sssshhhhhh...

Can you hear that?
It's called quiet.

I am alone right at this very moment.

This hasn't happened often this summer.

Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No demands. Nothing.

Wayne and Maya went to the Mariner's game (they are going to be in a suite--lucky!). Paige is still sleeping (or reading, but in bed nonetheless); Brittani is at her mom's house.

WHOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

The novelty wears off rather quickly, though. I'm already thinking, "what am I going to do NOW?" I think I'll wake Paige up and ask her to walk with me to the coffee stand at the entrance to our neighborhood. Then we'll come back here and watch Fur. I feel like I haven't seen her much this summer. She's been pretty good when I have her come with us to do family things. She went with us to dinner with Renae, Dryke and Laura the other night; she did get antsier the later it got because she wanted to get home to hang out with her friends, but she wasn't terribly snippy about it.

She's really doing that whole pulling away thing right now, but it doesn't feel like she's doing it to the point of being...distant, aloof, uninvolved, etc. I think it's the natural course of adolescence, but it does feel weird.

How strange it is that there will be a time in the not so distant future that we won't be in constant contact with our older daughters. I never really thought about how my mom felt about not hearing from us, her kids, for days on end, but I imagine that it was quite strange. A child moving out completely changes the relationship between parent and child. Ugh. Well, it's a few years away now, so I'll deal with that when I have to. And if Paige is anything like me and my siblings, she won't be leaving right after high school. It took us awhile to take the great leap out of mommy and daddy's and some of us have even returned in adulthood a time or two.

I remember when Paige was first born, kindergarten seemed so far away. How she got to be a junior in high school after such a short period of time, I will never understand. I mean, she was literally in diapers just a few weeks ago, I swear. The little Luvs diapers with pink roses on them. So cute. I'm going to have to scan in some pictures from when Paige was a baby.

And now we are approaching her last two years in high school. Shit, I still remember MY last two years in high school, as though it wasn't TWENTY years ago!

Yes, it has been twenty years since I began my junior year in high school. I'll have to scan some of those pictures, too. Ha! The thing that is so funny about high school, though, is that it hasn't changed much in 20 years. I know I thought my high school experience was vastly different than my own parents' experiences, so I'm sure Paige feels that her experience is completely different from mine as well. The same dramas happen. the same infighting. She has the group of guys that she hangs out with, which I also had. A few really good girlfriends, but mostly guy friends. Junior year I had three girlfriends (Jen, Renae and Renae) and our group of guy friends, who I think at the time were Dave, Andy and Andrew. Maybe I'm missing someone because that list feels incomplete. Junior year was insane.

Ok.
Well, I'm going to see if Paige wants coffee. To walk to coffee (We're WALKING? why can't we just drive? Mom, you're being stupid. Let's just DRIVE!"). To watch Fur. To snuggle together on the couch like she's my baby again...