End of Summer check-in

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I've had a lot on my mind, but as always, life has been busy in these parts. It pains me, but I still don't have much time to write during normal circumstances. Free time is, as ever, a rare commodity with two kids in the mix. And being summer and all, most daylight hours are spent out chasing the sun during its brief 3-month guest appearance in our world. The short and magical season where you don't need to wear jackets, plan for rain, and eat hot foods is something to be enjoyed with wild hedonistic abandon. So I lead my merry band of pirates on adventures almost every day, pick berries, play down by the river, hunt for agates, work on gross motor skills (the playground), and pretty much live outdoors all day long. Hammock is both a noun and a verb. It is the beginning of September, and by my reckoning, summer is over. I know what the calendar says, but as an almost perpetual student and teacher, school has always ushered in the end of summer for me. And school has started in some parts of the state, the apples are ripe, and the nights are getting cold. The crickets sound desperate, the yellowjackets are making their last stand, and the blackberries are dried up and long gone. If I were teaching right now, I would be busy memorizing class rosters and making seating charts to solve incipient behavior problems. As it is, nobody is terribly interested in hiring me, so I will forgo such pleasures and enjoy my two-year-old who in many ways is much more enjoyable than a classroom full of teenagers, unless you factor in diaper explosions and inexplicable crying jags. For once in my life I really feel completely satisfied with how I spent my summer, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with the fact that it's not cluttered up with work, doctor's appointments, or other forms of sabotagery. Throw in a vacation to the Oregon Coast, and it's all good.