the pieces of my life

The lifeguards at our local pool terrify me. Seriously. This one woman is so whistle happy, I’m hearing the shrieks hours after the fact. I’m dreading going to sleep because I know those whistle blows will echo in my dreams.

Unlike the rest of you reading this blog—or at least 99% of you—we are not yet done with school. Thanks to the wicked bad Nor’easters (who says I can’t talk like a local?), we had six—count ’em, six!—snow days this year. One snow day was burned off by taking away a teacher’s professional development day. But we are paying for those other five snow days now, and our last day of school is this coming Friday.

But it’s the first day of summer and, school be damned!, we were going to make it be summer! Our Y membership gives us access to an outdoor pool, so we headed there today. I meant it to be a quick half hour swim, but two and a half hours later I was dragging the kids from the water. Doodles especially as this year he passed the deep-end test and now he can frolic in the long coveted deep end. Pie dolphins about in the shallow end, but we’re finally at a point where I can sit on the edge and watch her instead of feeling like I need to keep her at arm’s length. Not that the whistle-blowing lifeguard would let her do much.

Lucky we got this one day of summer in, because per the weather reports, it’s the last one we’ll be getting for a while. Tomorrow after school we’ll head to Barnes and Noble. I said to my kids this weekend, “There’s no need to get workbooks this summer, right? You guys don’t need them.” They’re at a point where they read and do math for fun and love writing letters that I in no way feel compelled to make them do pages of workbooks. But clearly I’ve forgotten who I’m dealing with.

“Mom! I want a math workbook!” the boy said.

“I want to do a workbook this summer!” the girl complained.

Yes, my children. The ones who do workbook pages for fun. I see lots of exciting blog posts for the summer. “Pie did four more pages in her workbook! Doodles completed a whole page of math!”

At least they’ll always be able to look back at today’s one day of summer.

I love the fluidity of summer. How everyone just moves in and out of the house and just lets the mood of the day take them. Yes, I know, it’s not technically summer, as Pie likes to remind me (“Is it really summer yet? How many more days till my birthday?”). But it feels like it. This is the year my kids are old enough to come and go on their own more or less, coming and going being defined as allowed to head out the backyard by themselves or go across the street to play with Tab. Doodles is allowed to ride his bike as long as he has a buddy with him. It’s the first year I’ve ever had to ask, “Where are the kids?” and really not known. I’ll call to the neighbor, “Have you seen my kids?” and generally the answer is, “They’re down the street” or “In my backyard.” It’s a relaxing feeling.

We’re definitely slipping into summer mode–kids up later, less TV (yea!), lots of popsicles. Kindergarten Connections for Pie–where she starts to meet other kids who will be in her grade–starts this coming Saturday, although I personally will miss it as I’ll be on a girls’ trip to NYC. School year is winding down, which means I’m making the preschool class video, trying to finalize camp plans, floundering at making vacation plans (we cannot get our act together to figure out where to go).

Of course this also means I’ve slipped into summer dress. Which pretty much involves leaving my shorts on the floor and then the next morning evaluating if they’re clean enough to make it another day. Usually they are, except for those days when I’ve been gardening (I’m so into gardening! I have three types of tomatoes plants; lettuce, carrots, onions, and squash that are all growing from seed; red peppers; basil; cucumbers; eggplant; and I’m trying potatoes in a garbage bag, and they are growing like crazy!). Except that I now have the fashion police living in the house. I put on my shorts. For only the second day in a row, I might add. And that little girl came in after I was fully dressed, rubbed her eyes from sleep, took one look at me, and exclaimed, horrified, “Mommy! You wore those yesterday!” Why, yes. Yes, I did. What’s the point of being a suburban haus frau if you can’t wear your clothes multiple days in a row?

In general, Memorial Day Weekend was a big success. I had an uber-relaxing weekend. It’s what happens when you self-medicate. On Sunday, I had a BBQ that I was very much looking forward to, but I had the nigglings of a headache and my foot was hurting, so I popped a couple of Advil. Only about three minutes after I took them, I thought, “Hey! I don’t remember our Advil being blue.” I checked. They’re not blue. They’re orange. Those blue pills? Tylenol P.M. My state of mind? A happy place. Turns out you can fight the Tylenol P.M. for a good many hours (might even be longer if you’re not drinking) before finally having to cave to the goodness of a bed. I don’t know which was better: that gooey feeling or not hearing even the slightest peep of Adam putting the kids to bed.

The joys of summer. Bring it on!