It’s that time of year again. The kids are in a wide variety of camps, and those camps turn out to have a wide variety of forms that are required. I put “fill out camp forms” on my running punch list of bigger personal tasks (along with getting my car inspected + scheduling my own physical…) and carved out time to do it Sunday night.
I made a lot of progress. My personal favorite was the camp where I had to send in a form with a copy of the front and back of both our health insurance card and prescription drug card (this is a sleep-away camp). So this was a two-copy problem — first make a copy of the form with the front sides up, then take that copy and tape on the cards so the back sides are up and make a copy of that. For another camp I scanned in one kid’s pediatrician report and then it said the size of the document was too large. So I had to take a picture of it instead. Fun!
It is, however, mostly done. One camp doesn’t even have the forms available yet, but I will deal with that when it comes. I’ve also identified a week where I can see that me (and likely the 16-year-old) will be doing a lot of driving, so I’ll probably sign the kids in camp up for before/after care on that one.
Fortunately, the weekend is vast so it was not all consumed by administrative work. On Friday I ended my last podcast interview at 5 and played outside with the 6-year-old for about 40 minutes. Then we all had make-your-own pizza, and I drove downtown for a dress rehearsal for my concert with Choral Arts Philadelphia. We had a baroque orchestra, which was kind of cool (for performing Bach and Zelenka). We got out early and so I was home around 9:20 or so. On Saturday I got up early to run with Jane, during which we plotted a trip we are taking together later this summer (!). I finished my puzzle, read outside for a bit, dropped a kid at a playdate, and drove downtown for my concert.
It was about 80 degrees downtown and sunny, so Philadelphia was hopping…the net result of which was that my usual parking garage wasn’t available, nor was any surface lot near there, street parking was just a non-starter, and traffic was crawling. I had left the burbs around 1:15 and didn’t pull into a garage until about 2:05, and that one was a full 10-minute walk from the performance venue. But the people watching through Rittenhouse Square was pretty good! We rehearsed one more time, then sang the Easter Oratorio and the Zelenka mass — I think we sounded pretty good! This photo is of me grinning because I love singing.
Then it was back home, where we ate dinner (my husband and 16-year-old made fish tacos with some of the halibut we still have in the freezer from their Alaska trip), went to Rita’s for water ice (first time of the season), then went in the hot tub with the little kids for a while.
Sunday we were up early to go to the confirmation breakfast at church — the 14-year-old and her classmates were celebrated. The 6-year-old came with us and very nicely colored in his coloring book during the breakfast, and during the wait before the service. The 16-year-old and 11-year-old came together to church (the upside of having a kid who can drive again!) and we sat together, with me running back and forth to the choir loft to sing the anthems, then come down to sit with my family and the confirmands. One wrinkle: the 6-year-old decided he did not want to leave the service to go to Sunday school, and by the end of the service (which featured a short congregational meeting after) he had basically run out of his supply of self-discipline. Probably everyone else did too, though they’re better about hiding it. But we survived.
Then it was time for kid activities. During the drive to get my 11-year-old from his tennis lesson I noticed that my car was at 99,997 miles. So when I picked him up he was very excited, and filmed my odometer as we drove to Wawa. Wawa was close, however, so it was still 99,999 in the parking lot. So we had to film again as I was driving home and sure enough, it ticked over. The 11-year-old was also excited to ponder that the car is older than him (it’s a 2011 Acura).
I tried to run in the 86 degree heat but it was a slog. The upside of the heat, though: we managed to go in the actual pool for a while (not just the hot tub). The water was freezing but that felt OK on a hot day!
I tried to make guacamole for dinner to go with the leftover fish tacos but all our avocados had gone bad. So I drove over to the supermarket (4 minutes away) to get some, but all of those weren’t ripe yet! Foiled. Oh well. Then it was on to the camp forms.
More publicity stuff today. If you’ve been pondering joining the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community, we have our monthly meet-up today at 11:30 a.m. eastern. We’ll be talking Big Time and time management in general. Membership is $9/month, and you can cancel at any time. We have 3-4 discussion threads going each week on our forum.
Over the weekend, Vox also featured me in their Good News newsletter — I’ll post that when it goes up on the web this week.
Avocado ripeness feels like it occupies an inordinate part of my brain and life.
@Cate – I have 7 bad avocados in the trash and four non-ripe ones on my counter. This inventory management system is bad!