All I need is a cornfield.

It is such a gorgeous day here.


This is how I feel.


Or perhaps is THIS version better?



I think I prefer the horseback-riding Gordon Macrae. Not to slight Hugh at all, because he does a great job, but G-man’s got a better voice, and he’s RIDING A HORSE while singing. Plus which, there’s corn. You can’t go wrong with corn. Beats in old lady working a grinder any day for creating ambience.

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When I was preggers with the Things, I sang “Oh what a beautiful morning” to them almost every day. It’s pretty much how I felt about being gravid…it was wonderful.

Yes, I was one of those glowy pregnant women. I was an advertisement for fecundity, developing the baby belly early, with THICK hair and dewy skin, and an obnoxious habit of rubbing my own stomach. I felt great. Truly every morning felt beautiful.

Hormones are amazing things. As an example: As soon as parturition occurred, the endocrine miracles that buoyed me through the 9 months of expecting lapsed in a most spectacular fashion and the beautiful seeped out of the mornings. Days rolled by in the haze of newbornedness, the hair fell out, the dewy skin developed the pallor of exhaustion, and the baby belly stayed long after birth had occurred.

Beauty was a long way off in those immediate postpartum days.

Still, when I hear this song, I think back to the days of carting the Things around in the handy-dandy incubation chamber of a rapidly expanding uterus, and how potential and promise were all ours.

Those little babies now stay home by themselves when I’m at work. Yep – I left them home alone for a few hours on Monday, and again today, while I am at work. They did fine. No phone calls of complaint, no fires, smoke, blood, or violence occurred. Today their Dad is coming to get them by around lunchtime, which will put them at about 3 hours alone at home.

A dozen years after singing to them of the beautiful world around them, they’re launching further out into it. Time flies, and life is still good.

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One manifestation thereof: Thing 1 proved to me this past weekend that he can swim in water taller than he is.

Those parents out there who have children who did not learn to swim until later in life know the terror I’ve faced for the last dozen-plus years, fearing that their child would plunge overboard or off a dock and not know how to get to the surface. You know the nightmares of watching your child sink beneath the water while you’re unable to reach them, the look of horror on their faces as you fail to save them, their beseeching arms flung toward you.

OK, maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think so.

I’ve had these nightmares repeatedly over the years. They NEVER end well.

However, on this past Saturday afternoon, while the bug bombs were going off at home and we sought refuge (and a place to go) at the pool de Kenju, Thing 1 was convinced to show his Mom (that's me) that he could swim across the deep end by himself, which he did. And then did again, and then jumped in, bobbed to the top, and proceeded to engage in a “float fight” with Thing 2.

To see him in the water, able to bring himself up from the depths, swimming, was a gift. He’s not a strong swimmer yet, but that hasn’t been the goal to this point. Getting him into water over his head, seeing him swim on top of it, knowing that if he should go overboard without a lifevest on won’t mean a certain death sentence, is enough goal achieved for now.

And I expect that I’ll have one less class of nightmare to haunt me.

Yes, it’s a beautiful day indeed. Y'all go rock this Humpday, mmkay? And maybe hum a bar or two of somethin' pretty to get you through it.