Summer Plans

Back when my summer started, I made a long mental list of plans. After all, I thought, Hubby and I will be off for 2 whole months together, with the boys at home. We'll have plenty of time and energy to enjoy our time together and get a lot done. It would be the perfect, balanced combination of efficiency and enjoyment!


My Summer To-Do:
1. Lose the 3 pounds I gained since Spring Break
2. Completely empty and re-organize the guest room closet
3. Spring clean the entire house (we're talking move furniture, empty bookshelves...serious shit)
4. Organize over 1000 photographs into corresponding albums and photo boxes
5. Design and order 4 photo books using the professional pics dear friend took (including the maternity ones, which are now over 2 years old!)
6. Get back on my mountain bike again


You know where this is going, right?


Here's how it's turning out:
1. I've maintained the 3 pounds and gained an additional 2 due to the near-constant beer and wine drinking, also known around here as: "Aw, what the heck! It is summer, after all! Crack open a bottle!"
2. I sat and watched as Hubby emptied out some of the stuff in the guest room closet and placed most of it back in (no real organization took place but we did come across some really great old photos).
3. We've vacuumed twice, mopped once, and scrubbed the bathrooms once. No furniture movement of any kind has occurred, unless you count to find a runaway Hot Wheels car.
4. The 1000 photos have now multiplied to about 1400.
5. One photo book has been designed and ordered, and it wasn't even the maternity one.
6. I watched Lance Armstrong ride his bike in the Tour de France for the last time. Does that count?

Pretty amazing how during the school year, I can get 6 things done in one day, yet this summer even a list this short is too long. But I have become incredibly efficient at laziness and decadence...and joy. Who knew being an underachiever could be so satisfying?

Closed for Summer Vacation

Photo courtesty of www.zazzle.com

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I am a thinker.

A ponderer.

A muser.

I like to reflect, analyze, and then over-analyze.

I like to sit and think.

But apparently, not in the summer.

It turns out, this summer, I just like to sit.

I think about my blog all the time. I think about my online world of friends and fellow-thinkers. I think about all the drafts I've started. I think about how many days it's been since the last time I was on...

And then, well, then, I stop thinking.

I pack the beach bag and leave the house with my three favorite men.

I flip through the channels and watch the day's stage of the Tour de France yet again.

I call my friends and meet up at the local bounce house place.

I go to the gym.

I do laundry.

I eat chips and salsa.

I am very, very lazy this summer.

All the projects I had in my head in May: the two-years-worth of photos to be organized and put in boxes? The photo books to be designed and ordered back from when I was pregnant with Aidan? The closets to be purged and cleaned? The massive behind-the-sofa-spring cleaning? The steam cleaning of the boys' rooms' carpets? The every-other-day blogging?

Nope.

Not one.

I feel guilty about it when I'm in bed, mainly, at the end of the day, trying not to count how many weeks are left of this no-work, no-school, no-schedules kind of life for the four of us.

There will be so little accomplished, I think.

And then, I stop thinking.

I go to sleep.

And I wake up the next morning to more of the same lackadaisical living.

And you know what?

It's nice.

For someone whose brain is always frickin' noisy, whose mind is always on hyper-speed, whose lists of to-do's are endless, it's nice to just wander a lot instead of wonder.

And on those nights when I lay in bed and think for a bit about all the things I have not accomplished this summer, I also realize that maybe this has been one of my most successful summers ever...one in which I've actually been able to Just Be.

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