This will be brief as AJ is in one of his contrary moods today and the only way to survive is a regular changing of the guard. My hour of freedom is almost up. I squandered the first forty-five minutes of it issuing death-threats to garden weeds and menacing them with my hoe. I�m pretty sure that if it were possible, they would have been laughing at me for my pathetic attempts at weed domination. But I have not yet begun to fight!

Saturdays like this always make me feel like a grown up. It started with AJ climbing into bed with us to watch cartoons and continued with a family trip to the playground and some gender-appropriate home maintenance projects: carpentry involving power tools for the husband and gardening involving the aforementioned hoe for me. It will end with a pizza, either eat out or eat in, depending on whether or not the impending rain prevents my husband from cutting the lawn. It is a Saturday from my own childhood, minus hauling the family trash to the town dump, a ritual that seems to have all but vanished in this country. My brother and I used to fight over who got to sit in the front seat to accompany my dad each week. The dump was a fascinating place. All the detritus of daily life was on display � piles of tires, piles of metal things like old bicycles and car doors, a pile of car radios. History, of a sort, in the making.

It is a Saturday from my childhood, but I�m the mommy. After three years, that�s still sinking in.

Best wishes to all those heading to Washington tomorrow. We need all the help we can get. I�ll be there in spirit.

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