Summer drawing to a close

It's actually summer vacation that's drawing to a close -- we've got a lot of summer left. It's hot and dry right now, that Augusty feeling, when the sky is sort of white and all the plants are half dead. We haven't mowed our lawn in a month, but it's fine, because the grass has grown barely an inch in that time. We keep getting thunderstorms, so I don't actually have to WATER the lawn, but if I cared about having a lush green lawn I would.

The twins go back to school in 10 days, so we are going to squeeze in a little vacation before then. Normally we go to California to visit family in June, but that didn't work out this year. And normally we go camping with the Twins Club in late July, but we aren't members of the club anymore, so that didn't happen. So this little trip we've got coming up is really the only special thing we will have done for the whole summer break. Without Rocket Boy around we didn't even go on any day trips anywhere. I said I would do it, I promised I'd take the twins somewhere special every weekend -- and I have not done it once. (This is some of the negativity I left out of the last very negative blog post.)

So anyway, we're going to try to make up for that with a trip to the Four Corners (including Rocket Boy). There are so many things that can go wrong with this trip I can hardly bear to think about it. But we've got it all set up, reservations for a different hotel each night, cat-sitters visiting twice a day, the neighbors alerted. I still have a long to-do list left, but I've done a lot already. Most of what's left is things like "Clean bathroom," and yeah, I'll do a little, but I'm not going to scour it. Just enough so that if the cat-sitters go in there they won't be shocked.

I don't have much to share tonight, just wanted to keep on my blogging schedule. I've felt my life becoming more constrained this summer, since Rocket Boy left. I wonder if this is how I will live if I'm on my own someday (I always assume I'll outlive RB, but he's pretty healthy and I'm not, so you never know). I've got my job, which takes up about 4 hours a day. I've got the twins -- making dinner and other meals, reading to them at bedtime, transporting them to camps, playing the occasional game. I've got the house, which takes up a lot of time, even though it's a disaster (but note the clean-ish kitchen in the photo). Shopping, laundry. I've got the cats and all their meals and litter boxes. Time for myself is usually spent reading or doing puzzles. Once in a while I get a movie from the library. I almost never watch TV. I spend some time messing around on the computer. But that's about it. It's a little life. I feel too young to have such a little life, but this is how things are right now.

I'm up to 71 books for the year so far, so it looks like I'm going to hit 100 (the goal was 52). Some of the most interesting reading I've been doing has been for the Classics Challenge. I read two books this summer that I had been meaning to read basically my whole life (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne) and now I don't have to wish I'd read them anymore -- they are done. The Scarlet Letter was nothing like I thought it would be -- I counted it as my "Classic Tragic Novel" but it's very mildly tragic, more funny than anything. And Huck Finn has entered my consciousness and I think about him quite often, especially since he journeyed through Missouri and that's where Rocket Boy lives now. I'm currently reading a "Classic from a Place You've Lived," The Valley of the Moon by Jack London, and now that's got me thinking about it constantly. Among other things, it shows (unintentionally) how/why some people become white supremacists.

Anyway, I guess I'll stop here and get ready for bed -- a lot to do tomorrow and the rest of the week. Wish us luck on our travels. Next time I blog the twins may be back in school. Middle school. So amazing.