Summertime

School lets out pretty late around here, so as far as we are concerned, summer is only just over a week old.

If you were to go back and read my 2007 archives (and I’m not suggesting you do – some of those posts make me absolutely cringe!) you would see what summer was like with a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. We had a kiddie pool in the back yard, and we dipped our feet in it every afternoon. We went to the zoo. We went to the swamp. We visited grandparents and cousins. We picked berries in the yard, and went to farmers’ markets.

I tend to look at those days with rose-colored glasses. It was a sweet time. But, I also have to remind myself, it was a time of juggling my creative needs, and my keeping-a-book-store-afloat work with the attention of two little boys. The days were pretty long.

Summer is different now, with both boys spending a lot of time in separate rooms doing computer stuff. I’m not complaining about the amount of time they spend on their laptops – they’re not goofing off so much as they are working on self-directed projects. One is writing novelettes which he is self-publishing. The other is writing music and video games. They’re both interacting with a group of other kids they met online, and together they’re creating online content for a collaborative YouTube channel.

There’s a lot of creativity going on in there, and I’m proud of their accomplishments.

For myself, I’ve been working pretty hard so far this summer, what with the ebook publishing and the huge magazine sale. With all of that going on, I find that I’m grateful for the fact that we don’t have to be on top of each other all the time.

Still, I do want us to have some time together this summer, away from the computers and away from the work. Luckily the kids agree, and we have made a standing date to visit my parents once a week, just like we did last year. That gives us about an hour and a half in the car together (round trip) during which we sing and chat and otherwise enjoy the ride. My parents have a pool, so we take a dip, the boys often spending hours in the water just clobbering each other and having a blast at it. I knit by the pool when I’ve had enough of the water war. We stay for a meal, we socialize. It’s lovely.

My hope this summer is that we supplement our weekly date with additional fun activities. We have other grandparents and cousins to spend time with. And despite the fact that we’re all eight years older than we were in 2007, the zoo and the swamp are still perfectly legitimate destinations.

I started this post thinking I was going to share some pictures I took yesterday and write just a quick sentence to go with them. And here we are a page-and-a-half later. Isn’t that always the way?

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On an unrelated note, I’ve decided to only post Weekend Favorites when the mood hits me, or I have a lot of links/images to share. Neither of those criteria are being met this week, so there will be no Weekend Favorites tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe not. Hey, it’s summertime! The living is supposed to be easy 😜