Maybe I’m just incredibly narrowly read, but it seems far too infrequent that I read a male writer exclaiming, “Thank god. The kids played Monopoly all afternoon and left me alone at my desk. For two whole hours.” Perhaps what I need isn’t so much a room of mine own (which I now have, after many years) but a nanny of my own.

Rain is rumored, but long in arriving. We’re now settled into a summer routine of kids swimming at the lake while I spread out my laptop and a bag of work on a stained towel. By the dinner, it’s been a full day of work sandwiched with swimming and snacks. This is the high point of the summer – the crickets at full throttle, the lakes endless, the garden escaping its fence and long past the dire point of must-weeding. What will grow, will indeed grow. Blackberry tart rears its maplely head this evening.

Here’s a brief bit of beach reading from Mary Norris’s Between You and Me, one more womanly skill among many mothering others:

Used well, the semicolon makes a powerful impression; misused, it betrays your ignorance.