Our monthly water bill is reasonable enough. It hovers around seventy bucks, which is loose change per person per day on any given month. I can wash clothes, run the dishwasher, drink eight glasses, cook pasta, fill the chickens' troughs, and shower, each of which would be a luxury to the 783 million people who live without running water. 

On these dog days of July, however, one shower is not doing it for me. By the time I have lugged the hose to five pens, cuddled a few Silkies, brought a dirt bag of a barred rock who just had a dust bath back to roost, and refilled the feeders, sweat is pouring off my forehead. Even if I stay inside to quilt, crawling on hands and knees across a sandwich of front, batt, and back, in order to clip a hundred safety pins leaves me drenched. We have a window unit that valiantly hums to keep us cool, or at least less hot, but all of life cannot be lived in one room. 

So I shower. Again.

My father once told me that President Kennedy changed his shirt twice a day. He respected Kennedy, and used the information to assuage his conscience about tossing a smelly polo in the hamper at noon, and reaching for a fresh one. Not that I had any opinion about it. Maybe my mother did, and considering her diagnosis it would have been safer to explain his logic to me. 

We are blessed to have easy access to water. It is also a miracle that grime comes off as easily as it does. Even when my feet are brown with mud, the spray of a lo flow head gets them clean. It does not even scold me for so quickly having undone the job it did yesterday. Or that morning. 

Ben has been yelling. One reason is his outrage about having to climb on the bus the next day to attend ESY. That is the trendy name to replace summer school, which accrued enough negative connotations as to render it useless. It is not exactly cruel and unusual punishment, being but three hours in a space cooler than home making brownies and learning about Cuba. Which he reminded me is almost a homophone for a six sided square object.  

But he did yell, which is something we are addressing. I followed the therapist's suggestion and rather than speak I wrote an equation. 

No yelling = a milkshake at Be Well

Yelling = No milkshake

While we sat side by side, slurping up chocolate shakes we chatted about Tarzan. Then out of the blue he handed me two words. 

"I'm sorry."

And just like that, the slate was all clean.