Last night the heat was nearly unbearable. I tossed and turned and kept dreaming I had slept too late, only to see that the clock read 2:02 am, then 4:20.

This morning, up early, I've opened all the doors up to let the cool air get in.

The summer so far has been crazy, a little too crazy, with my kids home all the time, and I find myself wondering how exactly, I am supposed to live these 2 lives inside of me, the artist and the mother. Summer is wonderful, and I love the heat and walking to the beach and even the sand tracked all over the house. But another part of me goes missing a little bit. And maybe that's okay. Even writing it that way - 2 lives - shows I'm disconnected. It's not 2 lives. It's one life, a life that is meant to encompass many things at once. Seeing them as seperate and divided from the rest never helps.

I admit there are times when I feel tired of trying to balance so many things. Sometimes, I'm tired of being grateful and present and laid back and flexible. I want nothing more than to hole up alone in an art studio for weeks and just paint and write and scribble songs. Sometimes I get tired of trying to scrape together something from the scraps.

But then, the flip side. How I wake sometimes and remember that there is no getting this back. Now will never return. Ella will never be three and a half again, in a lemon-yellow bikini. Iryn will never again be seven in her orange checkered sundress learning to ride a bike in the back alley. I want to be here for this, while it is here.

Besides that, there is this almost inappropriate sadness over the loss of a cat. The neighbor's cat, not even ours. But he slept with Iryn at night and he showed up at our window like clockwork, early morning and after school. His owner moved, and so he did too.

We are waiting for something to come and fill the hole he has left, but in the meantime it sits here, yawning wide open us.


And in the meantime there is the slow walk down the street to the beach and bags of cherries in the fridge, picked fresh from a friend's farm, and the peas in the garden, grown much too tall for the stakes, now all hunched over and tangled and cherry tomatoes in big pots that will ripen soon.

It's raining this morning, and it comes as a bit of a relief from the long, hot days we've been having. Also, the garden needs it. Although going to the beach and lounging in the yard for days on end is my idea of a good time, I need a day to do some plain, old running around. To browse the second hand store, to stop for a latte. The rain gives me permission. Plus, the air smells really good.

Out my window, enormous daisies are in bloom. There are sweet peas climbing up the stair railing. My floppy sunhat is hanging on the metal trellis, awaiting the next beach day. There are tiny droplets on the Jack Pine. I just watched a crow fly out of the alley dumpster with a grapefruit peel in its beak.

In June, I drove up to Cortez Island to attend a 4-day writing workshop at Hollyhock, with one of my favorite award-winning Canadian writers, Sharon Butala. It was HEAVEN, eating dinner on the deck overlooking the ocean, writing in the garden, and walking to classes through the warm-pine-scented paths. After returning, my music publishers flew me and a few other singer-songwriters out to Nashville for 4 days. Things are starting to settle now, as much as they can possibly settle with 2 small children underfoot, and I am looking forward to long lazy summer days and long evenings on the deck when everything is quiet and all you can hear is one single lawnmower in the far distance or the faint beat of the park music floating over the trees.