When I was a kid, there was a bench in my parents' house that was just long enough for a small child to lie down with her head touching one armrest and her feet touching the other. I loved that bench. I still love it -- my parents gave it to me when I moved out. Sometimes I go upstairs and sit on it and realize how totally uncomfortable it is, but I still love its swoopy wooden details. I don't have the house or the budget for the amount of swoopy wooden details I would buy if I could.

I was moving some things around a few days ago and put a little rectangular pillow on the sturdy, uncomfortable bench in our living room, the one that went so well with the Mission 1902 style of This Old House but not so much with the seventies vibe lingering in Chateau Travolta. I don't think anyone in the family has ever sat on it except to put on or take off shoes, but it holds all of our living room blankets under its seat, so it lives on in the corner of the room.

The day I put the pillow there, my daughter came home from school and saw it and immediately went over to lie down. Her head touched one armrest and her feet touched the other. She looked down, pulled a book out of her backpack and didn't move for the next hour.

Pretty cool.

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Speaking of things kids like, you can win a giant cardboard playhouse now through Nov. 1 at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

[Editor's Note: I wasn't compensated at all for this post. I only linked to the swings so you could visualize, as we all know I suck at photography.]

The tree must have already been a hundred years old by the time I met it and its black tractor tire swing hanging from a long yellow rope. It wasn't the sort of tire swing I see hanging on suburban playground sets, laid out horizontally with three ropes meeting in the center. This tire was hollowed out with handles cut in the sides, so you could sit deep inside it like an astronaut in a rocket booster and hang on for dear life.

I remember my father and uncles taking turns pushing us so high my toes seemed to crest the roof line of my cousin's house. We'd beg them to keep going long after we could tell they were regretting ever hanging that rope. In my imagination, the swing got higher off the ground every year as the tree grew, taking the swing with it inch by inch.

I loved that swing.

Last Christmas, Beloved bought me a canvas sky swing, the kind made out of canvas and wood that you see at home shows and think, "Man, I really need one of those," but you never buy it because it's totally frivolous. (I love gifts like that.) We hung it this summer from one of the forty-year-old trees outside our house, but I could never get a turn because my daughter and her friends were always in it, and it's not a swing meant for kids. It's a swing meant for long novels and a stepladder end-table to hold my glass of wine. So I bought the ladybug swing.

The rope wasn't long enough, so my husband and the neighbor got more and spent two hours getting the rope over one of the top boughs. My daughter, fearless as always, taught herself to run and jump onto it that afternoon, though she begs -- just as I did -- for the sort of above-the-head, underdog push only an adult can give, the kind that sends the swing twisting and jittering ten feet in the air as the child begins a methodical pendulum ride that's as pleasing to watch as it is to ride. Back and forth. Back and forth. 

I had to buy a timer because the neighbor kids all fought over the swing, ignoring hot tubs and motorized kid cars and wooden swingsets and park slides for the $23 ladybug swing, which has become so popular we unclip its little green string from the long white rope at night. It's a treat, something brought out only when there is time to sit back and inhale the scent rolling off the tomato plants and listen to the morning doves argue over safflower seed.

The swing is really a time machine, and it lands a few times a week in my cousin's yard in Iowa.

I woke up this morning and it was November. I laid in bed for several minutes, trying to remember October. It seemed to be one big pumpkin.

Last night while Beloved walked the little angel around the neighborhood with the Chiefs game thrumming in one ear, I stayed back to finish some work. After wrapping it up, the kids were still coming every few minutes, so I pulled up Ebay and started looking for fake American Girl stuff for Christmas presents. I thought about Christmas, which suddenly seemed to loom. Beloved mentioned Thanksgiving last weekend, and I realized it was only a few weeks away. The little angel looked suddenly taller as she drug herself up the hill at nine, lit by glow sticks, feet filthy and aching from those damn ballet flats.

As she slid into bed, she complained, again, about her feet. Without thinking, I said something about prom. Then as Beloved read books to her, I wandered back down to the couch and picked up my book and started reading, and it occurred to me that prom could come as quickly as November had, if I wasn't careful. 

Friday was the last day of school for my school district. I happened to find myself behind the bus for the middle schoolers on its last trip home.

As I hovered behind it, anxious about all the things I needed to get done before the end of the day, a boy got off. He whipped around the front of the bus and stood in his driveway, watching it leave.

And as it pulled away, he threw his backpack on the ground and started dancing.

My girls' weekend ROCKED. On every possible level. It was so great.

But it's private. Yes, it's true -- I do occasionally have boundaries. SURPRISE!

So, instead, I give you the house we made out of the cardboard box Steph's glider came in.

 

Note the fence by Beloved and the shape by moi.

 

We got some markers and puffy paints for the occasion. It reminded me of the cat house Blondie and I made with Pa when we were kids.

 

Beloved made special handles for the window out of duct tape.

The little angel immediately began decorating.

 

I contributed an apple tree.

 

And a sun.

 

Cardboard box houses ROCK.

 

As do half-price roses from the grocery store that have miraculously opened while you were gone for the weekend.

It was gorgeous today, this first day of November, when winter begins in the lower Midwest.

It is her sixth November.

 

The little angel was determined to wear her new snow boots, despite the seventy-degree temps.

She can see through my attempts to get her to smile for real.

 

She fearlessly climbed a very tall rock.

 

I was happy and sad to learn she didn't need me to hold her on the way up.

 

She became the spiderweb queen, and I retired to princess.

 

She doesn't always listen to me anymore, now that she's five.

She has her own ideas.

Sometimes, she's determined to go her own way.

 

A cautious toddler, she's become a courageous girl.

 

It's a relief she still looks back to make sure I'm behind her.