  Normal, Illinois? Nah, nowhere near that exciting. Normal as in my normal life, as in two kids in the house, as in... well, as in celibate, which is so totally not normal, but hey, it's where I find myself.
And now that the kids are back from their summer jaunts afar with other relatives, I can go back to my comfortable delusion that it's celibacy enforced by the presence of virgin ears, or by the exhaustion that heralds the end of a day spent parenting, or anything but reality, which is... It's gone. Parched clean out of me. Forget to water your plants for a few weeks, or, as in my case, a few months (adapt to anaqueous living or perish), and they slowly dry up, until one day you look at them (in the desert, at least), and notice that while the outer trappings of life has been largely preserved, if a bit strained, the shape of the leaves and the green they had, but then you touch them and discover they have become fragile memories of what was once alive and vibrant.
They crumble. You can either throw them away or keep them around as imitations of live plants, what with the residual green leaves and all, but it's a sham and eventually you conclude there's no point in pretending to be a gardener when everything you touch seems to crumble into dust well before its time. things we wish we could do drink heavily things we can't do any more due to advanced age drink heavily 
