And never without smiling

I click "create new" and then I stare. For a very long time, 30 seconds to be exact.
Which feels like a very long time when it's the first 30 seconds you've had to stare at a screen in what feels like days. And really, it's been days.

The dog on my lap, she is mine only for the week, and I am not really a lap dog sort of girl, but she is a lap sort of dog. (Her name is Princess if that gives you any clue.) So here we are, sitting. She is as comfortable as can be, and I feel as though my right foot is on the verge of falling off.

Today I drove a taxi for four children and three schools, there and back and there and back. Squeezed in gymnastics for the littlest of the four while I was at it, her very first day. And I got the time wrong too, just to make things interesting. Oh and before that, it was the Room Captain meeting for one of the four kids and one of the three schools, the meeting I only got the invitation to on Sunday because, well, they apparently let anyone do this Room Captain thing, if they are desperate enough. (And they were. Oh, they were.)

Have I mentioned before that I tend to freak out when there is no white spice on my calendar?

But before my calendaric claustrophobia progressed to the point of breathing in a bag or eating ice cream for dinner, I overheard the soothing sound of regular, rhythmic, unhurried life humming in my living room. My nephew sat with my son while Caed practiced piano. They talked notes and finger position and then out came Micah's trumpet, and an impromptu duet of This Land is Your Land.

Calli started howling, turned it into an ensemble. Dani and Caed started cackling, couldn't stop.  Micah kept playing and Calli kept howling (and trying to smell the trumpet), and the rest of us kept laughing.

After the concert, James said no to more of Harry Potter #4--and oh it was a good part too--in order to say yes to his little cousin Dani, yes to playing doll house and yes to pink legos.

And this was all I needed. I'll drive 25 gas tanks worth of school pick ups and drop offs, if it means that when I have finished scurrying, I'll hear the hum of affection and admiration and laughter and learning and togetherness. The sort of togetherness that brothers and cousins and sisters and mothers will always remember, and never without smiling.