America's Best Idea

Striking an appropriately patriotic note, Chris, his sister, and the four kids piled into the car on the 4th to visit Yellowstone, our first national park.

I stayed home and worked, enjoying the silence and the relatively cool air blowing through the screens. I needed to do a bunch of writing, and that's so much easier to do when the normal daily routine of meetings and the lobbing of emails back and forth is displaced by the silence of a secret work day.

By the end of the afternoon, my productivity and energy started nosediving, but I felt unable to tear myself away from the computer. The oddly compelling numb, out-of-body feeling that sneaks up after hours of staring at my little screen freaks me out. I should want to run, but instead I sometimes linger, unable it seems to pry myself away. Yuck.

Finally, I made some tea, enjoyed by the banks of our newly miniaturized pond, which is shrinking by the day because of the dry heat. I got a little perspective back, indulged in some critical idle daydreaming, (check out The New York Times' piece on the busy trap, and this great New Yorker piece on the virtues of daydreaming,) and decided to head out for a short ride to Heebs, our local grocery store, to pickup the ingredients for bananas splits, which seemed like they might be just the thing for the kids after a long day in the car.

Best errand ever

I rode slowly; the temperature was absolutely perfect, and I wondered if we might even get a month of this before it begins getting cooler, and then cold. The wondering made things all the more delicious. By the time I returned home, the gang was back, and we settled on the front porch for some fireworks and squirt gun attacks.

Chris' sister, Kate

The evening progressed, though darkness did not come for hours still. We made our way up Pete's Hill to enjoy the fireworks show, which, though muted by concerns over wildfires, still delighted. Zoey slept on my back, Stella held my hand, and we walked along the ridge of the hill, chatting away long into the late night.