Here I am at home, after a week at what my son James calls Poet Camp, a title that is probably more or less accurate, except that we toasted no marshmallows and no one fell into the lake. I feel like doing nothing at all, but my house says otherwise. Thus, I am washing dirty towels and sweeping a week's worth of grit off the kitchen floor and cooking what James calls "a healthy breakfast" to tide him over during today's handy-boy gig as a carpenter's assistant/coordinator of destruction. "A healthy breakfast" is a code phrase for "bacon," which according to James is a great way to improve SAT scores. It also buoys the spirits of those who are about to spend the day ripping rotten cedar shingles off the side of a house alongside their best friend's dad, whose own teenage son is away at a how-to-get-yourself-ready-to-go-to-college-someday-because-we're-worrying-you-won't program and who is thus forced to hire a teenage-son substitute to help him out with this crappy job. Ah, summer and its minimum-wage mementos.

Son #2, he of the "athlete's foot is destroying my life" phone weeping, has proven not to be suffering from athlete's foot but a serious case of poison ivy ("I didn't know that was poison ivy when I ran into the patch barefoot to look for a baseball" even though his parents have been pointing it out to him for his entire life). The result is swollen feet and legs and howling misery. I'm thinking that he won't be playing in that Babe Ruth game today.

As you can see, Poet Camp is quickly fading into a quaint memory of quiet.