Sounds and sights, of the miscellaneous variety

There are Legos everywhere. Bursts of squealing, screeching, shouting, crying, then it settles into quiet voices as they get back to playing together. They tell stories to each other. "Pretend you are the dad and you went to mow the grass and there was a horse in the way..."

"Pretend you are a cheetah and your brother is coming over with some juice...."

Back and forth, they exchange scenarios while they build what they call "set ups" - little arrangements of figurines and cotton balls and tape.
**
Footsteps and muffled voices outside the door. I'm naked, in a hospital gown, waiting for my supposed-to-be annual skin cancer screening. The PA comes in, greets me while looking right past me. "Any concerns?" She tsks at the scar on my shoulder. "Who did this?"

I don't say anything. She was the one who performed that procedure. The scar looks like shit. It healed wide. I'm not the type to mind, but I do catch people staring at it if I'm in a swim suit. She tells me she needs to check the pathology report and leaves the room. When she comes back, she checks the rest of my body and doesn't say anything else about the scar.

"Good for another year!" she practically shouts, as she disappears into the hallway. I get dressed quickly, inhaling deeply when I catch a whiff of the mud caked on my boots when I bend over to tie them. It smells like disinfectant in there, and the floor looks clean, but I'm reminded of my mom's stories about her aides throwing soiled linens right on the floor.
**
Ever since we started looking at camper vans and RVs, I've been noticing people living in their vehicles. On the street near the boys preschool, in the parking garage at the Target. Once I was walking around the corner from my house and the side door on a nondescript work van was open, revealing some shelving with clothes on it, a little bed and a stove. I think I could very happily live in a van, even with the three kids, but that it would be difficult to live the way we do now.
**
I haven't heard a siren, the entire time I've been typing this. I noticed this fact because I thought they were a near constant presence on my street and I thought I might write a little something about the differences between Pittsburgh EMS and Eastern Area and the number 17 fire engines. But either it's  a slow day for overdoses and accidents or I am overestimating the general amount of first response traffic on my street.