I love summer vacation. I really do. I love all school vacations because 1) there’s less for me to do and 2) I enjoy the company of my children.

But right now we’re in the adjustment phase. Because we headed off to camp last Thursday for a long weekend mere hours after school let out, this is our first full week home.

With the Short Kid.

His larger-than-life personality is a little easier to take when The Short Kid Show has built in intermissions, but now he’s center stage 24/7 and my head is reeling. Plus, his pet name for me this week is Old Woman, which is beginning to get on my nerves. Last week (for several weeks, actually) it was Crazy Lady. “Hey, Crazy Lady, what’s for supper?” and “I love you, Crazy Lady.” Slightly better than Old Woman. (He always does it in these crazy accents that make us die laughing, which is why he does it of course. It’s a performance, not a disrespect thing.)

He does offset nicely some of the more depressing, hard things going on around us at the moment, but it all adds up to a desire for the fluff. In my reading. And in my writing. At the beginning of the week I gave myself permission to step away from the intense emotion and high drama I was working on to tinker with some fun & fluff. I love fluff.

As a rule, Joshua Collins Blackstone the Fourth had a fondness for women who knew their way around a toolbox. But when the toolbox was his and he didn’t recognize the heart-shaped ass of the woman bent over, knowing her way around it, fondness gave way to irritation.

“You always help yourself to a man’s tools?”

The woman spun around, keeping her hands hidden behind her back. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Probably all that racket you were making rummaging around in my drawers.”

“I was looking for a couple of nuts.”

“Wrong drawers.”

“Can you make me some toast, please, Old Woman?”

:gaah:

EDITED TO ADD: Further explanation of the pet names—it began as retaliation for the fact I call him The Short Kid on the internet. That’s why he gets a little leeway. (That and the accents, which I so wish you could here.)