Irony

Here is irony: reading a chapter in a book about mindful parenting while I ignore the children playing nearby and when they interrupt me, offering them distractions of television or a snack.

I do have to make note of the remarkable appearance of the moon tonight. I left the house after Babygirl went to bed (clutching dolly and her blanket) tonight. My mission: to return two videos and one Nintendo game and to stop by the grocery store.

The benefits of running errands after bedtime are as follows:
1) Listening to Laura Ingraham's radio show is hilarious and fun.
2) Shopping without children is soothing and hypnotic.
3) Occasionally, the moon makes a guest appearance in the sky and I remember the perfect October nights of my college days when I realized with a start: There will never again be an October night as beautiful and magical as this night, right now. And the melancholy of that thought--or maybe the heartbreak of homework or the loneliness of being human--made me want to cry. And I was right. That October night is long gone. So is my youth!

But tonight's moon just made me think of a glowing stone nestled on a navy-blue velvet expanse. The moon is a little more than a half-moon tonight, and because I am a mother of a toddler, I thought to myself: Moonbear loves the moon. He loves her when she's new. He loves her when she's half. He loves her when she's three-quarters. He loves her when she's full. Moonbear loves the moon . . . all the time.

I do, too.

I apparently also love the colon tonight. I may have used my colon-allotment for the next three years. (Yeah, that would be "colon" as in the punctuation mark, not "colon" as in the digestive organ.)