I find myself quite glum this afternoon, though it's not been a bad day or even a bad week. Right now, in fact, I'm on my comfy couch, a pot of Lady Grey on the side table next to me, keeping warm under the tea cozy I eagerly bought at Windsor Castle because tea cozys are an item ludicrously hard to come by in the States. Isn't this one charming?

I'm spittin-fed-up with the grand douchebags of America, Orange Trump and Kanye Hubris; repulsed by Kim Davis and her gross bigotry (thank goodness she was just held in contempt of court and remanded to feds); sick of stupid arguments by many Republicans and Ohioans about the affront it is to President McKinley to rename Mount McKinley Denali, not least because Pres McK never visited Mount McKinley, and actual Alaskans are in favor of the switch; exhausted by images and stories of migrants dying horrible deaths as they desperately try to get to places where they can simply live safely and feed their families; and despondent over the partisan political ugliness that is not only hurting Americans but also making us look pretty silly abroad.

But I'm also past ready to break up with summer. It's been a good one, but it needs to wrap itself terminally shut pronto. I'm hangdog tired, hot, and desperate for a routine.

Jack has been in Colorado with my father-in-law since Tuesday. They enjoy hiking together so decided to go big and climb the last 4,000+ feet of Mt. Elbert this week. I'm so grateful that our boys have such involved, loving grandparents, and I'm thrilled for Jack that he had this opportunity. After yesterday's summit, they celebrated with dinner at a saloon in Leadville. I'll see my climber tomorrow.

Jack atop Mt. Elbert; no, I don't know what's all around his mouth.

Oliver and I have, in the past twenty-four hours, painted Halloween-themed items at a local pottery studio, seen the Shaun the Sheep movie, been to the bookstore, read, built, playdated, lunch dated, snuggled, talked ad infinitum about his many ideas for Halloween costumes, obtained a horcrux locket (Harry Potter, y'all), and negotiated just how many pictures of each thing he eats he can take with my phone before said eating commences: I found 19 of one slice of cinnamon bread from this morning, for example.

We have had such a marvelous time together, but he is, mercifully, now at my mother-in-law's house which is why I'm finally able to just sit my sad ass on the couch and drink tea uninterrupted by anything but Percy's revolting new habit of continuously digging in his ears with his back paw claws and then licking those like they're popsicles.

For a variety of reasons, I today drove up and down northwest DC twice, into and out of Maryland and later to Virginia before trying to return home three hours later but discovering that I was out of gas. I cried for a full twenty minutes to an incredibly loving friend who just gets it.

Who gets that while I'm grateful for our summer, the fabulous travel opportunities we've had, my in-laws, and all that jazz, I'm so damn tired that all I could do was weep. And I'm gonna tell y'all, it felt good.

The older I get, the less I cry. By and large that's a pretty good trajectory, but it's also a definite result of feeling more and more that most people don't want to hear about the dregs of anything. And that, like the seemingly complete lack of real bipartisan conversation anywhere, is an enormous loss for everyone.

Percy has given up on his clawsicles, we finally got a bit of rain, and my tea is still warm. My cortisol level has subsided as I bask in this quietude that's mine for a couple hours more. I'm going to read my book, All the Light We Cannot See (which is fabulous and I am dreading the fact that if I keep reading, the story will end), and I'm going to breathe deeply and accept that we have four more days of "break" and will need to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Look what I saw today: if this can happen, well, onward ho!