The Heat is On
This will be a short post. Definitely not an ambitious one.
It’s summer time. To be specific, it’s July. And where I live, that means heat, hurricanes, and the half-way-back-to-school-again mark.
Which means I’m running out of time. All the grand plans made back in May (yes, May is when the kids get out here, and the first week of August is when they start back, so it’s basically June and July) and the sports / academic banquets / extra-curricular obligations were fading away—all those ambitions—are crumbling apart.
Which is the norm around here. Usually, we have a big summer trip somewhere—Alaska, Colorado, Yellowstone—and that trip eats up half the vacation. Not this year. We’re doing a short, one-week trip to visit my brother and the rest of the summer is Chris’ catch-up-on-work time. By that reasoning, I should be making great progress on all my ambitions.
Except I’m not. I’m flustered and flabbergasted and a few other words that start with “f.” Where the hell did June go? Don’t ask me. Somewhere between running a business and writing three books, it snuck out the back door. Hope it put mosquito repellent on.
It’s those ambitions—they’re the problem! The enemy I continually reinforce. I don’t know why I can’t let them go and just focus on the one or two which matter most. Instead, I find myself scrambling to do ten things at once. In July. Half-way to a new school year.
You see, I’m one of those parents who relishes the kids being out of school. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Whatever holiday you want to throw at me, I’ll take it. They don’t impede my work. In fact, I turn them into little assistants, working with me on those ambitions. They’re both quite brilliant, suitably hard-working, and brutally honest, and I’d love to have them home for half the year, if there was a way to swing it.
But there isn’t. Education comes first, and it’s coming fast. Next week we’ll be out buying new clothes, new backpacks and overpriced, BPA-free water bottles. What I have left to look forward to now are heat and hurricanes.
And my never-budging ambitions, hounding me forever.