Midsummer check-in

I got a new phone in early June. Due to a complicated migration of my data, none of my apps automatically transferred. I decided to not reload the social media ones for a while, just to see how things changed.

I’ll write a bit more about that later this week, but over the weekend I decided to go back on X/Twitter. I don’t really post there much anymore, but whenever big news happens, as it certainly did, I do find it interesting to see the variety of sources and voices. I don’t want to spend my life on there, so maybe I’ll log myself out and not save the password or something. I am still figuring that out — how to get the benefits without the time cost.

Anyway, life continues. We sent another kid off to camp this weekend so we are now down to three. My husband and I took the 12-year-old and 9-year-old for a short bike ride on Saturday and it was logistically easier than moving 7 people around for sure. We only needed one car. The 12-year-old and I volunteered for the preschool Sunday school class again. My husband and I went to Longwood Gardens on Friday night and walked around and had dinner in the beer garden. There were pool trips on Saturday and Sunday. There was also a massive push with an online class. Longtime readers may recall that this has been a source of summer stress/anxiety for me in the past — a child signs up for a self-paced online class that nonetheless “counts” on a school transcript. I was under the impression that the child was on pace, and said child was — if that child was not going to be away at camp for multiple weeks. The good news is that you can do a lot in 72 hours. But I wish we’d had this conversation, oh, like 72 hours prior to that.

While school has only been out for a month, in my mind July 15 is about the mid-way point of summer. So I’m doing a quick check in on my Summer Fun List (you can read the original post here).

We went to a baseball game in June, and have also now hit 2 separate beer gardens. There have been two bike rides with kids and several solo ones (it’s pretty easy to stick my own bike in my car with the seats down and then I don’t have to deal with the bike rack). I’ve done a number of early AM runs (about the only time running outside is comfortable in 90 degree weather!) including two early morning runs in Central Park during the NYC trip. I’ve wound up in the hot tub multiple nights per week — we tend to do evening pool trips at least during the week, and I get cold after not that long in the regular pool. There was one beach trip over the July 4th long weekend, but we’ll be back for two weeks in August and will do most of the beach items on the summer fun list then. I have now gone to our local farmers’ market twice.

I’m currently doing an evening hours challenge for Big Time…I probably need to speed up some of my research on this but it’s been mostly OK. I have been writing summer sonnets for sure — I posted the Tiger Lily one last week and I’ll post one at the end of this too.

I have not listened to the summer part of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Probably should get on that.

As for one-on-one time with each kid…. I’ve spent one-on-one time with the 4-year-old just by virtue of him being little. The big kids have all gotten fairly large trips this year. The 9-year-old is a little harder but we shall see.

Other than in NYC the older kids have not gone to any nice restaurants. Well, I took my daughter out for brunch. My husband is supposed to take the two older boys out when they’re back from camp.

I have been outside at night! I don’t think there will be any camping happening this summer. But I have seen the stars.

And I’m enjoying my new summer wardrobe. Basically it is all Nic + Zoe jeans in various crops plus flowy shirts. And my Charix shoes.

If you made a summer fun list, how is it going for you?

Here’s a sonnet called “Elegy on the harbor”:

The fragile warmth of June gives way to heat
that’s thick as clouds, a damp weight still at dawn.
The ebbing tide pulls water in retreat;
the dock now wonders where the boats have gone.

An old wood cabin, dark when it was built,
is faded gray, with weeds beneath the stairs
the porch boards broken, railing at a tilt
inside, a musty bunk bed where the pairs

of children woke and scurried to the hall —
the smell of bacon in the morning haze.
Then once when summer faded into fall
the children stopped returning, and the days

of campfires ended — lingering like a ghost
in smoky mist along this northern coast.