Packing, really, honestly

I am an hour and a half away from leaving for field school. I need to put things in the car. I am about 20 minutes from putting things in the car (wind a skein of sock yarn into a ball). It is pitilessly humid though not too hot yet.

Friday was the Only Beloved Daughter's Birthday. I went to meet her in Boston, with my my parents and her father and her boyfriend, and she made delicious chili and an even better cake. It was good, although the usual birthday discussions of the future were marred by our all having Done To Death "When are you Moving?" Sometime next week. It depends. She is fed up because too much is in flux nad the lease does all ow pets. This is a disappointment. She can't say much about her summer job doing research for the department chairman of her grad school, either. Flux. It is like limbo but with more blanket-tossing.

I spent the night at my parents', which is always pleasant. They have a back-patio container garden with many many pots of flowers. Sometimes they have a peregrine falcon living on the roof, but the chicks have flown and so has the falcon.

I went to see "King-Fu Panda" with a friend I have known for almost thirty-nine years. Since neither of us is over 25, this seems unlikely. "Kung-Fu Panda" (my friend likes pandas, I liked the clips on the NYTimes web site, we wanted to see one another) was enjoyable and I have seen many, many worse films. So the theme was stupid ("Believe in yourself and nothing is impossible."); it wasn't offensive or pernicious or suggesting I should buy anything. This movie did not make me ashamed to be a human being, and the animation and the art were really lovely. We had lunch at a Thai diner in Woburn with Daughter and Boyfriend and the company and food were lovely.

I may be the only person in the world who gets a manicure before setting off on an excavation. Digging tears up the hands. I have fragile nails and shreddy cuticles at best. Now my nails are short enough they won't break and the cuticles are as tidy as can be, and I have a very subtle glittery gloss of acrylic sparkles.

Then I came home and complained about being a 51-year-old mother of two who still has menstrual cramps. It was a great excuse to put off packing. Ithink I have run out of them... maybe I'll brush my teeth.