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I work outside the home four days a week and freelance from home on Fridays. I send my daughter to daycare all of those days, so summer "vacation" is really just "normal life but with more heat" for the Arens family. We don't sleep in, we eat dinner at the same time, we don't stay up too late and we don't have empty hours stretching ahead of us like so many clean cookie sheets.
I often wonder how I would fill our days if I were a stay-at-home mommy. My perspective is that summer moves too fast -- there are so many things I want to do with my daughter that have to be squeezed into staying-up-too-late-weeknights and jam-packed summer weekends. Summer never feels lazy or boring to me. A benefit? A drawback? I change my mind daily.
For my entertaining-the-kids sisters, though, this point of summer marks the back-to-school countdown. The pool? Boring. The park? Too hot. Television? Reruns.
At the beginning of summer, BlogHer Backtalk did an episode on summer and kids. How are we doing?
Yvonne of Joy Unexpected writes:
Today, I'm feeling Summer Vacation rage because OH MY GOD WILL YOU KIDS STOP KNOCKING ON MY DOOR, EATING ALL OF MY FOOD, FIGHTING, AND GENERALLY ANNOYING THE CRAP OUT OF ME?
It appears she's not alone. Heather of Desperately Seeking Sanity writes:
I wish I could sit here and talk about how much we are enjoying summer break. Well, I guess I could say that. But it would be a lie. And I’m all about keepin’ it real.
And keepin’ it real would require me to tell you that I’m about to pull my hair out, strand by strand.
You know, reading these posts is making me appreciate my job and my relatively intact schedule a little more.
Perhaps I would be one of those mothers who invested lots of time in learning, toting my daughter to the zoo and the farmer's market and the historic site of the Battle of Westport. I do that stuff on weekends quite a bit. But with all of those empty days, I have a feeling that I might be more like Sweatpantsmom:
As one of The Slackers, I've become adept at coming up with excuses as to why my girls are watching excessive amounts of TV instead of learning how to churn butter at Amish Camp.
Or maybe I'd teach at Vacation Bible School, like Wiping Up Snot:
Y’all. I was totally caught off guard. I expected her to ask me to tell Cindy-Lu to quit using the word “hate” so often or to remember to bring Cindy-Lu’s book bag to school with her. Or maybe she’d ask me why the pictures Cindy-Lu draws of her daddy all contain a third leg. Most likely, she’d ask me to tell Cindy-Lu to stop mentioning how it tickles her ‘gina when she jumps up and down.
I did NOT expect her to ask me to help at Vacation Bible School this summer.
Me. At Vacation Bible School.
I think it’s a good sign that my first response was “Oh my gosh, really?” instead of “ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?”
Yeah. It's probably better that I have a job.
