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Mule Mother

Written in January:
I am trying to figure out how much time per month I spend going back and forth to my car in the cold, icy rain. Does it add up to hours of my life? Years? It doesn’t help that we don’t have a driveway or a garage, so I park on the street and walk up 18 mossy steps to what Asher calls our “tree house”. It is just a house, but there are a lot of trees behind it.

This afternoon I had to carry Asher up the steps and into the house because he took off his shoes and socks off while we were driving home. I carried him up (one trip) then went back for my gym bag and my purse-stuffed two empty single serving rice milk containers, the remnants of my to-go lunch and some groceries (second trip). I still had to get his rain coat and his winter coat and several changes of clothes, since we emptied his cubby at school for the weekend. Also the shoes, socks and lunchbox (third trip-lots of stuff). But still, there were three paintings on the big paper from preschool I had to get (fourth trip). I wanted to give them their own trip so they didn’t get wet.

One of Asher's paintings featured a circle of pink paint at the bottom, and some red lines and squiggles on the top. The teachers write the child's name on their artwork when they are don. For this one Asher told his teacher write: There’s pink ice cream and a red upside down chair. It tipped over!

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