I’m sure I could be more exhausted, both from lack of enough sleep and from laughing so hard, but I’m not sure how. We’ve been in a whirlwind of sociability—first picking up Kira from the airport and then heading over to Joss‘ for the 4th of July—and while I am delirious with the joy of it all, somehow I have been required to get up and put on clothes for multiple days in a row, and I am just TIRED from it.

It’s possible I need to do this more often.

Anyway, the last time that Kira and Joshilyn and I were all three together was three years ago, during a very different time indeed. This gathering was reminiscent of the other in that there were some familiar players, like chocolate and wine, but it does rather feel like we last convened a millennium ago, back when the earth was still dark. Everything is different now, or at least it seems to be while my son and Joss’ Sam are running around discussing Pokemon with a life-or-death sort of fervor.

Anyway, we did the whole Independence Day thing of going to the town festival, buying little tickets, and letting the kids do things like climb rock walls and jump on something called a Monkey Bounce. IT JUST SO HAPPENS that MY Monkey was DELIGHTED with the Monkey Bounce, even calling out as his hair fluttered in the wind, “I’m a monkey on the Monkey Bounce!” You know, just in case I’d missed the joke.

This year we managed to con the children into leaving the festival BEFORE the fireworks, and then back at Joshilyn’s house we women sat around discussing world peace and how crazy we used to be in our tortured youth while the men took the children outside and let them blow things up. I thought it was a VERY FINE WAY to celebrate our country’s freedom, frankly. And I must say that Otto and Scott were very good sports about it all.

Mind you, my children and Joshilyn’s kids adore each other, and so we basically barely saw them for 24 hours while they played, and it wasn’t until we were coming back here today in the car with Kira that either of my kids seemed to acknowledge this other adult in any way, shape or form.

Monkey then felt it necessary to tell Kira a loooooong Pokemon story, and she appeared to nod in all of the right places.

Chickadee, as usual, sort of kept to herself, but then once we arrived home and Kira and I set about a grocery run and then making some salsa, Chickie decided to hang out with us girls and help. Before I knew it, my daughter and my friend were going over a cookbook together, discussing recipes.

So we had a VERY FANCY DINNER (nachos!) and then we had SURPRISE DESSERT (ice cream! and Magic Shell!) and I had the kids get ready for bed. I was still rounding up some of their things for their suitcases, as they’re leaving again tomorrow. At one point, Chickadee came upstairs to give me something, and then said, “Well, I have to go back downstairs and snuggle with Miss Kira, now. She said she needs to because she misses her kids.”

My chin was still gently resting on the carpet as she lightly skipped down the stairs. I finished what I was doing and went down, myself, only to find two of my very favorite females in the world snuggled up on the couch.

“I had to,” Kira said. “I miss my boys.”

“Feel free,” I said, sitting down opposite them, with Otto. “In fact, make me an offer!”

Chickadee rolled her eyes at me. That was exactly what I was trying to make happen, because it allowed me to narrowly escape my heart bursting out of my chest.

Kira thinks she’s going home on Monday, but I think Clay and the boys will be JUST FINE without her for a few more days. Or weeks. Whatever. Hey, I might just forget to drive her to the airport. I’m absentminded that way.