What I Know To Be True: Summer Version

• Anything eaten over the kitchen sink during the summer months is usually healthy, fresh and local… but nectarine juice cascading down your chin, neck and blouse can in no way be described as your best look.

• Moles can and will destroy your desire to live if you take them on in a battle royale.  No amount of repellent with castor oil or dried skunk blood, or stink bombs, poison pellets (illegal in the states of California or Illinois but available for purchase at your local hardware store) or any high-pitched sound machine will cause these rodents of the worst kind to pull up stakes and move next door.   Find yourself a mole whisperer and pay him whatever he asks to put out traps and tell you endlessly about the psyche of a mole. 

• When your youngest son passes his driver’s license test and has that new sense of teenage freedom that is akin to the joy found when walking skills were acquired fifteen years prior, the conveniences are not in anyway outweighed by the sadness felt at the loss of time spent with him (albeit forced time in car captivity but time spent nonetheless.) 

• Walking into Target wearing attire including your shoes from said Target is just plain embarrassing and there ought to be a capital ‘L’ on your emblazoned upon forehead…(note to self: wear Kohl’s clothes in Target, Target clothes in Kohl’s…or at the very least remember to mix and match.)

• Teenagers seem to be the most talkative over leftover pizza after 11PM.  The trick is having the leftover pizza, ears ready to listen and eyes that don’t require toothpicks to say open…ah, the irony.

• Those public pay car washes and vacuum kiosks are real pressure cookers.  There should be blood pressure warning signs posted as you race against the sucking and spraying clock.  As a public service announcement, make sure to bring a collection of unwrinkled never been in a pocket dollar bills hot off the US treasury presses to exchange for the one minute and thirty-seven seconds gold car wash/vacuum tokens. The machines don’t much care for anything less than dollar bill perfection.  Also, you might want to bring the whole family and have a well thought out car washing and vacuuming strategy akin to Michael Phelps and his Olympic 800 meter medley relay team.  Then and only then might you be able to detail your vehicle in the allotted amount of time.  So, yes that was me racing through the streets of Danville half covered in soap suds trying to get to the hose in our driveway that didn’t require a gold token…and no that police officer would not give us an escort home as much as I begged!

• Beyonce’s popular ten-day (ha!) lemonade fast/cleanse/diet could be used by the CIA to gather highly sensitive information any day of the week.

• Dead flowers are better than no flowers at all…in a vase on your kitchen table or in growing in a terra cotta pot in your yard…it says to all who walk by, ‘I was once alive and my very existence indicates that my caretaker at least tried to beautify the surroundings.’  How’s that for justification of not deadheading, pruning and buying a new bunch of flowers?

• This crazy thing called time really does move along more rapidly than it should and John Lennon nailed it when he told the world in Beautiful Boy that ‘life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’  I’ve been trying to pay attention much more closely lately and not get too distracted by tunnels in my lawn, the label on my clothes, and filthy cars… rather focus my time and energy on things like plotting ways to convince my kids to get in the car with me, keep a steady supply of leftover pizza in the fridge and eat lots of nectarines!