It has been hard to get up in the morning every day this week. I've been stubbornly staying up too late in order to do things like have actual, uninterrupted conversations with Jen and well... watch episodes of Six Feet Under. We went to a small get-together up in the hills too, and stayed late enough that the girls both went to sleep there. I was tired enough a couple of mornings ago that I went to work with my shirt on inside out and didn't notice for about 45 minutes. Nobody said anything either. Maybe it wasn't obvious enough.

This morning when I got to work I was greeted by the pungent smell of sewage. It turns out that sometime between when I left yesterday and when I arrived this morning, some meddling soul discovered the control valves for the leach field (our septic system - basically pipes with holes buried under the dirt in a gravel bed so bacteria can break down the waste - sort of an aquifer from hell, really) and shut off the flow. The result was that sewage was finding its way to the surface and forming puddles on the field. Nothing a bit of caution tape and some lime couldn't fix once the valve had been returned to its proper position, but a bit of a nuisance. Don't teenagers have anything better to do with their time than mess with forces they don't understand? Apparently not. They still can't recycle either. I've probably rescued a hundred cans and bottles from the band camp's trash each day this week so far. As I was doing this today, I got to thinking about how plastic bottles are a petroleum product. Petroleum will not be with us forever. People have a knack for using and disposing of things as if there is an endless supply. Everything is created out of sight and mind, and disposed of the same way. We can be so disconnected from this process sometimes. Maybe distracted is a better word, especially when talking about teenagers. Hormones dictate that plastic bottles are not important. One cannot breed with plastic bottles. It's a shame though that the biological impulse to further our species is so narrow in scope. Recycling plastic does indeed have a connection to this goal. We are so dependant on plastic now that I'm sure everything would collapse if it all disappeared tomorrow. How's that for a meandering ramble?

After work, I took the girls to get ice cream while Jen took the boys to get school clothes. The Dickens threw a minor fit when I got her ice cream in a cup instead of a cone, so I got her a cone to put on top. She ate exactly none of it. Willow didn't eat her cone either. I had three cones. On the way home, as we passed behind the grocery store, we stopped so the girls could shout into the ventilation tube leading into some unknown part of the building. They started by shouting, "hello," but quickly moved on to such colorful phrases as, "crocodile butt!" Then, in unison, they both shouted, "butt, butt, butt, butttt!" Willow, after a moment of thought, giggled and yelled, "tinky butt!" (that's, "stinky butt"). I can just picture some hapless grocery store employee back in the storeroom questioning his or her sanity as tiny, disembodied voices babble on in profane glee about general olfactory qualities of posteriors.

That's all for now. Goodnight.

Oh, and check out Pandora. Interesting.