But months? I just don’t really consider them all that much!

It’s an interesting question why not. While various financial things are on a month-long cycle, I tend to live my life in weeks and seasons.

In any case, though, it is a new month. October has a lot of good things going on — a kid birthday celebration (yep, another one), two trips to points north where leaves will likely be seen, hopefully some pretty walks/runs/bike rides. I will be playing a supportive role for my eldest, who is deep into college applications, though we got some good news there. One of our big state universities has rolling admissions, so he got his application in early and we just heard back that he had been accepted. The upside of this is that it makes the whole process feel much less stressful. We know he can go somewhere good.

I have definitely been enjoying fall-themed magazines. Real Simple, Better Homes & Gardens, and Southern Living all showed up recently, with their Halloween/fall content, and I am here for it. I’m probably not going to make it through any Halloween-themed books, so this is the next best thing…

In other news: In a recent Before Breakfast episode, I talked about a saying I’d heard from Kristen, The Frugal Girl, about work: “I’m here to make money, not to spend it.” The idea is to avoid letting work becoming an unintentional cost center in your life (apparently Kristen was quoting the Non-Consumer Advocate). Kristen heard the podcast and did a whole post on how to spend less on getting to/being at work. Please check it out! There’s an interesting dichotomy in the comments (which I note some in the episode too) — some folks note how silly it is to pay $$ for terrible vending machine food and the like. Others point out that going out and getting a hot meal or a really good coffee from a coffee shop makes a stressful/boring job feel a little less terrible. Both are valid. I think the key is not spending money mindlessly. When you know you’re treating yourself, it’s all good.

I love living somewhere with four seasons. Winter is an acquired taste, and spring feels like winter for quite a while, but fall is often lovely. There are summery days but cooler mornings and nights. Then, in late October, all the overgrown greenery turns bright yellow, orange, and red and the world is just extravagantly colorful. I’m also a big fan of fall flowers: Sunflowers, asters, zinnias, mums. There’s something so unexpectedly beautiful about blue asters or violet zinnias against the red/orange/yellow scheme of fall.

Of course, while fall is beautiful it is also fleeting. By mid-November, the leaves will be on the ground, leaving just the silhouettes of trees — visible for vanishingly few hours of the day as the sun sets by 5 p.m.

So…with that somewhat dreary thought in mind, here are a few things I want to do to really enjoy autumn while I can.

Visit New England…twice! I’ll go to Maine in early October for work. Then in later October my husband and I are going to a destination half-marathon. In both cases, the leaves should be about at peak. My running time may be atrocious if I’m constantly pausing to take photos of leaves! Of course, given the half marathon, I plan to…

Run long. Now is the time to be doing it, with the temperatures in a range that makes miles feel good. I hope to scope out a few new places to run (like within a 5-10 minute drive) as my neighborhood is non-ideal in some ways.

Bike. At least solo, but hopefully as a family at some point since we bought the extra bike.

Hike. Also, at least one longer walk in the fall leaves.

Visit a botanical garden. Possibly Chanticleer or Longwood, or both. People think of going to gardens in the spring, but professional gardeners can really make the fall flowers shine, and with the trees being colorful the visuals should be even more spectacular. I also want to do a picnic at Stoneleigh, given that it’s not that far from my house, and is free and open to the public during the day.

Go apple picking. We need to get on this as the kinds of apples I like (like Honeycrisp) tend to be best now, rather than during the usual October/Fall Fest times. I feel like apple cider donuts should also be involved.

Watch a football game. Probably just on TV, though other members of my family will be going to some live.

Take family photos. We’re actually doing this in a studio in late September, so it won’t be autumnal themed, but it’s something I like to do in fall so we have photos available for our Christmas cards. Doing this will not be “fun,” but I want to have done it. So, onto the fall fun list it goes.

Enjoy BLP Live! I’m headed to Ft. Lauderdale in November, and co-hosting this year as lots of us plan 2025 together. I’m looking forward to yoga on the beach.

Listen to Vivaldi’s “Autumn” part of the Four Seasons. Also, I will write some autumn-themed sonnets.

In other news: A little content round-up for the week….Over at Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter) my piece behind the paywall was “Laura’s list of easy thrills” — 31 quick, cheap ways to add joy to your life. One of the freebies was to “Build a time emergency fund.” If you enjoy this blog you’ll probably enjoy the newsletter as well, so please consider a (free or paid) subscription.

Over at the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community we’ve been discussing managing household employees’ time, how we’ve spent anniversaries (I celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary this week), and task management tools. Membership is $9/month, which gets you access to the discussion forum and monthly Zoom meet-ups (always recorded for folks who can’t make it).

The Before Breakfast podcast covered “How to keep your summer spirit,” and I recommended that you “Don’t decorate with cereal boxes.” Basically, anything someone can see is part of the decor, even if you don’t always see it!

On Friday, we planned to see Edinburgh Castle. Then, we had booked a private “Potter Trail” tour to see the places that inspired J.K. Rowling. On Saturday I had booked a tour for the three of us to get driven around to several castles within a few hours’ drive of the city (my boys are very into castles!). On Sunday we were going to do a fancy afternoon tea (the Georgian Tea Room at The Dome).

I’d gotten home at 1 a.m. from Newark Airport on Thursday morning. After a too short night, I did a little work, got repacked, and took off with the boys shortly before 4 p.m. for our 8:15 p.m. United Airlines flight from Newark.

Things went badly from the start. Theoretically it takes 90 minutes to get to Newark Airport, but we got stuck behind a big accident on the PA turnpike (right before you get to the NJ Turnpike extension). The other side was completely closed, and we inched along for a full hour before we got to the site (about the time it was cleared). So all the extra time had evaporated, meaning we got to the parking lot at 6:45 p.m. for the 8:15 p.m. flight. This wasn’t terrible (though it had been nerve-wracking during the hour!) as we have TSA pre-check and weren’t checking bags. We got to the gate about 10 minutes before boarding. Phew, right?

But, once on the plane, things continued to go awry. We sat there for quite a while as they were waiting on a fuel truck. Apparently we had a different plane than planned, so they had to put more fuel in to get across the ocean. Fair enough, but I guess they didn’t have enough maintenance people working because it took forever. Then, once they started putting fuel on, it turned out something was wrong with the fuel.

So they got us off the airplane. We sat at the gate for a bit, at which point I learned that half the people on my flight were from the late flight the night before (around 11:30 p.m. — there are 2 flights per night) — it had been canceled, and they were rebooked to this. So they were not happy. Around 10:30 p.m. the gate agent announced that there was a new plane for us at a different gate, so we all went there.

There was no plane there. There wasn’t even an agent much of the time. The cynic in me believes they moved us because the later Edinburgh flight was about to board nearby and they didn’t want us all asking about it and getting agitated. We waited at the new gate for an hour, and then they announced that there was a plane for us at a different gate (pretty close to the old one).

It was already 11:30 p.m. so I was getting quite weary, given my lack of sleep the night before (and also knowing I wasn’t going to sleep that well on the plane…). The situation looked more promising, though, as there was actually a plane there. A crew boarded around 11:45 p.m. Even better! But then we kept waiting. There were vague announcements about needing catering to show up, and other such things, and they were waiting for that, but no one seemed to be working in that capacity after midnight…

Then, at 12:45 a.m., the agent came on the intercom and announced that they were canceling the flight for weather reasons. You should have heard the cry from the folks who’d been on the canceled flight the night before. I looked into rebooking and was offered the late flight on Saturday night (two days later — this is what happens when you cancel two nights’ flights in a row) — which wouldn’t have gotten us to Edinburgh until noon on Sunday. Given that we were leaving Monday, that wasn’t going to work. I might have gone for 2 days, but not for less than 24 hours. Also, at 12:45 a.m. on little sleep I wasn’t in a headspace to figure out other options (like trying to fly to London as early as possible the next day and then to Edinburgh or something, though that would have eaten up a lot of time too).

My boys and I drove home (in the rain — I will give that there was finally weather, though that wouldn’t have been a problem 4.5 hours earlier) from 1:15 a.m. to 2:45 a.m. That was a hard drive. In a bit of dark humor, I realized that 2:45 a.m. Eastern time is 7:45 a.m. in Edinburgh. It was just about when we would be landing. We had traveled long enough to get to Scotland but we hadn’t gotten anywhere.

So…no trip. My boys were pretty good sports about it. We regrouped on Friday (I spent a lot of the day half asleep — I never want to drive on the NJ Turnpike after midnight again!). My husband had been planning to take the younger 3 to visit family. I offered the boys the option of doing that but they didn’t want to get back in the car for a 6-hour trip. So the three of us hatched a plan to go out for a steak dinner on Friday, and I made us a booking for afternoon tea on Sunday at A Taste of Britain. We weren’t in the UK…but at least it was a taste?

That left the question of what to do Saturday. The boys talked and eventually agreed on the Bronx Zoo. Yes, really. So I got tickets, and we got back on the NJ Turnpike, went over the GWB, and arrived. We had a really nice time — the boys enjoyed the animals and I did too. I particularly liked the gorillas and a tree kangaroo had just had a baby and we got some adorable pictures.

Occasionally this weekend I’ve had moments of being upset but we did manage to have a good weekend. I did some reading, started a puzzle, went in the hot tub, and did a long run (8.2 miles). I do hope to retry the trip sometime because it was a really good itinerary. Like I was really proud of my travel planning skills! Sigh. Now, onward to start the school year…

Photos: Tree kangaroo plus baby, and then this is the closest I got to the UK this weekend….

We got back from the beach Saturday afternoon. I decided to record five Before Breakfast podcast episodes that night. On Sunday I sent them in, got my various newsletters squared away, and did podcast prep for a massive recording session on Tuesday. That gave me space on Monday to work through the results from my recent Evening Hours Challenge, and to approve the various surveys that will be part of my upcoming Better Workday Challenge (a 3-week project where people test out three strategies designed to make any workweek better. You can sign up here if you’d like! The results will be used anonymously in my next book. You can still sign up if you did the Evening Hours Challenge too. As usual, my sign-ups tend to skew more female, so male readers are particularly encouraged to sign up – thank you!).

On Tuesday, Sarah and I recorded an episode of BOBW, two intro + Q&As for upcoming interview episodes, plus I interviewed Sarah for Before Breakfast. Yep, Before Breakfast will be launching a weekly longer show in mid-September — I’ll explain the reasoning in this weekend’s Week’s Worth newsletter, but suffice to say it’s a new project.

At noon we did the BOBW Patreon community’s monthly meet-up. Then I finished packing, dropped my 14-year-old off at the high school to take the bus to a cross-country meet and I drove to Newark Airport. I was flying to Austin, TX to give a speech, and American Airlines does very few flights there (they are always at bad times out of PHL, or else require a connection) so I tend to drive to Newark so I can fly direct. I practiced my speech in the car! Then I parked in the garage for Terminal C (an important point for later – the Newark flights flew out of C).

The upside of it being an afternoon event in Austin on Wednesday is that after having a long lovely night of sleep (10:30 CT-7:30 CT) I could work in my hotel room all morning. Even if the morning did not start that early! I had avocado toast for breakfast, worked until 11:30, went to the green room, met everyone and worked there and then gave my talk to the group in early afternoon. It was an all-women (well, 90%) audience as it was a women’s conference, which is always fun. I feel like my material is useful for all people but it tends to land best with people like me, which is probably true for humanity in general.

I was back at the Austin airport that afternoon, and on a 6:26 p.m. flight back to Newark. We landed early, but unfortunately, we landed in Terminal A. I have no idea why United and Newark do this. Flights to/from various destinations alternate between terminal A and C and they are no where close together. So I had to go wait for a shuttle bus to Terminal C. Given that it was 11 p.m., there was a certain amount of gallows humor among the folks waiting for this bus, though I got to talking with one of the Newark airport employees who was herding us around and she mentioned that she never wanted to fly because people were so grumpy when she was dealing with us at the airport, which I thought was kind of sad. Anyway, I made it to my car at something like 11:20, and onto the highway around 11:30, which put me home at 12:55 a.m.

I was in bed around 1:15 a.m. but my goal of sleeping in this morning was somewhat thwarted by the sheer volume of activity around this house. I made it to about 8:15 a.m. with a lot of in and out. Oh well — there’s more running around later today but for now I’m having my coffee and getting a bit less discombobulated…

Photo: Books available for conference attendees. 

It was a good two weeks. I’m feeling reasonably relaxed before the whirlwind of the next two weeks! A few highlights:

Boardwalk runs. I did some very speedy runs (for me) with my little brother (who came to visit with his wife during the middle weekend) and with my 14-year-old, who is going to be running with the high school cross-country team this fall. I did two long runs, which were complete opposites from each other. On the first Friday, I struggled through 8 miles. It never felt good — I just ground it out. Then a week later I did another run that felt marvelous. Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t even notice mile 6.5-7.5, until I saw where I was. That’s saying something! I went 9.5 miles, and I could have gone farther for sure. Like I still had a pep in my step at 9.5 miles. I don’t know why the runs felt so different, but I hope all future long runs will resemble the second one!

Town walks. I decided to explore a little more of the town, which has incredibly cute Victorian architecture (and unlike my neighborhood at home, sidewalks). I’d take off with my phone and one ear plug in, listening to my daily Bach (St. Matthew’s Passion, and the Magnificat, among other masterpieces), and see the sights. Because the lots are so small, none of the houses are huge, but it’s such a mix of homes that have been renovated and extensively landscaped and those that are a bit more worn. I also find it fascinating that there are homes two blocks from the beach, less than two hours from NYC (really, more like 90 minutes), that have not been bid up/gentrified. A little different from the Hamptons! I also went on several boardwalk walks at night with my 17-year-old.

Days Ice Cream. Of course. I decided to just go for it and get the smallest possible scoop of real ice cream (chocolate peanut butter). I had some reactions to it but by limiting it to every few days I minimized that as much as possible and truly enjoyed this treat.

Other culinary adventures. We had brunch at Toast twice (my big kids are definitely getting into brunch), had lobster rolls from Cousins Maine Lobster twice, and my husband and I did a date night at Klein’s Fish Market on the water, which was lovely and summery. We liked it so much we took our big kids back the next night (while our nanny was visiting to watch the little kids). So I guess we did all of those places twice!

Reading on the porch. The house we rent has a lovely, huge porch. So we ate most of our meals out there and I took advantage of it to sit and read. I made it through several books (though nothing as ambitious as 2017, when I finished Kristin Lavransdatter in the same house).

A Vanderkam family reunion. As mentioned, my little brother and his wife came down from upstate NY to visit. My parents and my other brother and sister-in-law came to visit for the day, as did their three adult children, two with significant others. We grilled steak and lobster. My husband always tries to have way more than enough food and we barely made it with this crew.

The beach with mostly big kids. The 4-year-old can watch videos and be entertained for a while, which means that it is possible to relax even with him around and no other adults. We had this situation in 2019 (the youngest being 4.5), but the older kids weren’t old enough to leave home alone then, and now they are, which means they can choose to go to the beach or not on any given excursion so there’s just less arguing. We take other more adventurous vacations, but the beach is my relaxing one, with a lot of flexibility (my husband and the older two boys wound up going back and forth a couple times since it’s only 90 minutes from home). I really enjoyed it this year! I’m planning to be back in August 2025.

Of course, I kept writing sonnets while at the beach, so here’s one I’m calling “Beach House.”

Some seven years ago I watched the flash
of lightning from this porch, the slant of rain
a gust of wind and, drifting, someone’s trash
turned cartwheels and we tried to entertain

each other — well-worn tales of summers past,
unsure of all the summers yet to come.
But here I sit and feel the wind blow, fast —
another storm. The sand is biting from

the beach — the same — and yet it cannot be
the same for we are changed, the children grow,
the sand and waves change over and we see
that new things catch the eye, and others go,

not sudden, like the lightning, but a drift.
The old reborn as even oceans shift.

I think I succeeded. July was fun and relaxed and I wasn’t even on vacation! I did a lot of work — running a survey for my next book and doing several interviews for it, doubling up on a lot of podcasting so I don’t have to record much in August, giving speeches, etc.

But there were also a lot of family and personal life highlights. July opened with that epic long weekend (basically July 2-7 for me…) during which we helped set off a lot of (safe and sane!) fireworks at a friend’s house, went to the beach, went on a family bike ride (almost all of us) and SHU and her family came over for recordings, swimming, and an adults-only dinner out featuring margaritas.

After that we sent various older boys off to camp at various points. My husband and I went to Longwood Gardens for the beer garden and the flowers. My daughter and I went to see Olivia Rodrigo, which was definitely a summer highlight. I enjoyed getting to know her music and the show was great! (My daughter was an excellent concert companion — I’m so glad she’s willing to hang out with me.) That weekend also featured the York State Fair where, among other things, I got to see the Flying Cortes act, with Commander Alexander getting shot out of a cannon. I was so fascinated that I reached out and was able to do a short phone interview with him this week. I have interviewed a lot of people about their careers and how they spend their time over the years, but never someone who works as a human cannonball. So look for that in my upcoming content.

There have been solo several bike rides, and lots of swims. As I wrote yesterday, we’ve gone in the pool most nights. I went in last night by myself for a while, then chatted with my 17-year-old in the hot tub until it was pitch black dark. (Theoretically the pool lights have been fixed, finally, but I don’t have the app to turn them on yet…) There have been a lot of strawberry acai lemonade refreshers from Starbucks, and evenings where I open the windows.

So there’s been a lot of summer already, and now it’s on to August, which is a full summer month for us (the kids don’t start school until after Labor Day). I just got an ad from Scandic Hotels this morning informing me that summer isn’t over yet. And it’s true! Just like on Sunday the weekend isn’t over yet. Unlike with July there actually will be vacations this month — both a more relaxing one and a more adventurous one. I’m hoping to use the fact that I’m ahead on some of the day-to-day work to open space for thinking deep thoughts. But we shall see.

I hope you have much to look forward to this August!

So instead my general philosophy has been to set some limits on when the screens are available (they go away at night, at least for younger kids — and for everyone during the school year) and then just keep the kids busy doing a lot of non-screen things during the day. This naturally limits the time available.

This is easier said than done in winter, but this summer we’ve finally gotten the pool + hot tub combo working out in the yard. On any given “nice” (not raining) night we are often out there around 7:45/8 p.m. and aren’t back in the house until close to 9. As these are precisely the hours the kids would be zoned out watching YouTube videos, it’s kept at least some of that in check.

Of course, now that the Olympics are on I’m actually *trying* to find more screen time to watch it. Last night the 4-year-old had announced that he didn’t want to go in the pool because he’d had a swim lesson earlier. But around 8:00 it suddenly became urgent that we go, so I relented. He wasn’t the world’s best pool companion (he had a scrape on his foot, so after all that rigamarole to get out there he then didn’t want to have his foot in the water…) but the 12-year-old and 17-year-old sat in the hot tub and talked with me for a while. So that was still nice. I finally managed to watch some gymnastics from 9:45-10:45 p.m. after the little guy was down.

As for the 9-year-old…he’s now at sleep-away camp where he’ll have no screens for two weeks! I’m pretty sure they keep them busy enough that he might not even notice — but I’ll report back when I see him again.

In other news: We got a Polaroid-type camera for a party two years ago, and I hauled it back out to send printed photos to the 9-year-old at camp. He wanted me to hug his stuffed animals at night as though I were hugging him. So each day I take a photo of me hugging a different stuffy and send that in the mail. I sent him with addressed, stamped envelopes, so we’ll see if anything comes back to me…

On Saturday, my husband and I went on a house and garden tour nearby at Stoneleigh — while the gardens are open most days, the house is not, so it was kind of fun to see inside. The upper floors have been mostly turned into archival storage for the Organ Historical Society, so I snapped this photo of various copies of “Organ Building for Amateurs” — what a hobby!

I also spent a lovely hour floating solo in my pool. Normally, pool trips are spent supervising children, so I enjoyed lying on a float for an hour and not being responsible for anyone but myself. Talk about restful!

Then on Sunday morning, my husband and 9-year-old took off for his sleep-away camp. We have not done the traditional cabin-in-the-woods sorts of camps for any of our kids, so this is a new experience, but I have high hopes he will love it. He likes various outdoor/athletic activities. My husband recorded a video of him telling me that it looks really fun. Also: I sent him with a battery-operated fan and a baggie of ex tra D batteries. My husband had a brief moment of angst when he saw every other kid in the cabin had a fan but then he saw our kid pull his fan out and he sent me a text about how I was on top of this [stuff.] Yes. I am.

Meanwhile, the 17-year-old and I volunteered in the 4-year-old’s Sunday School class (we have been doing this a lot this summer as they always need helpers but I have no ability to do it during the school year with choir). Funny story — another parent whose kid was a little anxious about separation told me that in a class a few months ago she had tried to leave by telling her kid that she was going to the bathroom (true, but she didn’t say whether she was coming back…). My 4-year-old, who is wise in the ways of the world, told her kid that “she’s going to be in the bathroom for a long time.”

I have been watching a lot of the Olympics. It’s something like drinking from a fire hose, so I know I won’t see everything I want to (we don’t magically get extra hours during Olympic weeks) but it’s still fun. We’ve been scheming about going to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028. Some kids want to see gymnastics, but given the number of celebrities in the stands in Paris, that suggests it might not be the easiest thing in the world to get tickets. Well, we’ve got four years to figure that out…

In the meantime, this was a good summer weekend in my household (and my 12-year-old daughter may have had her best weekend ever). On Friday night, she and I went downtown to the Wells Fargo Center to see Olivia Rodrigo perform!

Over the past few weeks I have been on a crash course of learning Olivia Rodrigo’s music, since concerts are a lot more fun when you know all the songs. I’m happy to report that by Friday I was able to sing along with almost everything, and we had a grand time. I’d gotten seats with a very clear view of the stage (having learned from the Taylor Swift floor seats experience — which while definitely an experience was not great for actually seeing). Since we had real seats I was also able to sit down when needed. This is good for middle-aged people attending these sorts of shows.

Some highlights: Seeing Olivia ride a “moon” over the crowd, watching her baby/little kid videos during Teenage Dream, and the fact that she had an all-female band.

On Saturday I went for a run and we went for a quick walk in a local nature preserve where they have an art installation up — we were counting how many of the pictures we could find. My daughter went to a sleepover to celebrate a friend’s birthday (see: best weekend ever) so we were down to two kids overnight. We went in the pool/hot tub and got everyone down at a relatively reasonable time.

Sunday after we picked up the 12-year-old at the birthday party (she said they were up until 2 a.m….) we drove to the York State Fair.

On the downside, it was ridiculously hot, so the kids didn’t last as long as my husband and I would have liked (what can I say, we are into these things, and it turns out Lainey Wilson was performing that night so in an ideal world we would have stuck around). But in the time we were there, we managed to see a lot. For instance, we saw the Flying Cortes family perform! They did a number of trapeze related stunts, which then ended with “Commander Alexander” being shot out of a cannon. This is quite the stunt to watch if you ever get a chance. My husband filmed it in slow-mo so we’ve been able to watch it again and again. We also saw a giant butter sculpture (inside, in a refrigerated space), and a giant model train display. The 4-year-old went on a number of kiddie rides while my husband took the 9-year-old over to see the animals. We walked past an axe-throwing contest at one point. Good times.

This week will feature a lot of prep to get the 9-year-old off to sleep-away camp. I guess everything has to be labeled. I’ve never sent a kid to a traditional camp like this before (my older boys went to academic ones) so I welcome any advice!

I’ll write a bit more about that later this week, but over the weekend I decided to go back on X/Twitter. I don’t really post there much anymore, but whenever big news happens, as it certainly did, I do find it interesting to see the variety of sources and voices. I don’t want to spend my life on there, so maybe I’ll log myself out and not save the password or something. I am still figuring that out — how to get the benefits without the time cost.

Anyway, life continues. We sent another kid off to camp this weekend so we are now down to three. My husband and I took the 12-year-old and 9-year-old for a short bike ride on Saturday and it was logistically easier than moving 7 people around for sure. We only needed one car. The 12-year-old and I volunteered for the preschool Sunday school class again. My husband and I went to Longwood Gardens on Friday night and walked around and had dinner in the beer garden. There were pool trips on Saturday and Sunday. There was also a massive push with an online class. Longtime readers may recall that this has been a source of summer stress/anxiety for me in the past — a child signs up for a self-paced online class that nonetheless “counts” on a school transcript. I was under the impression that the child was on pace, and said child was — if that child was not going to be away at camp for multiple weeks. The good news is that you can do a lot in 72 hours. But I wish we’d had this conversation, oh, like 72 hours prior to that.

While school has only been out for a month, in my mind July 15 is about the mid-way point of summer. So I’m doing a quick check in on my Summer Fun List (you can read the original post here).

We went to a baseball game in June, and have also now hit 2 separate beer gardens. There have been two bike rides with kids and several solo ones (it’s pretty easy to stick my own bike in my car with the seats down and then I don’t have to deal with the bike rack). I’ve done a number of early AM runs (about the only time running outside is comfortable in 90 degree weather!) including two early morning runs in Central Park during the NYC trip. I’ve wound up in the hot tub multiple nights per week — we tend to do evening pool trips at least during the week, and I get cold after not that long in the regular pool. There was one beach trip over the July 4th long weekend, but we’ll be back for two weeks in August and will do most of the beach items on the summer fun list then. I have now gone to our local farmers’ market twice.

I’m currently doing an evening hours challenge for Big Time…I probably need to speed up some of my research on this but it’s been mostly OK. I have been writing summer sonnets for sure — I posted the Tiger Lily one last week and I’ll post one at the end of this too.

I have not listened to the summer part of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Probably should get on that.

As for one-on-one time with each kid…. I’ve spent one-on-one time with the 4-year-old just by virtue of him being little. The big kids have all gotten fairly large trips this year. The 9-year-old is a little harder but we shall see.

Other than in NYC the older kids have not gone to any nice restaurants. Well, I took my daughter out for brunch. My husband is supposed to take the two older boys out when they’re back from camp.

I have been outside at night! I don’t think there will be any camping happening this summer. But I have seen the stars.

And I’m enjoying my new summer wardrobe. Basically it is all Nic + Zoe jeans in various crops plus flowy shirts. And my Charix shoes.

If you made a summer fun list, how is it going for you?

Here’s a sonnet called “Elegy on the harbor”:

The fragile warmth of June gives way to heat
that’s thick as clouds, a damp weight still at dawn.
The ebbing tide pulls water in retreat;
the dock now wonders where the boats have gone.

An old wood cabin, dark when it was built,
is faded gray, with weeds beneath the stairs
the porch boards broken, railing at a tilt
inside, a musty bunk bed where the pairs

of children woke and scurried to the hall —
the smell of bacon in the morning haze.
Then once when summer faded into fall
the children stopped returning, and the days

of campfires ended — lingering like a ghost
in smoky mist along this northern coast.