Dog Days of Summer

I wish I were a dog. No, really!

If I were a dog, I could lay around and sleep all day, have several meals served to me by doting people who love me, play when I'm in the mood, and... well, that's about it.

Instead, my days consist of getting up at the crack of dawn in order to get some work done before the kids get up, followed by dragging them out of bed and trying to get them to "do something." Anything. (Other than watch television, that is; if left to their own accord, they'd be like vegetables before the end of one week... vegetables who can quote George Lopez verbatim but can't remember how to spell their own names.)

After school being out for two months already, the pool (now mostly empty) is the temperature of a hot tub, we've seen several movies, they've gone roller skating, have had friends over, and have done all the rest of the things kids do during summer break. I, on the other hand, have done very little that adults like to do, as there is no money (or energy) left after paying for the aforementioned activities and more.

They're done. We're ALL done. Even the cats are bored; I swear they rolled their eyes at me this morning when I opened the door to the screened porch and suggested they go scare some birds. Sure, there's Girl Scout camp next week, several more parties and play dates, people coming from out of town to visit. But in the end, all of us are ready for back to school time.

But there's still a month to go.

Sigh. I think I'll go next door and hang out with the neighbor's dog.

How Can I Be This Busy?

Summer is here. The kids are out of school, my book is in limbo, and I have no big client projects to work on. So how can I be so busy?

Sure, there are the typical household chores that need to be done: laundry, food shopping, maintaining the house, picking up the cat's prescription food. But those things are normally accomplished even when work is busy.

I think I've identified the problem: I tend to leave "big projects" for the summer, thinking I'll have all the time in the world to get them done. Cleaning the kids' closets with them (a mother's torture). Well visits, eye exams, and dental cleanings (ugh!). Letting all four kids invite friends to the lake house over the course of a week, resulting in anywhere from 8-12 kids at any given time, all of whom need to be picked up, dropped off, and fed, but few of whom can provide a real answer as to when exactly they'll be joining us.

On my desk are four lists, none of which are getting any tasks crossed off because I am stalling by ranting on this blog.

Okay. Deep breath. I will tackle the list. Lists. Soon. As soon as I have some more coffee and read another chapter in the book I just started reading. It is, after all, summer.

Drawing the Line on Sunscreen

I live in NC. Which means that although it's only mid-June, it's been "summer" for well over a month already. Further clarified, this also means that we have already been in full-fledged sunscreen mode for weeks.

Every day, I thank my lucky stars that I have already passed the phase of life in which my kids were wriggly, uncooperative little beasts, requiring me to hold on to their slippery little wrists with the grip of death in order to get the lotion slathered onto them. (While listening to them cry about how it's not fair, they don't like it, etc, etc, etc.)

Now they're old enough to understand that no one is going anywhere until the sunscreen is on. They also (due to my "mean momminess") understand how much a sunburn hurts, having experienced it firsthand over the past few summers when I decided that maybe they'd learn better from experience than from my lectures.

But of course this year brings a new dilemma. Advances in technology have not missed the sunscreen market. Thus, there is now the availability of spray-on sunblock that requires no rubbing, takes two seconds, isn't slimy, and works great. The problem? It's so expensive, I'd have to take out a second mortgage if my plan were to use it on four kids every day for the six months that are summery.

At $10 per spray can, and the ability to easily go through a whole can each day, it seems that I'm now back to holding on to their (much bigger) slippery wrists, trying to force the $5-a-bottle-and-will-last-three-weeks lotion onto them.

Unless I can get them to pay for the spray with their own money? Excuse me while I go assign some chores.

On the other hand, I'm broke. From buying the spray sunscreen.

Sigh... I guess that brings me back to the mean momminess of letting them get burnt if they refuse to get lotioned. Sometimes parenting really does feel like a perfectly round circle.