Please pardon the blogging delay. It has been a crazy summer — not that every summer doesn’t have it’s element s of crazy, but this summer seems to be especially bad. Health and family issues necessitated a lot of out-of-state trips, some on relatively short notice. It’s not so easy to pack up a preteen (or ‘Tween, as she likes to call herself, but that’s a topic for another blog) and a nearly 100 pound dog, and all their various accoutrements, supply them with gear to cover any possibility engendered by 100 degree temps and the ensuing air conditioning. I made two planned trips, followed by several that were entirely unexpected that had to be squeezed in before and after week-long girls camp.
Girls Camp needs its own explanation: yes, it’s a week in Cape May, but here’s the caveat — 30 teens, tweens and pre-teens, no air conditioning, no elevator. For one blissful week I get to trade the planning, purchasing, prepping and producing of meals for the drama of adolescence; overall, it’s a fair trade I guess – this is my third year. With all the stairs and afternoons at the beach it is easily the most active week I spend all year (Hey! I’m a writer –I sit a lot!). Throw in a surprise two hours of kayaking (it really did feel as if my arms would fall off), and I came home one hurting pup — a little sunburned, a little frazzled, a lot sore and tired and achy. And very, very grateful for air conditioning.
Through some quirk of the calendar, there was only one weekend between the return from Cape May and our family vacation. I had made a significant dent in the mountain of laundry when I remembered my brother and his family were coming for a few days at the beach – when the distance to the closest beach is measured in hours, the 25 minutes from our house becomes mighty attractive.
After the flurry of activity to unearth the guest bed and shovel out enough room for five more folks in the house, there was the usual fit issues of trying to mesh one family’s style with another’s’, especially when one of those has to keep working and the other is vacationing. I was glad they came, and I realized there were a lot of things we should have discussed beforehand. Live and learn.
Now I am rushing hither and yon, tossing things willy nilly into our bags, hoping the weather in Maine won’t be extreme, hoping my family will actually eat the meals they agreed to when we made the menu, hoping I don’t forget a lot of stuff and have to run to Wal-Mart — because the very necessity of walking into Wal-Mart negates the whole vacation right there.
As I type, I am realizing that I must in fact have a huge masochistic streak. Otherwise why I voluntarily be spending not one but two weeks without air conditioning in a summer that is setting records for heat? Regardless, that’s not what this blog was about. It was to be about how easy it is to get sidetracked and how summer, especially, is fraught with distractions.
A View From the Room 