I'm working on it.

It's summertime.  The end of it, for sure, but still summer.  My Google tells me that the astronomical summer  in the Northern Hemisphere doesn't end until September 21st.  So I know, because it's Google, that it is still summertime.

I also know it's still summertime because of how lazy our days are ... We get up, we play, we eat, we play, we snack and run and rest and read and make a mess and go to the store and the park and the beach and the pool and have last-minute-picnic-dinners downtown where we can look for carriages and ride the ferry and stop at the candy store and stomp in the fountains and laugh at the stars.

Summer-time.

The changing light hasn't come yet.  It will soon, and the days will become short and fast and exhausting, and the warmth will fade and the cold will come and then it will be gray for a bit and every day will feel like a scheduled chore.

And every day of the dark and grey I will think of the summer, and the summer time, and the summer times, and I will long for it and wait for it and hope it comes early.

And then, one day, the light will change again.  And I will see it.  And it will be spring.  And there will be days and days of longer, brighter, lighter times.  And then, the sun will wake one day in June and it will be that time, this time, one more time, again.

The dearest husband has taken the dearest children out to pick up diapers and bread, the staple items of our daily lives, and to let the small ones wear off their afternoon naps at the indoor play area near our favorite Target.  It's a gift today, though normally, after a day in-house with the ittys, I am more than happy to head out in the evenings for errands.  Right now, though, I am just extra thankful for the moments of still and the dimness of this room.

My head is a wreck.  There are multiple ways to take that, but in this case it's mostly just a two-fold meaning.  My head is a wreck of pain and twitching, the latter being a new symptom that goes along with the monster aches that seem to come more and more frequently these days.  My head is a wreck of lists - the kind of lists that organize what needs to be done and what's coming next, the kind of lists that are usually in order and neat, the kind of lists that have somehow become a monster ache of their own, growing longer and longer with less completion.  Neither of the wrecks does anything to lessen the other.  (At what point in life is it appropriate to hire a personal assistant?)

And it's spring.  My favorite time of year.  Everything here is blooming and beautiful.  The ocean even seems new.  I only want to be out, seeing, breathing, loving, enjoying the time and the new light that spins golden shadows later and later and later into the evening hours.

The physical ache is stifling that.  It's having an effect.  Affecting life and living, forcing hours spent in a dark room with cold compresses and mounds of ibuprofen (thirty-two-hundred-milligrams a day, plus the in-between spots filled with Tylenol is a. lot. of. Motrin) that only dull the pounding.  Now with the added twitching, I'm not sure what to think.  Maybe time to stop self-dosing and see a professional M.D.

I hate going though, because they always have to stick you with something.

Pressing on.