I saw a link to this snack on Facebook: Smiley Apples. The kids loved them! Super easy and the kids thought they were getting a special treat. Actually, since the mini marshmallows are cut in half, they were each eating only three. Not bad.

When I was taking this picture, Butterfly asked why I always had to get so close (see our shadows?). It reminded me of the great quote by Robert Capa: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”

Reading

• Candide, Voltaire: “I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life.” I adore this book.
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote: I just started this one because I left Candide in the van and needed something to read. I’ve seen the movie, of course, but so far I like the novella better.
• Robinson Crusoe, Danial Defoe: What was I thinking? I’ve finished five books since I started this one. I cannot get past the dialect and Randomly Capitalized words. But finish it I will if it takes another week!

Thinking

• that each day drags on interminably but years fly by like nobody’s business

Wanting

• my husband to come home and my kids to be happy

Listening (first five on shuffle)

• Ke$ha, thanks to C
• Billionaire, thanks to Echo who sings it 24/7
• Johnny Cash, because he always comes up in my playlists
• Pink, can’t get Glitter out of my head
• Gretchen Wilson

The last time we were out hiking, I saw these on a cactus and pointed them out to my kids (who were all complaining about being tired and hungry and thirsty). “Yeah, right Mom. I don’t think so!” So when I saw them on sale at the local grocery, 4 for $1, I couldn’t resist proving my point. They are edible! Butterfly, Jon and Echo loved them and ate theirs up in a matter of seconds. This last one has been waiting on the counter for the big kids but so far, no takers. I guess the need to prove my point is no match for the teenage will. *Although I should mention that when I cut this and took the pictures, Bleu did sneak in for a bite. “Not bad.”

More information on the prickly pear cactus fruit here!

“Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time flies but feels like it’s standing still. Every day is the same and I want to throw myself on the floor like a two year old. I never stop but nothing gets done. Monday night I stayed up making sure everything was clean: sweeping and mopping floors, scrubbing toilets, cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry. I figured I would have a good few hours of down time yesterday to work on a submission for Creative Humans Magazine. But then I woke up and got the kids off to school. Went to a doctor’s appointment. Filled prescriptions. Went shopping for the last of the school supplies (MOM! If I don’t have a combination lock by TOMORROW the world will come to an END!). Spent an hour updating all of my four calendars with the nine doctor’s appointments I made. Went to my mother-in-law’s to dispense a week’s worth of medicine. Stopped by the school to give Butterfly her antibiotic. And on and on and on. The day ended and poof! Nothing creative at all accomplished.  Today I will do something for no reason other than it makes me happy. I will commit a random act of kindness. I will create something. I will do more than just get through the day.

The kids and I went on one last road trip  to The City of Rocks last weekend. It was scorching hot on the drive over. We don’t have  air conditioning so the kids were eying the one cloud in the distance that looked like it was raining. “Never mind mom, we don’t want to go to the rocks. Let’s drive to the rain instead!” As luck would have it, the cloud met us at our destination, soaking us to the skin with one of those glorious late summer downpours that start the arroyos running. Almost as soon as it started, it was over. The desert swallowed up the evidence and within fifteen minutes everything was dry. See more pictures from our trip on flickr:

The Last Hurrah on flickr: set | slideshow