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.

This allowed for a natural experiment. What would change in my life if I didn’t put social media back on my phone?

I have not looked at Instagram or Facebook since June 3rd. I decided to go back on Twitter (mostly in a lurking capacity) this past weekend because it really is a good source for breaking news.

(I occasionally look at LinkedIn, and my business is still posting content there, but I don’t think anyone views LinkedIn as being an addictive sort of social media.)

So, what did change in my life? Well, my screen time tallies did not go down. My new iPhone is shinier and faster than my last one! What can I say — it’s more fun to use.

I quickly realized that I have a strong desire to scroll through something. In the absence of social media, this wound up being comments at the New York Times and on blogs. In the absence of Instagram and Facebook, I wound up looking through my own old photos a lot (which Apple assists with — its slideshow widget is quite good). I did more online shopping. Seriously. I spent a lot of time scrolling at Amazon, Nic + Zoe, NYDJ, Kut from the Kloth, etc.

Now, there is an argument to be made that the comments on blogs and the New York Times are more wholesome than those on Twitter, though I’m not sure that’s true. My own photos are less problematic than social media ones in terms of comparison, though again, not entirely. I wish I had appreciated how un-wrinkly I was in 2016 at the time. Shopping is…shopping.

So where does this leave us? Basically, reminding me that most of us waste some amount of time. The human desire to avoid boredom during time that is not otherwise spoken for is strong. Getting off social media mostly just changed how I wasted time. I don’t have a huge desire to get back on Insta/FB right now, and I may sign out of Twitter if the news calms down (if only) but I have not become massively more productive, much as I might wish that were true. Oh well!

In other news: Here’s a round-up of this week’s content!

Over at Vanderhacks I wrote about how we should “Choose how much news to consume,” perhaps “Take a spending pause” during the Prime day sales, and behind the paywall I wrote about how “Nothing is fun for the whole family” — but there are some things you can do to have adventures with a varied crew. If you’d like a daily dose of life strategies, please consider a free or paid subscription!

In the Before Breakfast podcast I talked about how “Magic happens in the mushy middle” and that “You can go a long way in a weekend.” Someone wrote me that she listened to that episode and booked a weekend away — excellent.

Over at the Best of Both Worlds Patreon community site, we’ve been covering advice for parents sending kids to sleep-away camp for the first time. This week’s episode was a mailbag one (recorded together in person!). Please give it a listen, and as always we welcome ratings and reviews.

(I did a study in which 150 people learned and implemented these rules over nine weeks, and their levels of time satisfaction did rise by statistically significant amounts!)

Anyway, in anticipation of the book, I’m going to start doing the occasional Tranquility by Tuesday (TBT) Scorecard here on the blog. I track my time, so I can look back on a week and see…how did I do? How many rules did I follow? What was the effect on my life?

My first rule is to “Give yourself a bedtime.” Since I have to wake up at 6:30 a.m. on weekday mornings (for kid getting ready/shuttling) and I need 7.4 hours of sleep/day, my bedtime has become 11 p.m. It used to be earlier, but in the new house the baby and I are both sleeping better…sometimes it helps to be a little farther away…. Over the past week (April 18-24), I was in my bedroom by 11 every night, and asleep at 11 every weekday night. I did stay up until 11:15 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night (horrors!). As a result of observing my bedtime, I was up a few minutes before my alarm 5 out of 7 days last week (the alarm was set for 7:30 on Sat/Sun and I was up before then, plus three of the weekdays I was up closer to 6:15). I really hate being sleep deprived and so I’ve become pretty fundamentalist about this rule, though I should note that getting in bed by 11 p.m. isn’t that challenging. We’ve also made some family choices (like driving the high schooler to school) so no one has to get up before 6:30.

My second rule is to “Plan on Fridays.” I plan my upcoming weeks on Fridays no matter what (well, unless I plan on Thursdays because I’m gone on Friday or something…), so I anticipate this being a boring entry in my scorecards…

Next up is “Move by 3 p.m.” This means to get some form of physical activity before 3 p.m. each day. I went for walks outside M, T, W, and F, and did a morning run on Saturday. On Sunday the time that worked for a run was 5 p.m. Thursday I did not do any particular physical activity. My life in general tends to feature a lot of running around, but I’m sure I can aim for 7 days in the future.

Rule #4 is “Three times a week is a habit.” Things don’t have to happen daily to count in our lives. For many fun/meaningful things, three times a week can make something part of our identities. In general these days I’m aiming to run three times a week, though I only did twice last week — I’m dealing with some IT band issues and so I had taken 2 weeks off of running. I would like to practice the piano three times a week, and I did that twice last week. I could put singing in this category, though that’s structurally built in twice (rehearsal + church service). I suppose I could combine piano + singing and pat myself on the back for doing music four times per week, but I actually want to aim to do each of those three times (adding in a singing practice session and another piano one) so that’s a goal for the future.

Rule #5 is to “Create a back-up slot.” I tend to leave Fridays as open as possible in order to use this time as a back-up slot for anything important. I didn’t really wind up needing it though I did wind up having a back-up slot for a kid activity. The 7-year-old was supposed to go to karate on Tuesday and somehow that did not happen. I took him on Thursday instead, so it was good that Thursday was fairly light for activities.

Rule #6 is “One big adventure, one little adventure.” This week’s big adventure was a Saturday trip to Hawk Mountain. (For 6/7 of us — the middle schooler was on a Boy Scout backpacking trip.) I saw that they were showing documentaries in their outdoor amphitheater so we went up in the afternoon to do a 1-hour hike, watched the documentary (well, some of it…some of the little ones had to go off and play in the woods) and then we ate at Olive Garden on the drive back toward home. My little adventure could be one of a few things — I went for a short walk on Friday at Stoneleigh, a historic grounds/garden a few miles from my house. It’s open to the public and free, but it always takes an extra nudge to do something like that. I put it on the list for the week and did it! But I could also have chosen the happy hour I went to Wednesday night – I hadn’t done something like that in a while so it was a different sort of adventure.

Rule #7 is “Take one night for you.” My weekly choir practice fits this nicely. Whatever is happening with work or with the family on Thursday, it’s nice to know that in the evening I will be focusing on something else entirely. It’s like a mental cleanse.

Rule #8 is “Batch the little things.” I make a “Friday punch list” during the week of things that are not terribly important but do need to get done. So on Friday I was a busy bee hanging curtains, repairing a mug, mailing checks and change-of-address notes, paying for field trips online, filling out forms for a fundraiser, etc. It doesn’t take that long, and it’s nice to not have these things cluttering up my mental landscape the rest of the week.

Finally, rule #9 is “Effortful before effortless.” The idea is to do some form of “effortful” leisure (reading, hobbies, etc.) before screen time. And here I pretty much failed miserably. What can I say. I’m having trouble finding books I want to read right now on my Kindle app in small bits of time. On one level my reading life looks really good this year, as I’m reading through all the works of Shakespeare. I’m currently on Act IV of Hamlet. But that takes 10-15 minutes at the pace I am reading, and then there are a lot of spots to fill during the day. I did listen to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring in the car, so I guess that was something.

Anyway, stay tuned for more of these over the next few months!

Then…I got a call yesterday from the district letting me know that they’ve decided to cancel all the in-person summer school classes. (Not for Covid reasons — they are just undersubscribed.) He’s taking a virtual health class to fulfill that requirement but I wanted him to have some structure, so I don’t think doing two virtual classes is the answer. But this basically means, for the structured part of his summer, that we’re back to square one.

So…regrouping. I’m hoping he can do a CIT stint at one of the camps where another child is going for a bit. And he wants to do a creative writing camp if I can find that (I asked him to look too). And maybe tennis lessons twice per week. I guess that plus the virtual class should mostly fill the time but we shall see. I wish I had a better sense of the “good” creative writing camps but I honestly don’t. He is not bullish on going away to camp, which is interesting to me, since the summer after my 9th grade year I was thrilled to be going, for the third year, to a 3-week summer camp at Northwestern University (I studied Modern World Literature that summer…).

Plans do not always stay planned. That’s life of course but the more moving pieces there are, the more complicated changing one thing becomes. I guess the upside is theoretically we could switch the vacation week to the July 4 week (when no one else will be in camp) but sometimes it’s better to just stick with something once it’s decided.

How is your summer planning going?

Photo: Random summer shot

Socializing with other adults can be challenging with little kids, but this concept seemed to work really well. They came over around 4 p.m. — the point on a weekend day when everyone is starting to go crazy and needs some change in direction. They brought appetizers, which was really nice. We had some snacks, then took the little ones up to the play room. They could play there while the adults all had some craft beers from the recent “Beer of the Month” shipment my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. Peach beer sounds a little strange, but it grows on you! Since both families had toddlers, and we were in the room with them, none of the adults had to skip out on participation to chase after the kids (well, there were a few escapes but nothing major).

Then I ordered pizza and salads from a local place. Thus no one had to cook, and the kids were all happy with the selection. Because the toddlers needed to go to bed, the evening was over by about 7 p.m.

Filling the hours of 4-7 p.m. on a weekend pleasantly — when one has toddlers — is no small thing. So perhaps we will try to repeat this model! My toddler was sufficiently tired out that he slept from 9 p.m. to 7:30 am., which counts as good over here.

In other news: The dining room chandelier I bought for the new house came in a giant box, which is filled with packing peanuts. The box had been sitting there for a few weeks since the chandelier got installed (I lost intensity with unpacking and getting rid of garbage) but the three younger kids just discovered it and have been having a ball with it. They call it the “ball pit” and keep diving in and covering each other in the packing peanuts. Good times.

We went to the Franklin Institute’s Harry Potter exhibit on Sunday. It was fun to see the costumes, and the Great Hall, though I felt like you really needed to have read the books/seen the films to get much enjoyment out of it. I mean, that makes sense, but since my 7-year-old has not done all those things yet, he was not terribly happy during the experience. Oh well. We managed to escape from the gift store, and spent far less cash on pretzels from a street vendor and everyone was OK.

I am reading King John in my Shakespeare reading project. This apparently has the distinction of being one of Shakespeare’s least staged plays.

I ran 6 swift-for-me miles on Saturday morning. And I am about 60 percent of the way through Malibu Rising, so it looks like I’ll probably finish this week. Good, since the book is due back to the library on Friday…

Photo: The “ball pit”

This past Saturday was the only day that was going to work. Cherry blossom experts predicted the peak would be March 22-25. Next weekend is more problematic. Sunday tends to be church and activities, plus it was a lot chillier. So I was watching the bloomcam that’s on the top of the DC Mandarin Oriental like a fiend, seeing whether the blossoms would be out. A handful of 70 degree days last week meant that many were!

So we decided to go. It was not the world’s easiest trip. We hit traffic and the toddler screamed for quite a while because he was having trouble going down for a nap in his carseat (and, it turns out, may have been getting sick — he vomited all over me and him on Sunday late afternoon. Yikes…). We stopped at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum first, and while it was fun to see the rockets, half the museum was closed for renovations. The 7-year-old just could not stop complaining about the walk down to the Tidal Basin and the 2-year-old had to be carried much of the way (he doesn’t do well in the stroller). On the way home our van’s tire air indicator started blinking alarmingly, and so we had to stop at a gas station and use the air machine.

But the blossoms were indeed beautiful! Even if they weren’t quite at peak puffy gorgeousness yet, a great many were out, and because we were a day or two early the crowds weren’t too intense. I’m glad we went — remembering self and all that.

Anyway, the point of this post: Obviously this trip had to be planned into our family’s weekend schedule. Very few things can ever happen spur of the moment — hence my stalking of the bloom cam. With five kids and their stuff, we always have activities or friend get togethers that need to be built into the model. We needed a day where we had open space within a few days of the peak forecast. We had a limited window to get down to DC after the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby in the AM and before the Air & Space museum closed. Much of my life has to be meticulously planned to hit windows like this.

Theoretically, planning seems like it would be in opposition to spontaneity. There is planning things out, and then there is being open to what comes. These are different personality types! There are those of us who like to structure things, and those of us who dwell in possibility, or however you want to characterize it.

But I think the two tend to work hand in hand. We have spontaneous fun experiences because we have plans. For instance, because I planned the DC trip, with two anchors in it (Air & Space museum + cherry blossoms) we were there on the Mall, where a lot more interesting stuff happens than at our house. We all got to pick snacks from the dozens of food trucks lined up near the Smithsonian museums. It’s always an adventure to be able to pick freely between snow cones, Mexican food, falafels, and so forth! Then we walked past an agricultural exhibit and got to stop and see some really tricked out tractors and other farm machinery. This was incredibly exciting for certain members of the family (the toddler called one combine harvester a lawn mower, which I guess is true in a way…). We had no idea that would be there but it was certainly a bonus.

Now I suppose it would have been possible to plan a DC trip that didn’t allow for any spontaneity, but that’s not my style. (An upside of driving is we had the flexibility to leave when we wanted). Or perhaps seven people would have just wound up spontaneously somewhere fascinating without any planning whatsoever, though that tends not to happen in my life. Maybe in someone’s? It’s probably more possible if there’s only one of you.

In my case, having a reasonably thought through plan for the weekend increases the chances that we can do stuff other than kid sports and lessons. When we do our planned adventures, we tend to experience some spontaneous fun along the way that helps keep life interesting. So I tend to think the two aren’t really in opposition. They can work together to create memories. 

In other news: This weekend’s baking project was vegan banana chocolate chip muffins. They turned out pretty well!

I flew down here yesterday and am meeting up with Sarah to talk all things Best of Both Worlds and have some fun too. We’ve already done champagne on the balcony, dinner out, a morning run on the beach (this pic below is taken post-run and is perhaps not the most flattering ever of me but whatever), brunch, and shoe shopping (not something either of us do a lot of but I had a total shoe emergency with sandals I hadn’t worn in a year). We’re about to do some podcast recording and then an afternoon spa trip.

In other happy news, my husband and I officially sold our other house on Monday — all closed and everything — so we are now at one residence. Phew.

One of the fun parts of doing an only-adults trip is that you can make completely different choices than you would with kids. Last night we decided to sit at the bar for the hour long wait for a table at a restaurant. An hour-long wait would have been torture with kids but without them, hey! It’s good to get a little break from time to time.

The weekend was reasonably full but still featured some downtime. As in, people zoned out on screens for plenty of hours. Gobs of hours.

Yet still, everyone got to do something not-on-a-personal-device that they enjoyed. My husband and the 14-year-old went to see Batman (that is a screen, to be sure, but is a somewhat different experience). My husband went to the gym and went skiing with the 7-year-old, who also got to go to a birthday party. The 12-year-old did tech crew for 3 productions of his musical and went to the cast party. My daughter went to see the 12-year-old’s show twice (she likes musicals!). She had been somewhat reluctant about going to the Brandywine River Museum of Art to see the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit, and to Longwood Gardens for the orchids, but she decided to go with me (and the toddler) and she had a really good time. Plus she said she enjoyed the Philadelphia Auto Show, which we all went to on Sunday, and the stop at Rita’s after. Yep, Rita’s Water Ice is now open for the season! Plus it was 65 degrees. I played outside with the toddler for an hour or so late Sunday afternoon and it really felt like spring. And next weekend we’ll get an hour more of light into the evening!

There were plenty of frustrations as well. It is somewhat insane how much children can fight in a car. Anything can and will become a weapon. The 7-year-old wanders off in crowded places like the Auto Show with a confidence I wish I could copy. I guess he just assumes someone will follow? Also, the 2-year-old is in a fun phase when he doesn’t want his diaper changed. It’s like, trust me child, I don’t really want to change it either, so it’s not helping matters to kick me simultaneously. Of course, he has his sweet moments. I’m still nursing and he reported to me the other night that “I like mommy milk. It’s beautiful.” Then he gave me a little motivational pat.

Now on to figure out which muffins to make…

Photo: From the Wayne Thiebaud exhibit. Now that I have an oven I could bake such pies…

I ran the Frostbite 5-miler, and while my time was not spectacular (10:57 min/miles) it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was in the middle. I also went (by myself!) to a chamber orchestra concert in downtown Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon. Some other combinations of people went to a movie on Friday night. We had some friends over at one point, there was night skiing, the 14-year-old got to meet up with friends at the mall AND he cashed in his Christmas present to go see Wicked in NYC. He and I got tickets, and then my husband and two other older children came in to go see the American Museum of Natural History. We ate lunch at the Carnegie Diner and did a lot of reminiscing as we walked through Central Park. Wicked was pretty fun — a good Broadway musical to bring kids to. I forget how close the city is (1 hour and 50 minutes with no traffic, which there really wasn’t on the way there). Now that some of the kids are older we should probably go in more often.

But perhaps not with the toddler. My most vivid memory of the weekend may be taking my 2-year-old to the grocery store on Saturday. I have five kids, so I’ve had a reasonable number of grocery-store-with-toddler experiences, but this one was one for the books. I’m talking throwing bottles of mustard off the shelves, lying down in the middle of the aisle and screaming. Wow! I just had to laugh because it was so ridiculous.

Photo: From lunch at the Carnegie Diner & Cafe

My husband took the big kids skiing later Saturday. They only made it through three runs because it was cold — guess that wind chill factor is on to something — but we have a season pass to a local mountain so it was OK. I am trying not to think too hard about the fact that it took longer for me to corral everyone’s ski things and make sure they were in them than they probably spent skiing.

I took some of the children ice skating at an outdoor rink on Sunday in near perfect sunny 25 degree weather, and went sledding with the 7-year-old, thus crossing another item off the Winter Fun List. This was fun for me, but he was sitting in front of me on the sled, meaning he was the shield for flying powder and took some in the face on our fourth run. This ended the fun for him, but he cheered me on as I did two more runs.

I do not love winter. I have found myself thinking, lately, that in 2 months the flowers will be budding. Winter cannot last forever. But I also do not like the idea of wishing time away, and so I am trying to enjoy those things that are only possible in winter. A snowy weekend provides an opportunity to experience several of those things — and some stunning snowy sunsets and fires in the fireplace too.