If you asked me if I liked summer 6 years ago, I'd have said no. It's hot in the summer. That summer of 2012 was hot, and we had a two year old, and I had a husband working the evening shift at a job he hated. So I got to go to work each day teaching my summer class and doing research, then I got to go home and enjoy being a single parent. It wasn't fun.
I still think summer is hot. Growing up in Florida, you didn't need a degree in meteorology to predict the weather - it was going to be hot and humid, and then in the afternoon, it was probably going to rain. But not a cooling rain - just enough rain to make the pavement steam and make the humidity worse. To me, summer meant no school, but it also meant bugs, and sweat. Midwest summers are kind of like opening a grab bag every year. Will it be hot for months or will it be pretty nice with only a week or so in the 90's? Will we have rain or will there be water worries?
Since my husband started teaching high school, summer has taken on a whole new meaning. Before you say that it's because we're both teachers and we are enjoying the summer off, let me tell you that every person who says that to me gets mentally punched in the face. Neither of us has ever taken a summer off. But, we work less. We eat dinner later. And with Ian getting older, we are finding a new freedom that hadn't existed. Or, I think it existed before we had Ian, but we didn't appreciate it. It's having sandwiches for dinner and popsicles for dessert. It's making a spontaneous trip to the pool or the lake (we're on a beach-finding mission this summer). It's letting Ian stay up until 11pm because the outdoor movie showing in the park didn't start until 9:30 because it's light out until then. And it's going to bed when we're tired and waking up with the sun, not an alarm clock. So yeah, I think summer is pretty awesome now.
Last summer, I started mourning summer in late July. I knew that the days of Dave getting home right before we needed to do something because he was held up by a student needing help were coming. Of me being late because one of my students needed something, or faculty meeting, or one meeting that bled into another. Of eating dinner when we weren't really hungry because there was soccer or Scouts to get to. Of homework and bedtime and making sure that everything was ready for the next day because if it wasn't the morning would be crazy. Of days where we went to work, came home, and went to work again.
And it's starting earlier now. It's mid-June and already I'm so in love with our schedule and our way of life (ok, but not the heat - this 100 degree weather can GO AWAY!) that I don't want to give it up in August. So I'm desperately trying to figure out how to keep it. Or maybe how to keep some of it. I have some ideas, but keeping a blender in my desk for a pina colada between classes doesn't seem practical. I think this is where my work on myself is going.
I am working on focusing on one thing at a time so that maybe if I get more done at work, I can just BE at home. Last year, for the sake of my stomach (and bouts of gastritis in recent years) and my sanity, I'd stopped working late at night. It wasn't efficient - my brain shuts off on complex tasks - but the MENTAL real estate that work thoughts took up was still tiring and sometimes overwhelming. The last few weeks I've been working on not just mono-tasking, but mono-thinking. Like meditation, but I'm not sitting in a lotus position all the time. I try to focus mentally on whatever I'm doing, whether that's work or leisure, and to actively try to redirect my brain if I notice myself getting distracted. Like the dog in Up, my brain was really getting to the point where some days all I did was yell "Squirrel" every 5 seconds. This is definitely a work in progress, but it's getting easier. I'm hoping that this means that if I stop working at the end of the day that I'm more present with Ian and Dave and not physically there and mentally a million miles away.
The thing that I want to think about the rest of the summer is how to not lose the sense of fun and spontaneity in the busyness and endless to-do lists of the regular year. To live on island time, year round. It might not happen this year or the next or the next, but I think that it's a goal worth pursuing. And it won't get me fired like day drinking probably would.
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