Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Ask me about my:

....tan!

I decided this summer was going to be spent at the pool. As a result I've baked my skin into a golden bronze. It's a shade it hasn't been since 1997 when I was married. Unfortunately my weight has not done the same thing. 

The thing about having an intense tan is how everyone says, "Wow! Look at your tan!" and the only explanation for it is that you've been sitting around the pool reading a lot of books.

...interview! 

I had an interview for a job a week ago, maybe a month ago, time this summer has no meaning. It was the first real interview I've ever had for a job in what I have come to consider "my field". And no, I don't mean "Whining On The Internet". 

Please to remember the last time I tried to get a job out of the house. Oh boy that went REALLY well.  It had to go better than that. And although I am not usually one to walk away from anything feeling good about my performance, I actually think it went really well. Aside from the crack I made about one of the interviewers age. In my thank you note I also may have called him "The Doogie Howser of The Communications and Marketing Department"

And yet I still think it went well. So I'm probably delusional and so far still unemployed so that's nice. 

....my husband's triathlon, biking, training schedule!

Never mind, don't.

...My summer with the kids!

It's almost August and I haven't wanted to kill anyone...except maybe the dog. 

....my dog!

Lucy is...mostly good but she's started urinating in her crate while we're at the pool all day. That's not even the problem. The problem is that she lays in the urine and I have to bathe her every time I leave her alone, even for 30 minutes. I'm sure this is because she hates summer, she's used to one on one time all day long with me. This must be very difficult the hours alone. 

And I understand, I'm a newly converted Enjoyer of Summer. But My God I need her to stop peeing all over herself. 

...My vacation!

We are going camping in a few weeks. After the last two times in the pouring rain, we finally invested in a tent with a titanium rain fly. I set it up in the yard and it survived two very big rainstorms without a single drop of water. This means of course it won't rain the entire weekend. 

...about school starting!

Meh. I'm not even all that excited for it. I realize this means the world is really ending in 2012. Sorry everyone. 

Simple.

The kids and I slept in the tent we bought for our upcoming August camping trip. 

Every time* Max sleeps in a tent, it rains. It doesn't just rain, GOD IS PISSED MAX IS SLEEPING IN A TENT. 

God opens the sky and pours out his rage at everyone for letting Max sleep in a tent**.

*This is literal: Every time Max has slept in a tent it has at least rained. Rained A Lot. 

**I don't know why God is mad, I suspect it has little to do with Max in a tent, but I'm just using the context clues. 

While we were in the tent a lot of storms blew over us. Maddie is not a fan of storms because storms mean she isn't in control of the gravitational pull of the earth and this is upsetting to her. I mostly understand this, luckily when I worry about things, nothing bad happens to my family or those I love. Madison hasn't learned to hone her worry to those sorts of things.

I mean really? Trying to control weather? How juvenile. 

Maddie cried a little, especially when a crack of thunder happened directly over our heads. Logan says (he slept in the house) (He isn't as much fun as me) (except in a lake) the power went out with that crack of thunder.

I held her head on my shoulder on the air mattress and I put her hand to my chest and put my hand over it. Max, laying next to us, put his hand underneath. They both fell asleep like that. 

I wish all their fears, all their problems, were so easily soothed.

Two Recipes You'd Probably Like To Try.

I told you how we've been entertaining more this summer. We've been entertaining and being entertained so much in this early part of the summer I said to Logan yesterday, "It's like I blew my Summer Fun Load already." 

That's a little gross.  Anyway.

On the Fourth we hosted a dinner for a few of Logan's coworkers/friends/friends I want to have. We made chicken and beef fajitas and had everyone else bring side dishes. There was an amazing potato salad, a pasta salad with asparagus and pancetta, also a bundt cake containing 3 sticks of butter. (Let's not talk about the part where Lucy ate the front end of that damn thing while it was waiting to be served. Shhh....don't tell anyone)

But one friend brought corn on the cob and he'd been in Mexicantown and had this corn, called Elote, with this amazing sauce and spice mix, he gave us this gift and I want you to have this gift too. 

Here is the recipe he gave us. 

You should know that at some point that evening I painted myself in the sauce and then begged Logan to sprinkle me in the spice mix. Logan hates mayo with the passion of a thousand Pickles so he refused. You can imagine how embarrassing that was, you know being naked, covered in a mayo/lime juice sauce and no spice mix. 

I also mentioned we made Fish Tacos for our Welcome To Summer With The Summers' party.

Summer Fun

I've been charging my computer up about once a week. I barely open it.

Luckily I'm not working for anyone else this summer so there's really no guilt and shuffling of priorities and the unending guilt that I feel when I can't do something with my kids because I'm working. 

I'm pretty happy with how the summer has been going, surprisingly. Of course what is this? Week three?  

The weather this summer so far (KNOCK ON WOOD) has been lovely compared to last year's aggravating Festival Of Rain. We've been entertaining friends again (last week 3 times!), something we kind of stopped doing at some point over the winter. 

Yesterday we spent the day out at Cass Lake with friends and their kids. Max, Maddie and Logan all went tubing on our friend's boat, for the first times. One of the only experiences I have had and Logan hasn't. On the drive home I said to Logan, "I swear I feel like we're up north." 

If you're not from Michigan you should know that Up North is like Situational Prozac or maybe Enviromental Prozac. 

My favorite thing about summer vacations up north with the kids is the nights after playing in the water all day. Around 4 or 5 you start considering scheduling showers for all the adults and kids in the house.

Everyone's skin smells like summer and feels warm to the touch...but you're not uncomfortably hot. You feel that excellent water logged relaxation in your whole body. You sit at a restaurant, usually with several families and eat a good dinner and by 9 you're ready to crawl into bed with a good book because tomorrow you're going to get up and hang out in the water all day again.

After our afternoon on the water we stopped for dinner in town with the kids and I realized I want almost all of our summer to feel like we're on vacation up north. 

That's what I've been trying to do. Staying away from the computer for the most part, spending 3-5 hours at the pool, going to the movies, eating dinner on our deck, sitting on the upper deck with Logan having an evening cocktail watching the bats fly overhead at dusk. 

Also driving this view of a relaxed, easy summer is the realization that I think I'm ready for a job out of my house. (Lucy? Is not happy to hear this.) July 14th I have my long awaited interview. 

This could very well be the last summer I have to just hang out with the kids every day in the summer. We are all well aware that acting as my children's Number One Source Of Entertainment doesn't fit me very well. But I'm smart enough to realize that all this time with them, all this time to fill, all this flexibility, is something I will miss when it's gone. 

Now it's true I still bristle when I take Maddie to the pool and she rolls her eyes and says, "LAME". Or I tell her to call a friend and she says, "No, I'll just sit here all day bored.*"

*In so many words.

The nice thing is, on the good days of this summer I think to myself, "I just want to absorb all this so I can remember it forever, we're so lucky to have this time together." 

And on the more annoying days I think to myself, "Next summer I'll be working out of the house and Logan will have to be here some of the time and they'll have to go to day camp and they'll have to have a sitter who will keep them entertained."

Somehow it makes everything feel more tolerable. It's okay, you can say it, I'm losing my edge.