Summer TIME

Good morning!


I'm so sorry, my friends! It's been far too long since I checked in. I'd like to say I've been writing, or editing, or at least thinking about my story, but we all know what I've really been doing!


Hopefully those of you in the US that read this had a great Memorial Day weekend. Let summer officially begin! I have one child out of school and one child with a week to go. Now that they're older, I don't have to pay as much attention to them in the summer as I used to. I miss that a little bit. I miss going to the beach, the zoo, the museums, the library. Every day was a field trip. Now, I'll be lucky if I see them for ten minutes a day. I guess it's part of life, but this time of the year I get a little sentimental about days gone by.


Where does time go? My mother used to sigh this at the end of long summer days when she hadn't gotten everything done. Where does the time go? I sometimes envy her her life, though I'll never admit it. Sure, she was dirt poor, but everyone was. Everyone wore bad clothes, had no money, drove crummy cars, and had huge gardens that they worked endlessly in heat and humidity.

Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of the days we'd freeze veggies. My brother was in charge of stripping the corn or topping the beans. I would flash boil the veggies. Mom sliced the corn off the cobs or cut the beans and then dump them into pre cut half gallon milk cartons. She'd tape them with yellow masking tape and write the veggie and year on the tape in black wax pencil.

I hated those days because we didn't have air conditioning in any room other than the living room, and the floor would get sticky from the veggie water dripping when I moved my hot basket of veggies from the boiling pot to the sink filled with ice. Boil and blanch, boil and blanch. Freezing days would go on for a couple of days every year.

But where did all that time go since those days? I feel like I blinked and suddenly thirty years were gone. I can't tell anyone to slow down. We just don't live in that style of life. My kids will never freeze veggies because I don't have time or energy for a garden. Besides, with frozen veggies at $1.30 a pound or less, it's just simpler to teach them how to shop.

Somewhere between boiling and blanching corn and being a mom of teens, I three decades of life. I kept a journal until I got married. Wish I still did it. Those young years with my kids were very entertaining.

Of course, if I clocked how much time I spend watching useless television, I'd be shocked and appalled. So I won't do that.

I have a weight loss goal for the next year. I'm going to lose 70 pounds by the time Rick Springfield comes back to Milwaukee (Generally the first week in May.) So now I'm very aware of time because I have a goal that will move against time.

Ah, if only there were a time store where we could go and buy a few hours or a year or two.
Maybe that's something Apple can work on!