Seasons

It’s Monday, September 2, 2024, 9:45 AM or so. I’m normally at work at 9:45 on a Monday morning but today is Labor Day, my very least favorite holiday. 

The pool will open for the day in about two hours. For the first few hours, it will be a normal pool day, with the adult swim whistle blowing at 45 minutes past the hour every hour. It will be more crowded than usual, of course, because holidays are free guest days, and everyone will want to get their last swim in. But by 5:30 or so, the occasional swimmers and the families with very young children will have cleared out, leaving the last few hours to the serious pool denizens. The lane ropes and the rope that marks off the diving well will be gone. The lifeguards won’t bother with the last two adult swim whistles. There will be simultaneous games of knock-out, sharks and minnows, and water polo with lounge chairs as goals. It’ll be fun, but a little frantic. And then as it’s getting dark, the final whistle will blow and pool summer will be over. And I’ll feel a little bereft and sad for a few days, but by next week at this time, it’ll be fine. It’s nice to have seasons, even when your very favorite one has to end. 

Transition

Have I mentioned before that I hate the end of summer? Well I'm going to mention it again. I hate the end of summer. It's only August 24, so we still have a week or so of official summer (which ends on Labor Day) and almost a month of meteorological summer, but we're taking a kid back to college today, and that's the end of summer as far as I'm concerned. 

It's actually warming up again, and we'll have a few days of summer weather now, after a preview of fall that had all the fall lovers in a tizzy of pumpkin spice excitement. They had to know that it wasn't going to last but their time is coming soon enough. We'll all be wearing sweaters and crunching through leaves and buying pails of chrysanthemums for our front porches. But at least we'll have hockey. At least I'm not dreading the election like I was a few months ago. And I like wearing sweaters, NGL. It’s not so bad, I guess. 

*****

We dropped our son off at Marymount yesterday. The car was packed to the rafters and  traffic was kind of dreadful, but the move-in went very well. Five boys are sharing a suite with two double rooms, one single room, two bathrooms, and a living/kitchen area. It’s still very dorm-like, though, with white walls, wood-framed windows, vinyl floors throughout, and heavy, all-but-indestructible wooden furniture. Two of my son’s roommates are swimmers; one is his freshman roommate, with whom he will  share one of the doubles. The other two boys were assigned to the suite at the last minute, and had not arrived when we arrived yesterday. 

After the “how was your summer, so good to see you again” reunion with the other families, we did the things that parents always do when they’re moving kids into a dorm room. We made beds and washed dishes and helped to organize the little cabinets. The boys hung pictures and arranged memorabilia. They put down a big area rug in their living room, and arranged the table and chairs and sectional couch pieces. They set up their TV. They moved things back and forth, trying different arrangements. 

It’s the second year at college for all of them but the first year that they have something close to an apartment, and it was fun watching them arrange and decorate and personalize their space. Each of the boys brought their own things to hang or display, and they’ll each have their own private bed and study and dressing areas. But they also brought dishes and supplies and food to share. They will share a TV and games (board and video). They are already negotiating chore-sharing and neatness standards. Their common area now has a cheerful rug on the floor, throw pillows and blankets on the couch, a dartboard, and strings of festive Christmas lights. It’s a cozy, welcoming place. They made a little home for themselves, and they seemed delighted with it. And I’m delighted for them. 

*****

Today’s the official first day of class for both of my college students and for public school students here in Montgomery County, Maryland. After a few days of fall temperatures last week, the summer heat has returned, reminding all the PSL weirdos that it’s still summer, at least for a little while. I went swimming yesterday in a pool that had chilled down considerably after a few nights of temperatures in the 50s. It was hard getting in but once I was in, it was almost fine as long as I didn’t stop moving for a hot second. It will warm up throughout the week, and it’ll probably be just about perfect for Labor Day Weekend. 

I thought, mistakenly, that summers would feel slower and less rushed now that our kids are grown and we’re no longer all-in swim parents. But this summer flew by. Even our August vacation, just over three weeks ago now, seems like ancient history. The older you get, the faster life goes by, I guess, and nothing faster than my beloved summer. 

During the summer, I get to come home from work and go swimming, and then make dinner and clean up the house and do whatever else I need to do, while the freshness of the water and the coolness of slowly drying wet hair stay with me all evening. I can do this four more times this summer; and assuming no thunderstorm disruptions, I’m going to be swimming after work every night this week. Fall has its own little joys, but I’m going to wring out the last few drops of summer. 

Vacation reading (with meandering and spoilers)

I’m always trying to stay ahead of the book list, because one day, I’ll publish it in January. It’ll happen. Maybe even next year. 

I read four books during my recent vacation; or rather, I read 3.5 books because I didn’t finish the fourth one until later. I always read a lot during my vacation, because I can. Thanks to the temporary loss of my Kindle, happily recovered a few days later, I read Murder on the Orient Express, the only book on the beach condo’s bookshelf that didn’t actively repel me, and it was delightful. I might read a few more Agatha Christies, just for fun. I have no interest in American murder mysteries, but British murder mysteries are a different thing altogether. 

On the first and second days of our vacation, I read Anne Applebaum’s newest book, Autocracy Inc.. It’s a short and very well researched explanation of autocratic governments in the 21st century, which are far more concerned with accumulating and keeping wealth for the autocrats and their friends and families and henchpeople than with any particular political ideology. Ideologically, as Applebaum explains, autocrats are all over the place, from the far left of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro to the far right of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But ideology is secondary to money in an autocratic regime, which exists to hold on to its power and to further enrich itself. With money comes a firmer grasp on power, and the power enables further accumulation of money. In the autocratic countries that are still within the traditional world political order, the autocrats become wealthy by legitimate means in markets manipulated and regulated to favor their interests. In pariah countries, the money is outright stolen, or gained through criminal enterprises - drugs, human trafficking, arms sales. 

One of the biggest differences between dictatorships in the 21st and 20th centuries, as Applebaum writes, is not so much the utter disregard for truth as the lack of concern about world opinion that seems to be a defining characteristic of 21st century autocrats. As she reminds us, dictators used to at least lie about their motives and to try to convince the world that their people were better off than the citizens of free countries. Now, not only do dictators do whatever they want - steal, kill, stifle the media, rewrite election laws to solidify their grip on power - they don’t care what anyone thinks, at home or abroad. They don’t care about their “position on the world stage,” if that even means anything anymore. 

Just as I was wondering if there was any hope at all in a world in which the powerful can operate with near total impunity, Applebaum also reminded me that we do still have ways to save our own democracy, and to pressure the dictators to change their behavior. Laws that punish individuals and companies that do business with autocratic thugs, and enforcement of existing laws and sanctions, can make a huge difference. Anne Applebaum has been writing about dictators for a long time, and although she is realistic and clear-eyed about our tenuous grasp on freedom and democracy, she’s also optimistic. 

*****

I wanted to read a companion piece to Autocracy, Inc., so I downloaded Twilight of Democracy. And then I lost my Kindle for a few days, and had to turn my attention to a murder on a luxury train from Istanbul to Paris in the years leading up to World War II. Murder on the Orient Express is one of the best-selling novels of all time, and I was familiar with the basic premise but I had no idea how it was going to turn out, although I did have some guesses, which turned out to be partly correct. And just as I was about to read the final whodunit chapter, my Kindle appeared in the cushions of a chair in which I had not even sat, and so two mysteries were solved in the same day. I learned exactly who killed the vile Mr. Ratchett, and then I started another Anne Applebaum book. 

Anne Applebaum wrote Twilight of Democracy amid the craziness that was 2020. The book begins and ends with parties, at the beginning of the then-new 21st century and the end of the pandemic, if it ever actually ended, because I know at least 10 people who have had COVID this summer but I digress. 

2020 seems like a long time ago, and like yesterday, simultaneously. One of the defining features of that year was the way in which so many people just lost their minds, and apparently, this was not unique to America, though it was probably worse here thanks to you know who. In Poland, the collective mind-losing seems to have started earlier. Applebaum writes about family divisions and broken friendships resulting from politics, and pinpoints those divisions to conspiracy theories around the Smolensk plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski. I won’t even try to recount the details but to boil it down to oversimplified basics, conspiracy theorists claimed that the plane was deliberately targeted by assassins, aided and abetted by Kaczynski’s political opponents. I don’t know a thing about modern Poland, but I know all about once-reasonable people adopting conspiracy theories as truth, and defending their beliefs with religious fervor, and turning their politics into a cult. 

*****

The years since 2017, and more so the years since 2020 have been a challenging time for the idea of truth. We might have expected that advanced technology would make it harder for people to tell lies and get away with it, and in some ways that is true. You can’t really fake a resume anymore. You can’t claim to be a Harvard graduate or an Olympian or a war hero unless you actually are one. Factual claims about one’s life and background are very easily proven and disproven, thanks to the Internet. 

But of course it’s very easy to fake evidence to support a false claim that someone said or did something, and it’s also very easy to alter evidence so that it “proves” whatever claim you want to make or supports whatever “truth” you want people to believe. Even smart people can be easily fooled by clever deep fakes and sophisticated image manipulation. Stupid people are even more easily fooled.

By the way, I’m not saying which one I am, because it varies. Sometimes I’m brilliant and sometimes I’m a fucking moron. Just keeping it real, because I always keep it real.

*****

I remember reading some Christian apologetics essay that points out a key reason to believe in the claims of the faith, that reason being that the early Christians and many martyrs since have gone to their deaths rather than recant their faith. The argument here is that a person might be willing to die for a belief that isn’t true, but they won’t do so knowingly. People won’t risk their lives for a lie that they know to be a lie. It’s a pretty solid argument, but I don’t think it holds up given the bloody history of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st. 

Although maybe it does hold up. Taking Nazis and Communists, for example, because the 20th century is always my default frame of reference - many millions, of course, genuinely believed in these causes and died accordingly. But others, I would suggest, government officials and military officers and politicians, supported Hitler or Stalin for reasons of convenience, and believed, incorrectly, that their positions in the government or the party or the upper echelons of society, would protect them from the wrath of the despots. Some believed that they could play both sides against the middle, faking devotion to the Nazi or Soviet cause while simultaneously exploiting the true believers and protecting their own power and their own self interest. The gulags and concentration camps were populated with plenty of those people, lots of whom went to their deaths having once supported lies that they knew to be lies and only realizing their mistake when it was too late. 

*****

Yes, I know that Trump hasn’t sent anyone to a concentration camp. Yet. But the Hitler and Stalin analogies are still apt here because they illustrate the phenomenon by which certain unprincipled or cowardly people convince themselves that they can get in bed with the devil and still wake up clean and safe and well-rested. And no matter how many times they see those who have gone before suffer the rude awakening find-out moment after the reckless fucking around, they believe that they are different, that they will be fine as long as they are useful and loyal. In the FAFO lifecycle, the FA phase is always a lot more fun than the inevitable FO phase. That’s free advice to JD Vance, who probably won’t heed until it’s too late. Hey JD, give Mike Pence a call. He can fill you in. Maybe he can hook you up with a competent barber, too. 

*****

See what happens? I was supposed to be talking about books, but I got distracted. Don't say you weren't warned, though, because the disclaimer is right there in the title. Caveat emptor. 

But let’s get back to the vacation reading: Two non-fiction books, two novels. One classic novel, one contemporary novel. A few weeks before our vacation, I bought a Kindle copy of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow because antisemitic “pro-Palestine” (scare quotes intentional) influencers mounted a boycott campaign against its author, Gabrielle Zevin, for no discernible reason other than that she is Jewish. Having bought it, I had to read it, and I’m glad I did, because it’s very good. I went in not knowing a thing about it, and I was very surprised to find a novel about video game designers so absorbing, because this is a topic in which I have absolutely no interest. But of course, the video game industry is just a setting, a way for Zevin to tell a story about two brilliant young people and their decades-long on-and-off friendship, and their place in the time in which they lived, that being the waning days of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. I’m not finished with this book yet but I have an idea of how it’s going to turn out, and I have a further idea that it will end very differently from how I want it to end, because I always want a happy ending. 

SPOILER ALERT. Not a happy ending. But the tragedy was foreseeable, and so we don’t have another Ian McEwan Atonement situation on our hands. I’m not mad at Gabrielle Zevin. Ian McEwan, on the other hand, remains on my list. I can't stay on message to save my life, but I can hold a grudge until the end of time. 

Only a drill

“Attention please. Attention please. There is a fire emergency in the building. Please leave the building at once. Do not use the elevator.”


This is what I think right now is a fire drill, but could be a real fire. If it's a drill, they're not going to tell us, obviously, because then it wouldn’t be a very effective drill. In fact, even when we’re not sure if it’s real or not, even when as far as we know the building could be engulfed in flames, we still take a moment to gather our stuff before we vacate the premises. I mean, no one wants to be caught in a fire, but also no one wants to be stuck on the base without our car keys and our handbags.

*****

That was Thursday, 2:30 PM or so. I normally leave at about 4:15 (or 1615 depending on who I’m talking to) and so I also grabbed my computer and my notebooks and pens on my way out because I telework on Fridays and didn’t want to be without my computer.


It was just a drill, thankfully. It was a nice day, and everyone on campus gathered outside, congregating on the field and around the walking track and in the shady pavilion. I sat on the pavilion steps, writing and talking to people. At 2:55 or so, the all-clear sounded so I returned to my office, and hammered out a pile of work, thanks to a burst of productive energy driven by the unexpected interruption. It was great, actually. We should have fire drills all the time.


*****

Now it’s Saturday morning. It’s gray and heavily overcast. I swam every night this week, including last night, when the pool was chilly and dank. My heart wasn’t in it. But today’s forecast is promising - it should be hot and sunny this afternoon, and I am planning to make up for last night’s half-hearted swim with 30 minutes of brisk laps (brisk being a relative term).


*****

It’s Sunday morning now. We had a few hours of sunshine early in the afternoon, and after I did whatever I did (it’s 24 hours later, barely, and I don’t even remember although I know that there was a grocery run and some other random errands as well as the usual housekeeping and laundry), I went to the pool at 4:30. The thunder started at about 4:37, just as I was about to step into the water. So I came home. I didn’t change my clothes - I cooked dinner and cleaned up, still in my suit and an oversized t-shirt that serves as a pool cover-up. The pool, I reasoned, would be open until 8:45, and I could try again after the storm passed. And the storm did pass. It looked apocalyptic for a few minutes, nearly dark at 5 PM, with a few minutes of very heavy rain, and then lingering lighting and thunder with light showers for another hour or so. I finally returned to the pool at 7:45, but the parking lot was empty save for one car that belongs to the brother and sister who were the lifeguards on duty. I hate being the only person in the pool, and so I returned home and sulked. I only sulked for a few minutes, but I did sulk.


*****

My son goes back to school in a week, and it feels like summer is over. Beach week seems ages ago, and even that bright and sunny fire drill two days ago seems like a distant memory.


But the second year of sending a child away to college is much much easier than the first, I’ll admit. He’ll come home on some weekends, and swim season starts in October, so we’ll get to go to Marymount swim meets, and I love Marymount swim meets. And it’s been a pretty good summer, so I don’t have any reason to feel sad. I’ll admit that I’ve even started to like fall a little bit, except for the football and the school traffic and the pumpkin fucking spice. Fall is sweaters and jackets and college swim meets and Capitals hockey. Even winter has started to grow on me a little bit. I like all of the seasons now, but summer will always be my favorite. And meteorologically, summer still has a month to go, but I send a kid back to school in one week and then the pool will close a week after that, and that’s the end of summer, no matter what the calendar says. I kind of miss it already.

Beach Week 2024

Today's the day, people! Today's the day. We're in the car now heading toward New Jersey, just one of many cars heading to their vacation week, or heading home afterward. It's the first Saturday in August and intensely hot again and I can't wait to see the ocean. 

Packing up the car for a beach week is a significant endeavor, one in which my role is minimal. I pack my own stuff, of course, and I pack the linens, because you have to bring your own when you rent a beach house in New Jersey. And then I sit and wait while my husband and sons pack everything into and on the car. I was watching Simone Biles and Jade Carey win Olympic gold and bronze while the men strapped the bikes to the back of my RAV4. Go USA. And Brazil too, because Rebeca Andrade is amazing. 

*****

We don't rush to get on the road on Beach Week departure day. We're on vacation and we're not on the clock. Plus we can't pick up our keys from the rental office until 3 PM so there's no reason to hurry. We're on 95 North now, still in Maryland. The vacation really begins when we cross the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Two hours give or take, God willing.

*****

It’s Sunday morning now, our first full day at the beach. The weather forecast for this week is all over the place but as always, I do not care about a little rain. I don't even care about a lot of rain but check with me later this week. If we do get a lot of rain, I might feel differently. 

But it's not raining now. It's beautiful and sunny and likely to be hot but with cool breezes from the water. I'm on the deck right now. I just had my first vacation cup of coffee, and now I'm just looking at the bay. We have a lovely unobstructed water view from the third floor deck. 

Our place is an upside down condo, on the second and third floors of a 16 unit mini community, eight units facing the other eight units across a courtyard with a pool. We're three blocks from the beach and less than a block from the bay. It's a lovely little spot. The condo itself is very beachy and bright. Not overly fancy but clean and comfortable and cheerful. 

The deck is still wet from overnight thunderstorms and rain showers, which are the best kind. A few early risers are out walking and the anglers are unpacking their tackle in the parking lot by the bay, but other than that it's just me and the seagulls. I expect it to be a lovely day. 

*****

“I like your pink bike!”

“Yeah I like your pink bike!”

“Thanks ladies!”

That was a five year old girl and her three year old sister, complimenting my old pink beach cruiser as we all rolled up to the 82nd St beach in Stone Harbor at about 1:30 PM on Sunday. Next Saturday we'll strap that bike to the back of my car and take it back to my garage in Silver Spring, where it will remain undisturbed for the next two years.

*****

Yesterday was a lovely day. The weather varied wildly throughout the day but we had a solid six hours of overcast but still sunny and breezy conditions, perfect for the beach and pool. The ocean water was too cold for swimming yesterday after an overnight storm that brought cold deep water to the surface. The air temperature varied from shorts and a T-shirt and flip flops in the morning to a long skirt and sneakers and a cardigan at 7:30 pm. On the beach at 9 pm, the cardigan was not enough. 

It's Monday morning now, not even 8:30 yet, and already about 85 degrees on the deck. After I straighten up the house and fold the laundry I'm going to ride my pink bike to my favorite used book store, and then come home and make sandwiches for anyone who wants one (I can't convince anyone else to eat tomato sandwiches and they don't know what they're missing) and then commence with another day on the beach followed by another swim in the chilly pool. 

*****

It's Tuesday morning now. I think. I just finished my morning reconnaissance routine. I do a certain minimal amount of housekeeping during beach week. Laundry, daily straightening, dishes and countertops - enough to keep everything pleasant and livable for the week. It takes very little time, and it's very much worth the effort. 

And now I'm on my deck again listening to seagulls and looking at tiny sailboats on the bay. I'm like a human version of those giant wooden “Relax” signs that decorate every beach rental on Seven Mile Island. It costs a fortune to rent a condo here for a week in August and I guess the owners think that we need a reminder to relax. Certainly I do because relaxing is contrary to everything in my nature. 

It's been a nearly perfect week so far. The ocean water is much colder than normal in August so I haven't been all the way in yet but I'll do it before the end of the week. But thanks to the very underused courtyard pool, I still get to swim every day. My biggest problem right now is that my Kindle has gone missing and I'm kind of upset about it, not just because I don't want to have to replace it but because I was sure I had it after the beach yesterday but now I'm questioning myself. Now I'm afraid I'm losing my mind a little bit. But there are books here in the house so I'll find something else to read on the beach and I'll keep looking for the Kindle. It has to be somewhere. It's probably where I had it last. I heard that this is the best place to find missing things. 

*****

It's Wednesday morning now, pearly gray and mild. The sky is nearly completely clouded over, with little patches of blue here and there, and some pale sunlight just filtering through. If it stays like this all day, it will be a perfect day. 

Yesterday morning, I conducted a hard target search of every farmhouse, outhouse, doghouse, and henhouse in this vicinity, and I still can't find my Kindle. I went to the public works department, the police station, lifesaving headquarters, the Chamber of Commerce, and the recreation building, hoping that maybe someone had picked it up and dropped it off. No luck. Apparently there is a Facebook group where people post notifications about found items. My sister is checking it for me because I'm no longer on Facebook. 

The absence of the Kindle created a reading emergency, and the bookshelf here in the condo was not much help at first. A lot of Tom Clancy and Mitch Albom. No disrespect to these esteemed authors, of course, but I've read one each of their books, and that's enough.

Then I found a paperback copy of Murder on the Orient Express, which believe it or not I have never read, and I am completely engrossed. It's delightful. No wonder it's the best selling novel ever. I'll probably finish it today, and then I guess I’ll give in and read another Tom Clancy or maybe take another trip to the bookstore. Meanwhile I'm now one of literally millions who have spent afternoons on the beach reading Agatha Christie. 

*****

It's Thursday now, rainy and cool. I don't really mind too much, though I would obviously prefer a nice day. 

Yesterday we walked on the misty, foggy beach, barefoot and carrying our sandals. The water had warmed considerably and we walked in and out of the water. We ate a slice of pizza at a 96th Street pizza place, and poked around the shops and then got back on the beach and walked home. No one was sitting under umbrellas, but lots of people were out walking and some swimmers and surfers were doing their thing in the water. The lifeguards were on duty and we had to ask our location at one point because the fog was so thick that the street markers on the fences near the dunes were invisible. A few drops of rain fell here and there but not enough to spoil the walk. It rained a bit again after we came home so we went swimming, rain drops falling on the chilly pool surface as we moved through the water. I recorded 21,000 steps. And my husband found my Kindle! An excellent day. 

*****

I just looked at the weather forecast and I wish I hadn't because it's supposed to rain all day today and there's a very good chance of rain again tomorrow, which is our last full day here. Mist and fog and cool overcast grayness is lovely but hard rain is not. But weather forecasts have been wrong before so I'm going to remain optimistic. Anything could happen. I'm hoping for one more day on the beach. 

*****

It's Friday morning and despite a pretty dire forecast, it's sunny and bright, breezy and fresh with pale blue skies. The clouds are uncertain looking; some white and fluffy and harmless and some a little heavy looking, a little leaden. I haven't rechecked the forecast yet but my analysis suggests an anything-could-happen day. But it's certainly very nice right now. 

It rained for most of the day yesterday, but it was light rain with not much wind so we went to Ocean City to have lunch and walk the boardwalk and poke around the town. Ocean City was once a pretty fancy resort town that has gone to seed in places but it's still quite charming. The 101-year-old Flanders Hotel is still rather elegant. Luigi's restaurant looks exactly as it did in the 70s, which is the last time I walked around Ocean City. Shops still line Asbury and West Avenues, some fancy and some far less so.  We had an amazing lunch including the best turkey hoagie ever constructed. It was a nice afternoon. We drove home in steady light rain and wind and then swam in the dank, cold pool, then got together with neighborhood friends who are also vacationing here and ate steamed seafood and Mack's pizza. My house is very full now, with three of my son's friends camped out on the couches. They had been staying with one of the boys’ parents in Cape May, who decided to return home early this morning. The boys wanted to stay until Saturday so they're here with us. These boys practically grew up in my house so they're quite comfortable here, and we're quite happy to have them. And it looks like we'll get that last beach day after all. 

*****

Today's the day again. That is a wrap on beach week 2024. We're on our way off the island, heading toward the Elmer Diner in Elmer, NJ, for our traditional last day of vacation diner breakfast. We were up betimes this morning, and after a last cup of coffee on the deck and a last bike ride to the beach, we commenced with the packing and clean up operation. The rental agency sends cleaning crews in to ready the units for next week's vacationers but you have to clear the refrigerator, rid the place of all trash and recycling, and strip the beds. And then you have to pack up the car, which is just as much work for the return trip as it was for the trip here a week ago. 

It was such a lovely week, even with the crazy weather. Especially with the crazy weather. We got to walk surrounded by mist and fog on the beach, and we got to sit in the wind and sunshine watching surfers in the choppy waves, and we got to swim in the rain. We wore long sleeves and jackets at night, and we were still a little cold. It's bright and sunny and warm this morning and this week's beachgoers have an excellent forecast for the week. I kind of feel sorry for them. 

*****

It’s Sunday morning now, and it’s nice to be home. I’ll miss the beach for a few days, especially my water view. A few other early risers and I were out on our decks every morning, nodding politely to one another as we settled for a few minutes of watching the boats and the seagulls as we drank our morning coffee. I’ll miss the family who sat on the beach right near us every day, their three little girls practicing their gymnastics moves as their parents and aunts and uncles watched and applauded. I’ll miss walking miles in bare feet on the cool packed sand. I’m catching up on news today, which I’ve been ignoring all week. Ignoring the news might be the best part of vacation, really. 

I have some work to catch up on today; laundry and organizing and restocking and neighborhood association meeting minutes, which I need to deliver before our next meeting two days from now. Tomorrow, I’ll be back in the office drinking from the proverbial fire hose, and it’s all good. Somebody has to do the world’s work, right? It might as well be me. 

Change of pace

I'm in the backseat of my car right now, for maybe the third or fourth time in the two years that I've owned it. My husband is in the driver's seat and my mom is riding shotgun. She spent the week with us and we're driving to the Maryland House to meet my brother, who will drive her the rest of the way back to Philadelphia. It's the Grandma hand-off. It's old lady human trafficking. I had planned to drive her myself but my husband got up and insisted on driving. I don't love sitting in the backseat but it's nice not to have to pay attention to the road. 

It's been a long week, but I think my mom enjoyed herself and that's all that matters. But now I have some work to do. We're very different, my mom and me. She is very messy and I am not. When she visits, she brings at least twice as much stuff as anyone could possibly need (OK, we have that in common) and she spreads out, occupying every room and distributing her belongings across every available surface. It's been chaos. And I'm going to go home and restore order. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, and just about a perfect day weather-wise. My house is clean, top to bottom, and everything is back in its rightful place. Even my car is clean. I have some volunteer work to catch up on, but there’s nothing else on the to-do list except swimming and watching the Olympics. Our crape myrtle is in full bloom, so heavy with flowers that the branches are sagging a bit under the weight. It’s my favorite kind of late summer day, which means that of course I’m anxious about the many things that could go wrong. I wish I wasn’t like this but I am. 

*****

I’m back in the office this week after a week of telework. This is my pre-vacation week, and I have lots to do, at work and at home, but that just makes the vacation that much better. 

And I like the pre-vacation week for its own sake, too. We get creative with meals, using up whatever is in the refrigerator. We eat out the night before we leave, making it the official first night of vacation. I start packing, just a little bit; or rather, I start planning to pack. Beach week packing is a project because we have to bring linens and towels as well as clothes. But packing the clothes is quite easy because I am very familiar with the climate and the fashion environment of Avalon NJ, so I know just what I’ll need. 

*****

It’s August 1 now, and I’m still reeling from what turned out to be a pretty extraordinary July. July always goes by very fast, even as you look back to the beginning of the month and think how long ago the Independence Day holiday seems now. July 4 seems like a distant memory in a very memorable July. And August will also fly by and we’ll be sending our son back to college in five minutes, but on Labor Day, I’ll look back to August 1 and it will seem like it was ages ago. Tomorrow is my last workday. We leave for the beach on August 3. 

*****

Not long ago somebody forwarded a post from a dumbass influencer who said something about sad little American weeklong vacations and how looking forward to your vacation is a sure sign that your life is stunted and confined and miserable. I guess we should all quit our jobs, buy expensive rock climbing outfits, and post smarmy videos in beautiful outdoor settings. I wonder if the geniuses who say things like this have any thoughts about who will do the world’s work if we all decide to drop out and live our best lives. Morons. 

I’m right here to say that I’m looking forward to my week of beach life. I’m looking forward to biking and swimming and jumping waves and reading books and wearing shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops every day. And I’ll be happy to return to my regular life after it ends because I like my regular life, even the hard parts. But even people who like their regular lives need a break from their routine, no matter what that routine looks like. Everyone needs an occasional change of pace. 

Rodent vandals

There’s a new bird feeder outside my window, with an Arlo camera trained on it, as my husband’s long battle to keep the squirrels out of his birdfeeders enters a new and deadly phase. The new feeder is hanging from a length of copper tubing mounted to the fence, and angled so that the feeder is too far from the trees and the fence for the squirrels to reach. But the squirrels are determined and daring. 

Why a new bird feeder, you might ask? We had to replace the old bird feeder because a little black squirrel knocked it down. How do we know that a little black squirrel is the culprit? Yes, that’s right, we have video footage of the little black squirrel sitting on top of the fence, calculating its trajectory before taking the flying leap that took down the bird feeder and a good-sized tree branch. The squirrel escaped unharmed after stuffing itself on the scattered bird seed. I am that squirrel’s biggest fan. I’m not saying that I would deliberately sabotage my husband’s squirrel defenses, but I do continue to oppose this unwarranted prejudice against squirrels. I don’t see why the birds should have everything handed to them. I don't see why the squirrels can't get a break. 

*****

Even with the rather extreme heat and humidity this summer, we’ve had few thunderstorms, but we’re making up for it now. It’s Tuesday, the second day in a row of thunderstorms. We need the rain, but I also need to go swimming. Me vs. nature: Nature wins, every time. 

Really, that’s true for anyone vs. nature, but some of us, like the person I’m married to, will try to fight the inevitable. In brand-new Arlo footage released this morning, a small black squirrel (the same one? A new one?) leapt from the fence and landed on the new bird feeder and hung on for a few minutes before finally dropping to the ground. The new bird feeder is slippery, and the little ledge where the birds roost, stuffing themselves on free birdseed, is nothing but a narrow wire, so there’s not much for the squirrel to cling to. But my husband is not the only one who’s not giving up. That squirrel is going to keep trying, and I’m here for him. He’s an underdog, just like USA Men’s Gymnastics, and look what happened there. 

*****

I’ll continue to root for the squirrels but I draw the line at raccoons, especially the agile and daring variety of raccoon that climbs trees and hangs upside down and then digs right into our bird feeder, which is there for the birds. And the squirrels. My husband got up in the middle of the night to chase the raccoon away after an Arlo notification on his phone alerted him to its presence. Later footage revealed that the stupid raccoon came right back and stuffed itself on bird seed. The bird feeder is still in place, but it won’t be for long if this fat-ass nocturnal rodent keeps swinging from it. Bird feeders are not designed to hold ten pounds of obese trash panda. So we’re going to the mattresses. My husband bought a humane trap, and will take his prisoners to the woods adjacent the Turkey Branch Parkway. This of course will avail us nothing except for new raccoons, but my husband will never stop fighting nature, no matter his win-loss record. 

American Wiseacre

 I do love when I discover a new author - new to me, that is, because my “new” authors are often quite old if not dead. This one is very much alive, and not all that old, either. 

*****

After finishing a book of essays, I had planned to return to my now-beloved Margery Sharp but then I noticed Elizabeth McCracken’s Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry in my library, and decided to read it instead. I felt like reading another novel and didn’t realize until I started it that Here’s Your Hat is not a novel but a short story collection. Short stories are just as good, though. Apparently, I’m in my fiction era. 

Elizabeth McCracken was quite young when she wrote these stories, which are populated with quirky American archetypes - circus performers, aspiring Quiz Kids, old vaudevillians, clannish large families, con artists, even convicts. McCracken’s older characters - usually the parents and grandparents of the narrators (the stories are almost all told in the first-person) - remember the 1929 stock market crash and the Depression and World War II.

This collection was published in the early 90s, a time of modern attitudes and rapidly emerging technology and major social change and political upheaval. But McCracken’s frame of reference remains firmly rooted in the American 20th century, which most of us didn’t imagine would ever end. The 21st century isn’t even foreshadowed. Neither McCracken nor her characters seemed to have any idea of what was about to happen. I certainly didn’t. 1993 was a long time ago. 

*****

I don’t know if Elizabeth McCracken ever read Flannery O’Connor, but it seems very likely that she did. O’Connor’s influence is evident in these stories, most notably in the elegant and stylish and accomplished mothers who are ambitious for their daughters and the daughters who disappoint their mothers by being rough around the edges or unconventional or uninterested in marriage and children and social status. That’s another American archetype - the mismatched mother-daughter pairing of a no-nonsense, relentlessly upbeat, stylish and beautiful mother, and the daughter who rebels against all that perfection. Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher are the best real-life examples that pop into my mind, but there are many more. 

*****

During the first year of the pandemic, I watched “Better Call Saul,” an episode or two a day, with my then 16-year-old son. Almost every night, at the end of the virtual school and work day, with dinner cleaned up and the house in order, we’d sit down together for our daily BCS episode. My husband and older son soon began to watch with us, and we all looked forward to that daily distraction from the disaster that was the year 2020. 

As I have written before, Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman is a character who could not be imagined anywhere but in America in the 20th century. My sons are both as American as can be, but they are also young. “Who is Karnak?” they would ask. “What’s ‘Let’s Make a Deal’?” And I would explain. But it was more than TV and movie and other cultural references. Jimmy McGill was the embodiment of the brash, confident, almost reckless optimism of 20th century America, and there is no way to explain him to a person born in the 21st century. Sometimes, you literally have to be there. And I would explain that to them, too. I’d explain how when I was young, some things were very much as they are now, but other things were just so different that it was as if we’re living in another country altogether. I guess Elizabeth McCracken knows this now, too, 30 some years after she published these stories. 

*****

I started with McCracken’s earliest published work and just finished with her most recent novel, The Hero of this Book, described by one reviewer as a love letter to McCracken’s late mother. It’s a beautiful book, and defies categorization, though I suppose if I had to place it in a genre, it would fall under A for autofiction. The first-person narrator of this novel is a writer like McCracken remembering her brilliant, charismatic, beloved mother. The narrator's mother is disabled though she hates the word and refuses to yield to pressure to accept help, use a wheelchair, and stop moving. She understands that motion is life, and so she won’t stop moving. She walks slowly and she falls down regularly but she gets up and walks again, one slow and hesitant step after another

McCracken’s alter ego, a successful author, recalls her early work - stories about elderly confidence artists, circus performers, wannabe child prodigies, convicts - the stories of Here’s Your Hat. She continually breaks the fourth wall, addressing readers directly, challenging us to figure out what’s truth and what’s fiction. It’s the Epimenides paradox in fictional form - “All writers are liars. But I’m a writer. And I’m telling the truth.” McCracken even mentions the paradox, making the comparison explicit. She is the Cretan (not cretin lol) in this scenario. 

And McCracken’s brilliant, funny, beautiful, self-assured, and infuriating mother is the titular hero of this book. “An American wiseacre,” McCracken calls her. I can think of no higher praise and no better epitaph. 

May you live in somewhat uninteresting times

I saw a crape myrtle in bloom yesterday. My own crape myrtle is still green. Our neighborhood is full of crape myrtle, and as beautiful as they are, they are also a reminder that summer is at its peak and that we are on the downward trajectory toward fall and winter. July 4 was just over a week ago, and it seems like a distant memory. 

It’s Friday, and I’m so relieved, and not because the work week is over. I like working, although I love time off, too. I’m relieved because I had to tackle several unpleasant things this week, things that I had been dreading, and that are all done now. I had to go to the dentist to have two old fillings repaired, and it didn’t hurt a bit. I had to attend a mid-week social gathering among people I barely know, and I had a pretty good time. I had to make some phone calls and run some errands and deal with repair people - check, check, and check. My list is all crossed off. I handled my business. 

*****

It's Saturday now. We're at a summer swim meet, watching my niece and nephew swim. We know a few other families at this pool so we have plenty of swimmers to cheer for. 

We missed my nephew's first event because we are new alumni parents, still reveling in the freedom of unscheduled Saturday mornings. We still love summer swimming, but a summer swim meet is even better when you roll in at 10, like a gosh darn boss. “Oh, nice of you to make an appearance,” the people say. Why yes, it is nice of us, isn’t it? 

*****

Sometimes a summer rainstorm clears the atmosphere, pushes out the heat and humidity and leaves the world feeling refreshed. Sometimes it does the opposite. It rained on Thursday night and on and off yesterday, and today is blazing hot and jungle humid. The air is hard to describe - it's somewhere in between solid and liquid and vapor. Dense. Heavy. Sultry. Definitely not a day for handling business.  

*****

It’s Sunday now, and we’re just home from another swim meet; this time, the Swim Reapers against a bunch of other alumni swim teams in a Sunday morning meet. Once again, we missed an early event because once again, we pulled up at 10, because we can. It was already 90 degrees at 10 in the morning and I stood close to the pool to take advantage of the splashing. Between my niece and nephew and our friends’ kids and our son’s club and alumni meets, we are attending more swim meets this summer than when we were actual summer swim parents. 

And that is all good because attending a swim meet as a spectator is a top ten favorite thing to do for me, and because we all need to get away from the TV and radio coverage and the Godforsaken social media speculation on yesterday’s assassination attempt. The 2024 election just nudged the 2020 election. “Hold my beer,” said 2024 to 2020, smirking. 

*****

Despite Saturday’s events, this weekend was oddly relaxing, even restful. We did everything we had previously planned to do but the heat forced us to slow our pace and take breaks. The next few weeks will be busy and demanding and this weekend was the calm before the proverbial storm. Or maybe it was just calm amid the storm. Maybe that’s the only kind of calm we’re ever gonna get anymore. It’s still ferociously hot and will be so for the next few days, and then it’s supposed to cool down a little bit. The weather, that is. I’m afraid that things are going to feel pretty hot for the next few months, no matter what the thermometer says. Oh to live in less interesting times. Oh to experience precedented events. 

Chalk art

My summer days, at least the weekdays, are pretty much the same as any day any time of the year. I start work, either in the office or at home, at about 7:40 AM. I finish work a few minutes after 4, and then I shut down my desk, or I drive home. But summer evenings are very different from evenings any other time of the year. On every other evening, I do kind of boring adult stuff - housework, laundry, errands, gym, volunteer work, etc. It usually feels like a second workday - no big deal since my workdays are not too hard and I like doing stuff, but I do always feel like I have to keep to a schedule and that I can’t, or at least shouldn’t rest until I have fulfilled all of my responsibilities. An occasional dinner out on a Tuesday or Wednesday or an occasional weeknight Capitals game are nice breaks in the routine, but other than those little breaks, I do pretty much stick to the routine. 

Summer evenings, however, are quite different. I still run errands and clean stuff and cook stuff (though not as much of the cooking) but the late sunset makes the evening feel free and unhurried, like I don’t have to race the daylight. The pool remains open until 8:45 PM so I go swimming at 7:30 or 8. The water is often cold at that time of day, but it doesn’t matter. Cold or warm or anywhere in between, swimming is freedom.  

And summer weekends are just brand new, now that I am no longer a summer swim parent. Two wide-open days - I hardly know what to do with myself, really. 

*******

On the 10th and last of a streak of cloudless rainless hot sunny days, I came home from work and did some routine household chores, and then I went swimming. 

When you arrive at our neighborhood pool, you check in at a desk in the breezeway of a small mid-century pool building that has locker rooms and a guards’ office on one side of the breezeway and the snack bar on the other. A concrete walkway continues past the building and through the grassy grounds down to the pool deck. I stepped carefully as I walked down that walkway, to avoid stepping on and spoiling the gallery of chalk art flowers and dolphins. The flowers and dolphins are the work of young swim team members, who decorate the pool on Friday nights to welcome visiting teams on Saturday morning. The drawings remained bright and clear on the concrete after five days. 

I swam for a bit, and then watched the second annual neighborhood cornhole tournament, in which my son and one of his best friends repeated as champions. The other boy’s mother and I were pretty invested in their victory. Once a sports mom, always a sports mom, I guess. The tournament was over before 8, so I got back in the water to swim some more. Getting in and out and back into the water is something I do only when it’s really hot. It was a rather perfect summer evening. Then the heat finally broke a bit, with a late evening rain and thunderstorm that lasted into the night. The rain refreshed the real flowers, but it washed the chalk flowers away.

*****

It’s sunny again today, and the grass in our neighborhood looks green again. It hadn’t turned brown yet but it was starting to look a little pale and colorless. We’re in what I think of as the middle phase of summer. Early summer lasts from Memorial Day until the beginning of meteorological summer, which started last week. I guess you could call those weeks pre-summer, especially if you still have children in public school. Now it’s fully summer, schools are closed, and the summer swim season is well underway. The water is warm now. Last weekend it was close to too warm but it cooled a bit after one cool night, and it will be cooler still today after last night’s thunderstorm. I’m swimming almost every day. 

*****

I’ve been trying to build my endurance and increase my swim distances, and I’m back up to 800 meters in the pool, pretty much without stopping. That’s just about half a mile. I’m slow but I have never cared about my times, and I’m not about to start now. One night, when I was maybe two laps in, a 17-year-old boy took the lane next to me. He had missed swim practice and was doing the team’s set on his own. He lapped me consistently, as well he should because he’s a 17-year-old competitive swimmer and I’m a middle-aged lady if we’re being really optimistic about my potential lifespan. I mean, I’m not going to live to 118, God willing. But even though this disrespectful young whippersnapper easily doubled me in pool lengths, he got out of the pool before I did. So I outlasted him on both ends of that set. And that means I won. 

*****

Every year, I have the same conversation, usually with multiple people. Sometimes I start this conversation, and sometimes someone else initiates, but the upshot is the same: Summer is great and everything but the moment July 4th comes, it feels like it’s winding down, no matter what the calendar says. 

Just a few days before July 4, I had this conversation for the first time this summer. I don’t remember who started it, but people kept entering the chat, as they say on the internet. One person said that on July 5, we’d start to see back-to-school advertising. Another person complained that the stores would be stocked with Halloween candy and decorations by mid-August. I said that July 4 felt like the first stop on a freight train to Labor Day; and that once Labor Day was over, it felt like there would be no further stops until Christmas. The very next day, I received an email notification that preorders were being accepted for the University’s annual holiday ornament. The train’s not even stopping at Labor Day anymore. All aboard. See you in December.

*****

As much as I love summer, it’s too hot these last two days even for me. Very hot, and so densely humid that I just don’t understand how the air is even holding all that water. But it is; it’s just holding on to it and not letting it go. Days that in other summers would almost certainly end in Old Testament thunderstorms just continue sunny and bright until almost 9 PM. 

I’m lucky, of course. I work indoors in an air-conditioned office and I drive my air-conditioned car home to my air-conditioned house. And then I walk around the corner to the pool and I swim until my eyes burn and my fingers are pruny and the chlorine permeates my skin. 

It’s so hot that everyone is getting in the pool now. People who normally sit on the deck reading their books are now in the water up to their necks. People who normally swim laps are just splashing around, floating, treading water. On the day after my 800-meter swim, my shoulders hurt and so the next day, I swam like a child, flitting back and forth in the water, floating on my back, swimming in zig zags and circles and straight lines through one of the shallow “wings” of the pool. I didn’t do any headstands or somersaults, but I could have. 

*****

It’s now about 10 days since that first thunderstorm. Other than a 30-minute shower late in the day on July 4, there’s been no rain; just blazing heat and intense humidity. My husband is out watering the tomatoes. He’d water the grass if I let him but I won’t. The forecast for the next few days is pretty much the same as it could be for any day in July in the DMV - hot, humid, chance of late-day showers and thunderstorms. Meteorologists here could pretty much take the month off, post that forecast on repeat every day, and they’d be right eight times out of ten. The swim team has its last home meet this week, so the chalk art will be back, at least for a little while. 

Summer reading

When I wrote this post, I was still in the middle of my second Margery Sharp, The Nutmeg Tree. It’s several weeks later, and I’m still reading Margery Sharp novels. I think she’s going to keep me occupied well into July, if not for the rest of the summer. 

*****

The Nutmeg Tree ended very abruptly, leaving me hanging on several fronts. I never did find out definitively what happened to Julia and Susan. It’s reasonable to assume that Julia ended up happily married to Sir William but whether or not Susan and Bryan ended their disastrous engagement or went on as stubborn young people will do to the altar and an almost-certainly disastrous and unhappy marriage, we will never know. I’m guessing that The Nutmeg Tree was an unfinished novel that Margery Sharp’s literary executors just threw into the collection. Anyway, it’s just as well because Julia and Susan were beginning to wear me out a bit, and I was ready to move on to volume 3, The Flowering Thorn. There’s a four-year-old orphan boy and a beautiful and young and stylish but impecunious young woman who has thus far lived a wild and carefree life. We can easily guess where Margery is taking us, but she will make the road there very interesting and entertaining. 

*****

And it was. The Flowering Thorn is absolutely wonderful. Imagine if Rebecca West and PG Wodehouse collaborated on a novel about a hard-bitten, cynical, beautiful upper class English woman who adopts an orphaned boy and moves out of her stylish London flat and away from her stylish London life to a rustic cottage in the country, and you’ll have some idea of how great The Flowering Thorn is. 

Yes, Lesley (the beautiful protagonist) did adopt the orphaned boy just as I predicted, though it happened much sooner in the story than I expected. By the midway point, Lesley adjusts to motherhood and country life, and even makes a few friends. She doesn’t fall in love with her young charge; at least not right away, but she cares for him scrupulously and faithfully.

When Lesley arrives in the village, she’s determined to do her duty by her adopted child, to keep him safe and fed and clothed until he’s old enough to go to boarding school; and then she plans to resume her former life in a fashionable London neighborhood. She has no sentimental attachment to the child, nor any idealistic notions of motherhood. But eventually, she comes to love her new life in the country. Sharp writes about Lesley’s realization that a little boy, a dog, a cat, and a rough-around-the-edges village woman who helps with cooking and cleaning all depend on her for their sustenance and safety. We understand that just months earlier, Lesley would have been horrified by such a realization; instead, she is somewhat humbled, but also proud of her position as the center of the world for her unconventional little family. 

Does this sound like a Hallmark Christmas movie? In the wrong hands it could have been. 

Without giving away too much, Sharp manages to tell the story of a woman who finds fulfillment in family and home life, without making it into a morality tale or drawing an unflattering and judgmental contrast between the devoted country mother that Lesley eventually becomes and the self-involved single city woman she had once been. Lesley herself rejects this dichotomy, dismissing friends and acquaintances who praise her for her self-sacrifice. She is only fulfilling a commitment; and she doesn’t even believe that she loves her adopted son, but the reader understands that she does love the child. A person doesn’t give up a life of freedom and glamour and excitement for a rustic life of chores and children and animals for any reason other than love. Love is an action, not an emotion. Love is what you do for a person, not how you feel about them. 

*****

OK, we have just imagined a Wodehouse - West collaboration; now, just imagine if Shirley Jackson and Muriel Spark had worked together to write a novel, and then you might have some idea of what The Innocents is like. This was the last of the four novels in the collection, and the second one in a row about a single woman who adopts a young child. And there the similarity ends. The Flowering Thorn’s Lesley, a rich and spoiled London socialite, impulsively adopts an orphaned boy, regrets this impulsive decision almost immediately, but is then determined to fulfill her commitment, and ends up finding meaning and purpose in the process. In The Innocents, the unnamed first-person protagonist also cares for a child not her own, an arrangement that is supposed to be temporary but becomes permanent as a result of the untimely death of the child’s mother. In this case, the adoptive parent does have a deep, emotional attachment to the child, who is autistic, although Sharp does not use that word. I’ve read some reviews of The Innocents that suggest that it is a heartwarming story of an elderly woman’s unselfish love for a developmentally disabled child. But without revealing anything, let me just say that the love is far from unselfish; and the titular innocents are not the child and her caretaker, but the child and her unfortunate mother. It is both bitingly hilarious (that’s Muriel Spark’s contribution) and macabre (that’s where Shirley Jackson comes in). 

*****

Cluny Brown is probably Margery Sharp’s most famous non-rodent literary creation, and I picked up volume 2 of the collection expecting that it would be included, but it’s not. So I got a stand-alone copy of Cluny Brown, and it is my favorite Margery Sharp so far - an absolute delight of a story. Margery Sharp must have read PG Wodehouse, not to mention Jane Austen and George Eliot and George Bernard Shaw, because I can hear all of their voices in her writing. And Sharp herself was obviously an influence on Muriel Spark, with the same wry, sharp humor, but more tempered with kindness than Spark. Muriel Spark would have written Cluny Brown in the first person, and her Cluny would have judged Uncle Arn and the Carmels and Mrs. Maile and (especially) Mr. Belinski much more harshly. Of course, she would have been entirely right about Mr. Belinski, who is a self-important cad. 

I’m about 70 percent through Cluny Brown, and I’ll be sorry when it ends, except that at least I will know what happens to Cluny and Andrew and Mr. Wilson and Betty and the obnoxious Mr. Belinski because right now I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Anything could happen. And of course, I have another whole volume of Margery Sharp novels waiting for me as soon as I finish with Miss Brown. Margery Sharp is filling the gap left by Hilary Mantel and Muriel Spark, whose work I have read from start to finish; and she is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. As far as reading is concerned, it is shaping up to be a delightful summer. 

Peak summer

It's Saturday, and a swim meet morning in the DMV. It rained hard last night but the sun is out now, bright and warm; and morning cool is giving way to humid June heat. It smells like chlorine and coffee and sunscreen and wet grass and bacon egg and cheese sandwiches. IYKYK.

I'm no longer a summer swim parent, although my son is still a coach. But I am a summer swim aunt, so I'm here at the Manor Woods pool to watch my 11yo nephew, a summer swimming veteran; and my 7yo niece, who is making her A meet debut. 

I know some people here, so we have other races to watch; and it's fun, though a little weird, to be just a spectator. But the music is loud and the tents and deck chairs are all over the lawn and the kids are in full spirit mode with painted faces and blue and green fingernails and silly costumes. A summer swim meet is a summer swim meet. 

*****

The nice thing about being a summer swim aunt, rather than a parent is that you can come and go whenever you want. We rolled up at 9, and then found that the meet actually starts at 9, so we didn’t miss anything. And we left when the kids had both swum their best events. 

And then what did we do with our extra free time? Well yes, of course we went to another swim meet. A 17-year habit is hard to break. And what’s more fun on a Saturday morning in June, anyway? 

*****

It’s Sunday now, another beautiful June morning, and we're on our way to yet another summer swim meet. My son and some friends joined a local rec league for summer swim alumni and other adult swimmers; and their team, the Swim Reapers, is competing this morning at another old school DMV swim club. It's all sprint distances. It's going to be silly. 

*****

It was actually awesome - swimmers of all ages and many heats of each event, arranged in reverse order by age. No officials - swimmers are on the honor system - and each heat grabs a stopwatch as they finish their races, so they can time the next heat. It works very well. My son and his friend helped the Reapers to a first place finish in the men's medley relay, and he picked up an individual first place in the 19-29 men’s 25 breaststroke, breaking the Reapers’ team record in the process. That was a fun way to spend Sunday morning. Better than church. Sorry, Lord. I’m just keeping it real. 

*****

I usually like to swim laps, but sometimes I like to just get in the pool and swim around the large wide-open shallow end, counting nothing, just moving through the water in any which way. That’s how I swam when I was a child, and it’s still fun. I stay in motion the entire time because even on a hot day, I can’t stay still in a pool without getting very cold. I swim around the perimeter, and back and forth from the wall to the rope that separates the shallow and deep ends. After a morning at a pool that we couldn’t swim in, we spent part of the afternoon at our own pool, swimming like children. I stayed in until I couldn’t stop shivering; until my eyes burned a little bit and my fingers were pruny and I was just plain tired out. Then we went home and grilled dinner and watched swimming again; this time, the Olympic Trials on TV. Meteorologically it’s still technically spring but this weekend was peak summer. 10/10 - would recommend. 

As a matter of fact, I DO have the cholesterol to be out here

It's 8:34 AM on Tuesday morning and I'm sitting in the waiting room at LabCorp, waiting for my 9:30 “appointment.” Why quotation marks? Well I'll tell you. LabCorp doesn't take appointments, so you have to just show up. It's first come first serve. And then when you come, you sign in on a list of assigned 15-minute time slots. Almost like appointments. Why they don't just take appointments in the first place is a question whose answer is unknown to me. 

I arrived at 8:30 and am now signed in for 9:30. I brought something to read so it's fine except that I can't have any coffee until after the blood draw. I didn't realize how dependent I am on coffee in the morning.  I'm really quite miserable - I can't stop yawning and I'm slow on the uptake. Fuzzy-headed, really. Muddled. Not sharp. Not on my A game. 

*****

I might be the youngest person here, and I'm 58, so I’m not accustomed to being the youngest person anywhere. But a medical lab at 8:30 on Tuesday morning is a hot spot for senior citizens, and this crew thinks they own the place. They gave me the fisheye as I approached the lab sign-in list, as if they’re thinking that the young people should step aside and let their elders go first. Normally, I’m all about respect for elders, and not just because I am one. But I have to go back to work after my blood work, and everyone else in that waiting room is going home to watch “Matlock” reruns. They can jolly well wait their turns. 

*****

I read for a bit, and then wrote for a bit, and then watched “House Hunters International,” featuring a young Canadian woman who was moving to Playa del Carmen. At 9:27 I received a text message notifying me that the lab tech was ready for me, demonstrating that they DO in fact know how to use technology and that they could conceivably figure out a way to schedule appointments that doesn’t involve a clipboard hanging from a hook. 

The lab technician was curt to the point of rudeness, responding to my cheery “good morning” by pointing to a chair and barking “sit there.” But she was reasonably competent because the blood draw was quite painless, although I’m left this morning with ugly track marks on my arm. It’s kind of cold today anyway, so my long sleeves will cover the damage. And everyone knows I’m not a heroin addict. 

*****

But it seems that I am a bit of a coffee addict because I was literally shaking by the time I got out of there at 9:50 or so. I was going to just drive home and make some coffee but there’s a Starbucks right across the street from the lab. Starbucks smells lovely, and it really was unseasonably chilly on Tuesday morning, almost fall-like, a very Starbucks morning. Starbucks doesn’t sell pumpkin spice latte in June, and that is a good thing, given my well-documented hatred of Godforsaken PSL, which is a hate crime against coffee. I ordered a vanilla latte, my favorite Starbucks drink. Vanilla latte tastes like 1997. Had I sustained a head injury halfway through that latte, and then been asked who the president is as part of a concussion protocol, I’d have said Bill Clinton. Or maybe I wouldn’t because that latte cost almost $7, so it’s definitely 2024. On my salary, I can have two children in college OR I can buy $7 cups of coffee. I can’t do both. That’ll be the last Starbucks for a while. 

*****

It’s Friday now, and if I’m being honest (and I am always being honest), I’m patting myself on the back for all the progress I’m making on my still-long-but-shorter list of administrative catch-up tasks and medical appointments. With the blood work out of the way, I now have to make two more specialists’ appointments, get an old filling repaired, and then deal with my apparently quite high cholesterol. I’m already taking anti-anxiety meds again because the panic every time I left the house and especially any time any member of my family left the house was getting out of control, and it is a bit better. But I don’t want to take any more medication. So I guess I have to do this the hard way. And since I do pretty much everything the hard way, this shouldn’t be a problem. Everyone in my house is going to be eating very healthy food this summer. They’re not going to like it. But by the end of August, I’m going to have a crossed-off to-do list, and much better triglyceride and LDL numbers. I need to live long enough to glare at the young people in line at LabCorp.