I went to the library to work today. I needed to get out of the house so very badly. The dogs were driving me nuts and the walls were closing in on me, and the cat was puking in the hallway, and I just had to go. So I packed up and left. I found a yellow vinyl armchair that looked like a prop from That 70’s Show at the end of an aisle of books and sat with my headphones on, listening to my Stay playlist and editing. It was sheer bliss.

Until school let out and the library flooded with kids. I started off thinking, ‘good for their parents taking them to the library after school,’ but switched over to ‘get me the hell out of here’ shortly after, when a little girl in the aisle lost interest in looking for books on pets and started farting and trying to blame it on her sister.

When I got home, our next door neighbor was out (not Mrs. Gnome, the neighbor on the other side). We chatted for awhile. She told me that little Mr. “Hi Argo’s Mom!” came home from school and said he was writing a book for every kid in his class. He came over to chime in that it was 17 books he was making out of paper and drawing the same pictures in every one. She told him that I was writing a book. He said, “Like me!” He looked up at me and said, gravely, “It’s so darn hard.”

It was almost as good as the time last summer when he saw a pile of Argo poop in our back yard and yelled out, “Who pooped in your yard?” It took everything I had not to tell him J did it.