I was able to engage him for a longer period of time than usual, simply by painting alongside him, on the same page. Normally, I’d discourage this–it goes completely against my teaching style, which is to let them simply create on their own. But he seemed to enjoy telling me what he was doing, which colors should go where, and he thought what I did was funny. He loved sharing the piece of paper, maybe it reminds him of sitting on my lap when we read a story. For this reason, it felt just right.

Chas. Bull Creek Trail, Austin

He somersaults now, too! It usually follows “Daw-Dah,” which means “Down Dog.”

It’s not fair that Chas can nap like this without me. But Ford will have none of it. He meets my exhaustion sometimes with sandpaper to my nerves, and I could just cry. So I’ve started taking vitamins more regularly, and with exercise and a little more sleep I’ve built up a better defense against the afternoon slump. Damon has introduced me to blackberry sage iced tea in mason jars. And I’ve taken up painting the sleeping babe.

I signed up for an encaustic painting class. A while back, I mentioned Amy Ruppel and her wonderful buttery paintings. I love this texture. It’s what I’m craving, more fat. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to learn for years, it’s just been hard to find an instructor. Lo and behold, they have one in Austin at the Laguna Gloria. So I cancelled our Vegas plans and am now sitting primly on the edge of my seat, waiting for two weeks to pass so I can start playing with oils and beeswax.

There are no more caterpillars. I keep waiting for a second generation to spill out of the trees but they haven’t arrived. I jogged along the creek today. The white rocks are dry now and milk-green where water trickled down only weeks ago, runoff from uphill. The pools where the big fish swim are coated with pollen and dust and milkweed tufts. Every big patch of sunlight holds a surprise along the trail. I’ve learned to ignore the scattering spiny lizards and squirrels. At the last minute, before my foot falls on them, they dart into shadows, bark and leaves flying behind them. So I ford through the little forest community, knowing it will all unfold before me.

Unless it doesn’t. My foot descends on a fat snake. Like the recoil of a shotgun, I yank back with so much force that I pull a muscle in my chest. But the snake is safe, motionless, and only as I bend down to study it does it slink into a rotten tree stump. Who knows what else I’ve narrowly missed?

Chas wore this dress of mine yesterday. I had to roll it about six times until it was short enough for him to just barely clear the ground in, and he just barely cleared the ground all over the garden as he trampled the runner bean seedlings and bulldozed through the birdbath. Finally, he returned inside with a little wicker basket and a tiny Schleich lamb at the bottom of the basket, declaring his arrival with a wet pattering across the tile floor and up onto Damon’s chest, where he soon fell asleep.

We went out on date last night. This is not something we do often, but my parents were in town and they decided to relieve us. So, after a quick bite and a paint lesson from my dad:

We left. We drove as fast as we could to make the 7 o’clock reservation. It was still hot outside, and my dress stuck to my legs in the car while I waited to the air conditioning ot kick in. Summer is just getting comfortable; you could see it in the smile of a man in his convertible, sunglasses reflecting the red light: summer is wedging itself back in the seat of the rocker, next to a side table with sweet iced tea and a paperback memoir.

Sunset raked over white table linens at the restaurant. Wine and hands, a sublime filet and the finest long grain rice from Texas; I felt ten years younger immersed in the quiet of our childless space. I mentioned that the restaurant reminded me of the bistro in Mill Valley, the one with the gorgeous hostess, but I realized that the similarity lay not in the setting but the absence of stress. Children have been the bane of our dining experiences. No matter how charming it is when they politely request macaroni and cheese, each good deed is met with an equally annoying faux pas: say, a fork thrown across the table and barely skewering the woman at the table behind me.

We kill 45 minutes atop a parking garage.
And then eat molten chocolate cake a la mode with pints of ale at the drafthouse theater.
My head is heavy and tipping off my shoulders on the winding road home, smiling and satiated but sleepy.