I'm told I should start a Tumblr blog for these pictures. I'm too lazy to do that, so I'm creating a new category: Scenes I Walked in On. I'll try to go back and find all the others and tag them so they're in one place. I can't bear the thought of tracking more than one blog.

A few days ago, I walked into the living room after the little angel had gone to school and found this.

It reminded me of some horrible movie I saw in the eighties in which all the people were wrapped up by giant bees or spiders or something. With more than a little trepidation, I lifted the blanket.

And then I saw this.

So I did what any logical person would do. I tweeted the Nelson Atkins museum. We were just there. Looking at mummies.

Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at the @nelsonatkins last weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/

— Rita Arens (@ritaarens)

Which is funny, because I always feel so dumb at art museums. While talking to the front desk folks, I forgot the word "sarcophagus." Then I got into an extended discussion  with a docent about a pieta in which I screwed up art terminology. I thought a pieta was any piece of art depicting Mary and baby Jesus. It's so not. It's Mary and dead Jesus, which is really much sadder than Mary and baby Jesus.

But he'd never heard of it either way, so I guess there's that.

Then the little angel asked me if it was okay to think art showing Jesus was really ugly, and I told her I thought the real Jesus would not be upset if she didn't like art created before people discovered foreshortening. She was extremely relieved. I actually remember having the exact same question about her age. They should really go through these things in church.

Lo and behold, the museum tweeted me back!

sarcophagus bears? “@ritaarens: Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at @nelson_atkinslast weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

@nelson

Send her over to help w/ our installations :} “@ritaarens: @nelson_atkins I think so. Otherwise, the Chinese bed with the drapes. #art”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

So then, just as I'm securing funding to send my little art genius off on her future career, I learned the truth. When she got home from school, I asked the little angel what up with the bears.

"Oh," she said. "They're sleeping. The light hurts their eyes."

Damn.

The vine kept wrapping itself around my flowers and strangling them, every year for four years. It was impossible to kill, no matter how many times I ripped it out, because its roots are under the deck where I can't reach them.

This spring, as it reached its little tendrils toward my pepper plants, I wrapped it around the deck railing in frustration. I told it I would let it live if it would keep to itself.

It did.

It just bloomed this past week, and now there are at least ten very happy bees belly up at the bar.

In addition to peppers and tomatoes, this year we tried growing cantaloupe. I've never done that before. Initially we had tons of yellow flowers, and we were so excited. Then the heat came, and though we watered and watered, I guess they couldn't stand the weeks of triple-digit temperatures. Because after the temperature fell below 95, we saw little yellow flowers again. And then, miraculously ....

There's even a baby. I never thought of fruit as cute before.

Happy Friday!

(This thing? Goes into the Chateau Travolta Banish the Linoleum Fund. Ooh-rah, VTech. Plus I like their phones. Actual post is below this big box.)

I don't know if you do Twitter or Facebook, but if you are friends with me there, or read my tweets or status updates, you know that I like to spend a few minutes a few mornings a week on StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a site where people tag cool or funny or beautiful things and you just hit the button like a rodent and it rewards you with something interesting to look at that's been crowd-sourced by the masses. You hit a button to say like or dislike, and it finds you stuff closer to what you like the next time.

I use it as a mood enhancer. Totally Pavlovian, right?

I like to look for beautiful or cool or funny things in the morning to start my day off better. I do this BEFORE I look at news headlines, because -- as evidenced by my post yesterday -- they tend to be complete downers.

Here are my favorite stumbles from the last month or so:

2011 National Geographic Photo Contest

What I can only assume is a monastery on top of a cliff

Awesome paper roll collages

Art made out of words

If you see beautiful things in your travels online, please tag the #morningstumble so we can all enjoy. There's enough ugly out there already.

The neighbors are out of town. They've asked us to water their flowers since it will not rain in Kansas City again before the Mayan calendar runs out. We said, "Sure!" 

The first night I went over to water, I found the hose in back to be already on with a device attached to the top. It looked like a quick adaptor, but when I tried to put the nozzle in, it just shot water all over me. So then I decided to take the quick adaptor off, because WTF?

BAD IDEA.

As I watched water come shooting out the sides as I attempted to unscrew the adaptor, I remembered my neighbor saying something vague about the hose in the back never turning off.

Huh.

I watered everything while growing more concerned. I couldn't leave the adaptor off for a week, but if I tried to screw it back on, I was going to get even more soaked. And I was wearing my glasses, and I really hate it when my glasses get wet. It wasn't until I had the adaptor almost on that it occurred to me I could crimp the hose to at least slow the avalanche of water currently drenching me from head to toe.

No, I'm not known for my common sense. Thanks!

Fast-forward to last night. Saddened by the knowledge I have to do this every night this week because I am the only one home, I headed across the street. The little angel trotted along behind me in her skort and cowgirl boots, because that's all she wears ever since she read that is Taylor Swift's favorite outfit.

Me: Want to help me water the flowers?

Her: No, I want to go play.

Me: Okay, so what are you waiting for?

Her: I wanted to watch you get drenched first.

In every marriage, there's a moment in which you get to be the one who is right. My moment came on Saturday night.

On Saturday, a series of events led to my victory. 

1. A two-week heatwave was flaming out in a 105-degree burst of glory.
2. My brother- and sister-in-law and their two daughters were staying the weekend.
3. A door between the garage and the house was left open.

When I realized the door had been open, I went to look for Petunia. She's never left the garage before, but she has visited it when I've left the kitchen door open, and on the night in question, both doors to the garage were open in an attempt to release the atomic air trapped inside. Since Petunia is terrified of my youngest niece, I assumed she'd be hiding out in the basement. 

Halfway down the stairs, I saw something flutter. No, FLAP.

I ran back upstairs and yelled to Beloved there was something with WINGS in the basement. 

Beloved: "Wings? Really? Are you sure it's not a cicada?"

I may not be in Mensa, but I know the difference between a cicada and a bird or bat (I wasn't sure which one it was at the time.) There's a slight size differential.

This is a cicada. (image credit: Gardener41 on Flickr)

This is a fucking bat. (image credit: blmurch on Flickr)

Me: IT IS NOT A CICADA.

He dropped whatever he was doing and went downstairs. Seconds later, we heard a loud crash from the basement. 

Beloved: JESUS CHRIST! BAT! BAT!

(I may have allowed myself a smile)

I went to get a broom to join my knight in shining armor downstairs. He was crouched in front of the door to the half-finished bathroom, which leads to a half-finished, well, room room that we use as a tornado shelter. Nothing in our basement is finished, so we don't spend a lot of time down there. 

Beloved looked back at me, sheer panic in his eyes. I could see the bat flying back and forth between the room-room and the bathroom, looking for all the world like the bat on a string you see on The Muppets.

Beloved: I think he's getting tired.

My BIL came down the stairs and I sent him for a weapon. Then I gave Beloved my broom, because the man was trying to catch a bat with a toy butterfly net. I headed up to re-arm myself when I passed my BIL storming down the basement carrying a shovel. I was pawing through the garage when he reappeared. 

BIL: "He says we need something softer."

Me: "Is he worried about the bat?"

BIL: "No, he's worried about the walls."

I handed my BIL two plastic baseball bats and grabbed a bucket. As we re-entered the house, we heard Beloved yelling at the top of his lungs.

Beloved: "WHERE ARE YOU GUYS? A LITTLE HELP HERE???"

We rushed down the stairs, baseball bats swinging, to find Beloved crouched on the floor. Just the tiniest bit of webbed claw showed out from under the broom and butterfly net. BIL and I stared in shock. The bat was chittering away like a pissed-off rat.

Beloved: "GET THE BAG!"

I had no idea what he was talking about, and neither did BIL. Then I noticed a paper bag behind BIL. I tried to hand Beloved the bucket, as it seemed way more useful and user-friendly than a paper bag, but Beloved had gone to a place that doesn't hear reason. He is not fond of bats.

Finally BIL handed Beloved the bag and they got the bat out into the yard, where PETA will be glad to hear it was released. I admit at the point at which I heard it cursing us out in bat language, I wasn't too keen to kill it, but I was also thinking CHILDREN RABIES CHILDREN RABIES CHILDREN RABIES, as mothers are wont to do.

The next morning, the bat was gone, so we believe he lived to tell his story on his own blog.

AND I WAS TOTALLY RIGHT. Not a cicada, honey. 

NOT A CICADA.

The two-week Kansas City triple-digit heatwave is preparing to break! Phew! I was pretty sure I was going to have to go to a desert soon to cool off.

WE ARE GOING TO FREEZE!

Despite the ridiculous heat, we've been spending almost all our nonworking hours outside. We eat outside, we play outside, we sit on the deck and read or play on the Internet outside. From time to time, I become aware of the heat wrapping around my body like a hot washcloth and the sweat seeping into my clothes. It's not the active sweat of a hard workout -- I always notice the minute I begin to sweat when I'm working out -- but the passive sweat of a body attempting to cool itself off as inobtrusively as possible. Lately it's been not until I get inside and my skin cries out for joy that I realize just how incredibly hot it is right now.

When I'm very cold, I'm a jumpy, grouchy mess, but when I'm very hot, I find myself floating along, almost disassociated from my discomfort. My body is definitely more calibrated for heat than cold. My mind and my soul don't want to spend one more minute inside than I have to before the cold returns to Kansas City and I explore every inch of the space inside my house in an effort to find something new to do that doesn't cost money until the weather breaks and I can go outside without shivering again. 

It may be hot, but the weather's going to have to throw even worse than 105 to keep me inside for very long. I'd rather just float.

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Read my review of Backjoy on 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.

Yesterday I was in CVS picking up my prescription and a photo that I thought was going to make an awesome Father's Day gift but was just really disappointing instead. I was staring at it, wishing it were much cooler, when a man next to me noticed my Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt. Following is the exchange between two people being inexplicably rude and only one of them realizing it.

Him: "You know what Iowa stands for?" 

Me: "Yes."

Him: (taken aback) "Uh, I suppose you've heard them all."

Me: "Yes, I spent my entire childhood there."

Him: (not getting it) "You know the best thing to come out of Iowa in the last ten years?"

Me: (allowing myself to stare openly with an incredulous expression on my face) 

Him: I-29!

Me: (continuing to stare as though his brain matter was actively leaking out his ears)

Him: (backpedaling) I hear it's really beautiful in Iowa.

Me: (knits brows in concern)

Him: My friend lives in Iowa. He really likes it there.

Me: (extends neck toward him in disbelief)

Me: (takes my daughter's hand protectively and walks away)

The End

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The people who set up my mphoria store think it would be helpful if I pointed out things that I think are cool in there. I said sure, though there can be no pressure of any sort to buy anything. So I put that handy line up there, because you guys all know when things are below the line they are like commercial breaks, right? So anyway, I thought this keyboard duster with total volumized mermaid hair was cute.

On Monday night, I sat across the aisle from Gloria Steinem at a premiere of Jane Fonda's new movie with Catherine Keener, Peace, Love & Misunderstanding. I sat next to my BlogHer editor-in-chief, Stacy Morrison, who as usual was wearing shoes much more fabulous than mine. The whole thing was at the New York City Museum of Modern Art. 

What makes this even better is that I'm typing this from my normal office in Kansas City while wearing a running skort and a baseball hat.

When Stacy told me about the event, I immediately asked what I was supposed to wear. I worried about it briefly, then decided I would wear one of my Outfits by Goodwill -- a black Jones New York cocktail dress with satin trim and hot-pink, pointy-toed mules. I also wore the necklace my niece made that everyone thinks I paid millions of dollars for, when in actuality I think I slipped her $40.

We had a great time at the premiere and the afterparty, but when I got back to my hotel room, I realized the zipper that was too stuck for Stacy to pull it all the way up when we left was too stuck for me to pull down. AT ALL. And the dress was too well made to tear. I was completely trapped in Jones New York. I tugged and pulled, but considering that it was almost midnight and I was exhausted and I paid $6 for the dress in the first place, I concluded that two wearings -- a friend's wedding and GLORIA STEINEM -- was a fine ROI for $6. Since I was in a frickin' extended-stay hotel with no room service or maid service, there was a butcher knife handy. 

I should've photographed the knife.