HAPPY DANCE

     That's me in the middle of the room! . . . hips hula-ing, arms circling in the air, spinning around with a broad smile and loudly chanting,  "I did it!  I did it! I made it through the summer. YEA!  I did it! I did it!  I made it through the summer. YEA!"
     Bombarded with ten weeks of  ' TJ won't stay out of my room!', 'Anna's being mean to me!', 'TJ hid the remote!', and 'I'm bored,' left me irritable and impatient. but the question I disdained the most came every afternoon from Anna : 'What are we doing tomorrow?"

    "What are we doing tomorrow?"
    "Let me think." I mused. "Tomorrow we will do the same thing we are doing today, and the same thing we did yesterday."
    "I'm bored,"
    "For heaven's sake, Anna, you live on a farm!  Ride a goat, pluck a chicken, bathe the pigs. I can't believe you can't find something to do. The garden needs tended, beans picked, jelly made. Here's a novel idea . . . CLEAN YOUR ROOM." None of those activities ever appealed to her. "What do you want to do?"
    "I don't know."

     Being ADHD TJ was her own source of entertainment. She carried on hours of conversation with herself, began collections of dead cicadas, crickets, and beetles that she kept in separate baby food jars, colored reams of paper with pictures of God and Jesus and frogs. Constructions were made from any scrap materials from Bob's recent building projects. There were days she followed me so closely that when I turned around quickly I knocked her over and many days I thought she would never stop talking. Her stories and chatter trailed on and on and on . . . "blah blah blah AND THEN blah blah blah AND THEN . . ." She could keep a story going for hours!
     TJ did get have six weeks of swim lessons and Anna two. Both girls now know the breast stroke, side stroke and butterfly. Anna went on a one week mission trip and returned wanting more. Two weeks of visiting grandchildren stressed TJ and Anna to the brink, but they handled it well.
    And now the girls are back in school and I am wandering in circles around my empty house with no one calling my name. I'll adjust.