When all the sky is clear and blue

Earlier this week, Donna and I babysat for a pastor and his wife from church on their anniversary. They have a two year old, and a boy who is, I think, about five. We played soccer outside together, and he tried to distract me from my job of guarding the goal by calling out things like, "Look over there! A Golden Retriever!" Either he knows me really well, or we have a lot in common.

I am, apparently, way too much fun, because he wasn't eager to go to bed, or stay there. This poem came to mind that Donna and I both remembered from childhood:

Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still running past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?


It is now not yet 8 on Friday night, and the sky is clear and blue, and I am sufficiently exhausted to think bedtime wouldn't be such a bad thing. After all, I have to rise early tomorrow to watch the ladies' final at Wimbledon, and somehow at the same time, the Argentina vs. Germany World Cup quarterfinal.