Labor Day

Like Mrs. Chicken said recently, I've been feeling rather blogstipated. Not much going on, and what is bugging me I can't necessarily blog about because I don't know if those people read me, and I think you're probably getting rather tired of the "what I did with the random crazy veggies in my CSA basket this week!" posts. (I know I am.)

This weekend was Labor Day, and we had no plans. As a kid, I always dreaded Labor Day. We'd be at the lake, it would rain, we'd have to turn on the space heaters and light a fire, wearing jeans and tennies with our big, thick, hooded sweatshirts. It was so dark, we'd have to turn on lamps to read, Jerry Lewis would be on the little black-and-white TV, and the next day was always the beginning of school. I would wake up with an ooky feeling in the pit of my stomach, and honestly, I can feel it right now just remembering. It was the end. The end of the summer, the end of the good weather at the lake, the end of the freedom to pack up and just go whenever we wanted. We were back to responsibility and tests and deadlines, school and rehearsals. Mom always looked so sad on Labor Day.

Being an at-home mom, I figured it would be different. No schedules, no set in stone plans, no school tomorrow. Of course, it would be sunny and we'd go to the pool and grill burgers.

Our grill broke. It was cold. It rained. I had to put on socks and turn on the lamp.

But, I did have Dr. B home for the day. So I made a plan. And we had fun.

We took Rowan to her first in-theater movie. "Up!" was playing at our cheap theater, so even if she got "skeered", we'd only be out 3 bucks. But she did fine. She spent much of the movie hugging me facing the back, but by the end she was loving it, and only cried when I told her she couldn't lick the seat backs as the final credits rolled.

We came out of the theater, and she smiled up at us and said, "I loved my first movie!" We decided to make a night of it, and had dinner out at Damon's, followed by tag-team book browsing at Barnes and Noble while Rowan played trains at the Thomas the Tank Engine train table. We bought nothing, but got ideas for library requests, and enjoyed the smells of new paper and coffee, bright colors and fresh pages.

We made our stab at defeating the Labor Day Blues. Can't do anything about the weather, but a movie, buffalo chicken pizza, and some retail therapy did help lift our spirits a bit. Sometimes, that's all it takes.