Summer is really a wierd time of year when you're a school teacher. I remember when I worked at Kinko's - and well everywhere else, and summer was just the hot time of the year. But when you teach, and you don't have to work in the summer, then you sort of enter into this wierd zone of space time. Every day feels like a Saturday, in my case a Saturday when Jose has decided to work overtime. I don't have to flip my alarm clock over because i don't care what time it is. The kids sleep late, giving my all this time in the morning to watch shows I've DVR'd during prime cartoon time, and I have time to sit and read and be lazy. There's no bath time schedule, no homework schedule, no schedule at all.
Though, with Jose gone to El Salvador for two weeks, and Franklin with him, there are all the chores that I have pawned off the last few years - carring laundry down and upstairs, taking out the trash, and I have to wash all the dishes, every time. There's no leaving them in the sink to see if someone else will jump to the task. And like a day when Jose's at work, there is a mad scramble to keep the house slightly less like a tornadic explosion to avoid the grumpy complaints about what did you do all day to have the house be such a mess. I would only wish that summers in Kentucky weren't quite so humid and hot -- because seriously who wants to melt when you open the door.
I sometimes wish that I was the crafty mother who would have the kids do some neat projects -- find a way to create a memory that will last a lifetime. But, if you didn't catch the lazy comment earlier, that's a lot more work than I really want to do. And if I start the day slow and lazy, then I want the whole day to be slow and lazy - hands down, no question about it. But, I think for the boys, summer is still a magical time. There are no cool wooded areas to explore and be imaginative -- but there is time to be silly, to laugh, to go and meet new people and maybe do something different. I know for them there's more time or chances to go to mcdonalds - which I have now decided is my least favorite restaurant of all time -- nothing on their menu that i crave or desire at all....or to go see a movie.
I think the magic of summer is time. Time to spend in each other's company, time to lay in the bed and be lazy, time to laugh, time to cry, whine, bicker and time to get over it. Time to take a nap in the afternoon, to laze by the pool, to read a trashy novel, or a good one, time to conquer a new universe or ancient realm. Having the time to choose or not as you desire -- and having no one to tell you what you must accomplish in that time, being led only by whims and desires. And that is why summer rocks.
