Tag Archives: summer

The Unofficial End to the Most Miserable Time of the Year

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Labor Day weekend is upon us! The leaves are beginning to fall for reasons other than the blistering heat. The stores are full of cozy sweaters no one will wear for two months. My house has been decked out in the Basic White Girl Fall decor of plastic leaves, pinecones, and old-fashioned pickup trucks brimming with sunflowers for the last three weeks. I’ve already made a batch of pumpkin bread and watched The Worst Witch from 1986 three times. Summer is over… kind of.

When I was little, I enjoyed summer for all the normal reasons. School was out. My parents didn’t want to pay for childcare, so it was basically anarchy at our trailer house. My brother and I jumped out of trees with umbrellas to see if we could fly. He tied his skateboard to his bike and made me ride behind him down our gravel drive. We ran around our 10 acres playing a two person version of capture the flag, resulting in a gash on my arm from a barbed wire fence, the evidence of which is still visible today. On the weekends, we took trips to the lake. We went swimming in my grandma’s pool. We played on the Slip n’ Slide, which everyone knows is the most fun you’ll ever have while getting hurt.

As I got older, the family time waned and we got cable. I still enjoyed staying up all night to watch every episode of Nick at Nite’s Block Party Summer. The next day, I’d wake up around noon and watch daytime TV until my parents got home. When they split up and it was just me and my mother, there were even fewer rules. I spent my summers inverting my sleep schedule, staying up all night watching infomercials and Sex and the City reruns while crafting and playing The Sims. No longer forced to play sports, I was free to do the same when I woke up at 2:00 in the afternoon. By this point, I was almost entirely able to avoid going outside, let alone to the lake, and my brother lived with my dad. Summer was a time of solitude for me. It wasn’t particularly healthy, but I did have fun.

I’m not sure when I developed my complete loathing for this season as a whole. I think the novelty began to wear off some time in middle school. Though the aforementioned seclusion had its perks for 11-year-old Belle, it did eventually wear on me. By the end of July, I was quite lonely and bored. When school was in session, I got to see my friends. I had something to occupy my time besides a screen. I had a reason to get dressed in the morning and go to bed at night. I missed the routine. Whatever the catalyst, by the time I hit adulthood, I abhorred summer. I always assumed that having babies would change my view on the subject. Just as Christmas becomes more magical with the joy of children, surely the excitement they have for summer would improve the experience as well. Well, here I am, a mother of three and I can confidently say that I will forever hate summer. The reasons will simply adapt to each stage of life, as they have in this era of small children. For example…

The Heat

I am something of an indoor girl year round. I won’t pretend otherwise. My favorite pastimes primarily take place inside, such as crochet, cross stitch, sewing, writing, working with my Cricut, compiling my photo albums, and reading. I do, however, have some outdoor hobbies. I like to go for walks, swim, hike, take my kids to the park, attend outdoor events like festivals and the fair. Yet, summer in the South means that from mid-May to mid-September, I can’t do any of those things. Of course, that’s been the case my entire life, but is so much worse now that I have children.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain to a two-year-old that it’s too hot to play in her new playhouse or jump on her new trampoline? Well, double it, because neither of my girls can comprehend that we just can’t go outside in 104° heat and the glaring sun, even if we wear sunscreen and play in water. As far as they know, we took walks every morning for months, until one day it just stopped; as did the days of swinging, blowing bubbles, riding in their Fisher Price ice cream trucks, playing with sidewalk chalk, splashing in their water table, and going to the park. Maybe in a year or two they’ll understand that this kind of heat makes everyone feel sick, especially their little brother. For the moment, however, they just think Mama’s no fun and only leaves the house for Sam’s Club trips. As much as I adore climate control, we can only color and play with Play-Do for so long.

The… Critters

Just the other day, I walked outside to get the mail, blessedly without a baby on my hip. As I pulled an envelope out of the mailbox, I noticed a large scorpion just before it crawled onto my hand. It was only a few days earlier, that we enjoyed a rare afternoon with a high in the low 90s, when I could let the girls play outside while Thomas sat in his walker under a tree. He played his little toy piano as Violet and Scarlett grilled plastic hotdogs and fought over the other Adirondack chair. I thought about how nice it was that they could enjoy the outdoors for even a few moments before it got too hot. I stood corrected, however, when later that day, I realized everyone had several random bug bites. I suppose I should be grateful, however, because just the day before, Jake found a giant dead scorpion in Thomas’s room, proving our pest control subscription entirely worth it.

These horrors aren’t limited to my relatively wooded acre of land, either. Last week, I parked at Panera and sat in the car for a moment to send a text message. I’m glad I did, because just as I put my foot on the ground, I realized I barely missed stepping on a live snake. Naturally, I screamed, panicked, ran across the parking lot, and called Jake to cry about much I hated summer and tearfully ask if a snake could crawl into my car from underneath. Garden snake or not, had I stepped on it, it would have bitten me. No herpetologist, I couldn’t have guaranteed it wasn’t poisonous and would likely have ended up with a hefty E.R. bill. The icing on the cake? The lobby of the restaurant wasn’t even open and I had to go through the drive-through. This stuff doesn’t happen in November, folks!

The Crowds

I realize that I am more or less alone in my hatred of all things summer. That’s quite clear, because from June through August every place is absolutely packed, from Target to the park to the library. A former librarian, I’ve grown to despise Summer Reading. Not only does my system waste massive amounts of tax dollars and manpower on what is essentially a children’s program, every branch is bursting at the seams for two to three months out of the year. I haven’t even taken the kids to storytime since May, because I don’t want my toddlers and baby to get trampled by the seventy-five attendants in my branch’s small meeting room. The same goes for the park on the rare cool morning. It’s simply swarming with children larger than mine, even on the toddler toys. I’m just too afraid they’ll get hurt, particularly since they’re apparently only capable of running in opposite directions when we go. It seems even Panera and UPS are overcrowded at all hours of the day. One of the primary perks of being a stay-at-home mom is the ability to enjoy the world sans other people, but I can’t do that in summer.

The Disruption

If you’ve read pretty much any of my blog posts, you know that I am a person of routine. I don’t just like the monotony of the school year. I thrive on it. While there’s always the occasional birthday party, fancy rodeo dinner, or severe weather event, fall, winter, and spring are predictable, often revolving around the holidays. September kicks off with Labor Day, followed by my birthday, the state fair, Jake’s birthday, Halloween, November family portraits, Thanksgiving, Thomas’s birthday, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and our anniversary. I don’t need the chaos of everyone’s schedules bursting with big family vacations, rodeos every other weekend, lake trips, and pool parties. They make it impossible to plan anything, even a birthday party for my little girls to celebrate the only good thing that has ever happened in summer. I like my fun scheduled y’all. You can’t do that when everyone has Exciting Adventures planned every other day.

The Peer Pressure

Despite the fact that seemingly every horror movie takes place at a lake, a camp, or on a family road trip, summer seems universally loved. Every single person in my family adores weekend trips to the lake, organized sporting events, and grand family vacations. I, however, am pretty sure that every injury I’ve ever had occurred during one of the above. The only thing I can think of that sounds less fun than any of these things is doing any of these things with three in diapers. Yet, when my family invites us to rent a cabin at a lake several hours away or even in the next state over, we always spin some tale about Jake not having enough leave or not wanting to spend the money. Neither of these is entirely false, but we could probably make it happen if we really wanted. We just don’t.

I know, I know. What could be more fun than driving five hours or even flying with three small children on Fourth of July or Labor Day weekend, so we can enjoy family fun that is mostly overshadowed by my all-consuming terror that my babies will drown or fall off of a cliff?!? Everything. Absolutely everything I could choose to do with my time sounds more fun than that. Just as with my disdain for live music, bars, and travel in general, however, I am an all alone. The rest of society is utterly convinced that I’ll have fun this time, with this crowd, and these plans. I won’t, though… because summer is the most miserable time of year, no matter the stage of life. I am overjoyed that September is finally here, so the mainstreamers and cool kids can stop trying to convince me otherwise.

A Terrible Summer and the Family Room We Sometimes Shopvac

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I hate summer. That is not a seasonal declaration, either. On the coldest day in January, when my husband mansplains how to deice my car, while I tearfully scream at him to stop being an asshole and just take me to work, I hate summer.

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At 31, the majority of my life has revolved around the school year. For the first 28 years or so, this helped to mitigate my contempt for the season. Then, I began working as a librarian full time, which meant having an active role in Summer Reading. For those of you unfamiliar, a teen librarian’s schedule is the exact opposite of a teacher’s. Summer is absolute chaos. The library is packed at all hours, with everyone from teacher moms looking for a way to keep their kids busy on the cheap, full daycare classes, unsupervised children who should be in daycare… and it often feels like everyone under the age of ten is cackling or screaming or crying. In fact, every year, by the first of August, I’ve inevitably come to the conclusion that, if I even still want children, my body has probably developed some kind of immunity to procreation, as it does when exposed to chicken pox. All this to say that, the one redeeming quality that was once reserved for the summer months, a time of relaxation, no longer applies to me, as a public librarian wrangling 35 teen volunteers… and therefore, I hate summer.

Now folks, it would not be a stretch to suggest that I’m something of an “indoor girl.” My husband would tell you so outright, but I do enjoy some outdoor activities, such as hiking, swimming, bike riding, outdoor festivals, laying out… and zetus lapetus it is too fucking hot to do any of those things during a Southern summer. Add to that the plague of insects and insect paraphernalia…

Me: ::screaming::
Jake: “What?!?!”
Me: ::spinning in circles:: “Spider web, spider web, spider web!!! It’s on me!!!”
Jake: ::raising a brow:: “Are you okay?”
Me: “NO! I am not okay! I need it to be October!”

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… and I hate summer.

Despite all of this, the assumption that I actually want to leave my home from June to August still persists among my family, because they’re all Lake People. They love getting away for a weekend to share space with a bunch of strangers at a hole full of dirty water and creatures. I hate getting away for a weekend. I don’t enjoy ransacking my bedroom to pack a bag, which will be both overfull and missing something, to sleep in a strange bed, or on the ground with no air conditioning. Y’all, there is no surer sign that someone has a charmed life than their insistence on being poor for a weekend. I’ve been poor. Fuck. Camping. As for the strangers, no thank you. I talk to strangers all day long and they pay me $24 an hour to do it. I don’t need to meet more people. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure every injury I had before the age of 10 happened at a lake. Why would I attempt to relax at the number one setting for horror movies?

Now Jake’s family are not Lake People. They’re Rodeo People. These folks work too hard to understand the appeal of a weekend not spent working cattle or traveling to rodeos. Even attending a softball tournament is more acceptable than a weekend wasted lounging at the lake or anywhere else.

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Every man in Jake’s family.

As for me? When I was six, I wrote in my yearbook that my favorite place to be is “home,” and I stand by kindergarten Belle. While I enjoy being outside for limited amounts of time, when the temperature is between 45 and 75 degrees, it’s with the caveat that I can retreat to my own home, take a hot shower, lounge around in my falsely heated and cooled air, and sleep on my two thousand dollar mattress. Perhaps I love winter so much, because there’s a greater general acceptance of this behavior, but in the South, I feel it’s completely warranted from early June to mid-September, as well… and that’s been my default for much of my life. While everyone else dons far too revealing clothing for my taste and leaps into vats of stranger pee, for me summer is a time to crank the a/c and T-Swift, and dance around the house in my underwear, avoiding any and all people, because I met my quota at work this week. It’s a time to make some real progress on my Vampire Diaries rewatch, read 11 dark paranormal romance novels, and finally get around to that sewing project. I hate summer, but if I ignore all conventional social norms and behavior, it’s bearable… except not this summer. Nope. This summer has been truly unbearable.

Folks, when we bought our house, a year and a half ago, Jake and I decided to keep the converted garage as living space. It had a large closet, access to a remodeled 3/4 bathroom, and a heat and a/c window unit. Combined with the placement right off the laundry room, this allowed us to use it as a bedroom, creating a true split floor plan… with a little work and money. After painting, installing a closet kit, finding 96″ floor to ceiling curtains, it made a huge bedroom, both private and luxurious, with the thick pile carpet Jake insisted on installing. For a few months, it was awesome. Then… the rains came.

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Our house is built on the side of a hill, toward the top, preventing any possibility of flooding on the left side of the house, where the original master was placed, while necessitating a retaining wall on the right… next to the garage. In a normal year, this retaining wall would prevent the garage from flooding. This, however, has not been a normal year. If fact, I’d be willing to bet that this has been one of the wettest years on record for Cherokee, bringing several inches of rain in just minutes on multiple occasions… and ultimately flooding the bedroom.

The first time, in October, it wasn’t so bad. We put some fans on the carpet and Jake poured some tar. The second time, just after Christmas, Jake rented some equipment, dried out the carpet, toiled in the drive for a few days and was certain he’d fixed the problem. The third time, he dried out the carpet with a leaf blower while he researched and brainstormed, determined to put that hydrology degree to personal use, and resolve this issue, once and for all. The fourth time, he tore out the flower bed and put down more tar. The fifth time, he bought pipe to install a drain behind the retaining wall. As this went on, through much of winter and spring, I became more and more defeated, withdrawn, and downright depressed.

As much as I hate playing the role of The Damaged Girl, there was something about being uprooted from the haven of my bedroom, feeling as though my home was threatened, that opened old wounds. While anyone would feel a bit unsettled with their home in disarray, it was something deeper for me. Suddenly, I wasn’t a thirty-something homeowner, but a 22-year-old panicking at the sound of a doorbell, after being forced to move ten times in two years. The true homebody that I am, I had no retreat through the stress… exactly as I felt the day my home burned to the ground and killed all of my pets, leaving me with no place to even lay my head and cry. The circumstances were vastly different and yet, all of the emotions were an echo of those long forgotten heartaches. Just as I once lay in bed, watching my well-loved That 70s Show DVDs, on loop, I spent an entire Saturday unable to move, as I binge-watched The Office.

Jake was supportive and compassionate, showing me more care than I’d ever guess a hard-as-nails country boy was capable of, even though he couldn’t quite understand my distress. When I began to suggest abandoning our converted-garage bedroom, however, he would insist he could fix it, perhaps feeling as though he’d failed me or that he should have been able to resolve the issue, when he literally majored in water. Eventually, I accepted the fact that I could no longer sleep in our bedroom, too stressed from my obsessive weather analyses, though I traditionally love rainstorms, to find peace. When Jake woke up one morning, to find me sleeping on the couch, I quietly told him…

Me: “I think we need to move into the other bedroom.”
Jake: “Okay.”

… and so it began… more renovations, on the heels of the expense and stress of Jake’s attempt to waterproof the garage, which came on the heels of transforming the converted garage into a bedroom in the first place.

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Despite the coming projects and expenses, I was relieved to have a solution, even one that would make summer more stressful and miserable than ever, more expensive than winter and spring combined. You see, when Jake and I bought our home, there were a couple of odd design quirks, such as the kitchy, trendy barn door over the master bathroom, which I hated and immediately sold. Of course, this left us without a bathroom door, not that a door that neither latches nor locks really deserves its name. The master bedroom in a house built in 1980, is also substantially smaller than one built post 2000. While I measured and measured, there was simply no way our entire bedroom suite would fit in the intended master. Luckily, the media console fit beautifully next to the dining table, but there would simply be no room at all for a bookshelf. While most of my childhood mementos were lost in my fire, I cherish and display the few survivors… so I would need wall shelves.

Y’all, my husband deserves a big gold star. Whereas two and a half years ago, Jake couldn’t even discuss decor that wasn’t a dead animal, today he truly trusts me. Not only does he realize that I can envision things he can’t and that I’ll make choices that ultimately reflect him and his taste, he trusts me to dream it up and then make it happen, himself. So it happened, that he cut, stained, sealed, and hung 360 degrees worth of shelves for his mementos and mine.

Meanwhile, I organized… and painted… and organized, and painted. I started by switching the closets, which fucked up my back, to the point that Jake had to take me to the doctor, because I couldn’t drive myself. Then I painted and organized both the old bathroom and the new one… then the new bedroom and the old one. Jake scheduled an appointment with a contractor to install a pocket door, the only door that would fit. He flaked. I told Jake we should go with someone else and he insisted he knew how these guys worked, as he wrote him a check. The contractor flaked and we lost money. We fought.

Oh, how we have fought this summer. Summer is bad enough when I have a cozy hobbit hole I can hide in, until the worst of the heat and biblical plague of insects have passed. This summer, not only have I hated being outside, I’ve hated being inside, as our house has been in complete chaos. As if that weren’t enough to further ruin an already rotten season, I’ve spent the last two months going toe-to-toe with my best friend and the most stubborn man alive. He gets frustrated because I spend money on a project, when we aren’t done with the current one. I get frustrated because these are all projects we’ve planned and I’m following the agreed upon timeline. He tells me we don’t have the money for paint for the garage and then writes a check of equal value to a flaky handyman, without doing his research. He wants to save, unless it’s time to spend money on something he wants and I want to banshee shriek that it’s not just his fucking money. We rarely fight about money, unless we’re spending a lot of it and this year we’ve had no choice. Now we’re both so stressed that everything sets us off.

– Jake hangs up the phone in his work truck with his coworker. –
Coworker: “What’s wrong?”
Jake: “You know how a mockingbird will just dive bomb a hawk’s nest and get it all riled up, as it defends it’s home?”
Coworker: “Yeah?”
Jake: “Well, Belle’s nest is messed up… and I’m the Hawk.”

We’ve worked and we’ve fought and I’ve hurt myself and we’ve sweated and spent far too much money on paint and wood and stain and rollers. Finally, as Summer Reading comes to a close, as back to school supplies and even Halloween candy are appearing on Wal-Mart shelves, despite the consistently 90+ temperatures, there seems to be an end in sight. What was once a spare room with a TV and an elliptical in it, is now our surprisingly spacious bedroom, complete with pocket door and shelves all around. What was once our watery bedroom is now The Blue Room: a Family Room We Sometimes Shop Vac. Jake told me I couldn’t paint it in one day, so I naturally threw out my hip and blistered my hands proving him wrong.

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The Family Room We Sometimes Shop Vac is more is more or less empty, for the time being and it will take us two months to catch up financially, but Summer Reading is finally over and Jake and I can stop being total assholes to each other. I can once again arrange my nest and Jake can stop fucking dive bombing it. Now, if only it could be October.