I haven't forgotten.

I'm still here.

But it's summer vacation, and therefore my children are also here.

That may not sound like an insurmountable problem, but I will give you a brief snapshot of life at my house now that Peter can talk coherently and Mary is entering the stage of pre-pre-teen attitude.

After lunch (or at least after each child had announced that they were "full", meaning that they wanted a cupcake instead of their lunch), they decided to play with a laundry basket and a jumprope. Now, that in itself isn't anything too strange -- I remember from my own childhood that laundry baskets can be drums, carts, jails, soup pots, and precarious stepping stools to items on high shelves. Jumpropes can be lassos, reins, home decorating items, fashion accessories, and handles to pull the laundry basket carts. So the toys themselves were not the issue.

I don't know what happened in between the beginning and the end of this particular play scenario, so I will skip to the end: Mary at the top of the stairs with the laundry basket on her head, Peter with the jumprope (and both arms and legs) stretched across the top step, and screeching that sounds like two angry squirrels engaged in a battle to the death.

I will also skip the finer details of the next scene, in which Mary is sent to her room, Peter is sent to his room, Peter blows me a raspberry, Peter gets a swat, and Mary takes advantage of my divided attention to dart out of the room and retrieve the coveted laundry basket.

Silence reigns.

Well, sort of, since Peter has asked if he can come out yet no less than nine times in the time it took to type this. Make that ten. Eleven now. Twelve.

Nope, sorry, that was it ... I'll have to wait until another day for the creativity and the silence to line up again.

In completely unrelated news, school starts in one week, five days, nineteen hours, and fourteen minutes.