Good Old Summer Days

I remember the good old summer days of youth. School ended and the days were longer, and filled with carefree nothingness. We looked so forward to those longer days and all that freedom to do pretty much nothing at all. Friends spent the night, we spent the night somewhere and families actually took vacations, had cookouts,family reunions, and we all just basked in the enjoyment of being lazy for days and weeks. Ah, to have a summer like that again!!

Now my summer is filled with sports practices, teenage music blasting in my head hours after they have actually turned the music off, cleaning up after armies of teenagers, and it seems someone is spending the night at my house every night! Seriously not one night goes by that one child or more doesn't say " I have a question, can so and so stay the night?". There are no lazy carefree days filled with nothingness in my summer. I can't even really decide why they ever called it things like summer vacation, or summer break. I can't find five minutes to be lazy and do nothing. Cookouts are a lot of work, where did we ever get the idea that cookouts were the way to go. You have to shop, decide what to cook, clean the grill, wait for ever for the grill to heat up, and then can you believe you actually still have to prepare food after all, so you have something to eat with whatever you are cooking out!! I mean I don't remember that from my earlier summers. I had the crazy idea that while we kids loafed around in our nothingness every one did, with the exception of the dad who had to go to work.

Summer around here consists of five kids with five various sets of friends who all think our house is just the coolest place to be all day and apparently every night as well. I wonder sometimes if they really have homes at all. Our house seems to be the local camp or something, and my kitchen seems to be open to the public. I didn't realize we even owned as many dishes as I find in my kitchen sink at any given moment throught out the day. I barely get them dry before they are again dirty in the sink. I have this wonderful modern device called a dishwasher, but apparently you have to be over 30 to put dirty dishes in it, as no one here during summer seems to know how.

I have decided it might be a really good idea to put in a revolving door before summer rolls around again, as it seems ours is constantly being opened and closed. They will walk outside, turn around come back in, just to walk out and back in again in five minutes. They stand there with the door half open and declare it is hot today! Well no kidding, it is hot every day, it is summer. I guess they have some strange idea that if they wait five minutes and go out again it might somehow be cooler, but surprise still hot...let's try again in a few minutes!! And so it goes with the door. Know what else I don't remember from my lazy summers of the past, electric costs A LOT!!

Then what is up with youth sports?? I mean seriously we practice football all summer long, three to five nights a week depending on the cooperativeness of the weather. Those wonderful longer days are spent sweating at a field all so we can give our kids the great opportunity of team sports!! WOW! What a great idea that is. Of course it has it's advantages too... it means we have to eat dinner by 4:30 so those cookouts are out of the question. However it adds to the restaurant effect in the kitchen since I make sure all the dinner dishes and such are done before we leave, that way they are all clean for round two after we get home.

I still have one luxury of my earleir summers though. Remember we got to stay up late?? Well I still get too, that way after all are showered and all have eaten their second course of dinner, and I get yet round 250 of the dishes dealt with, then I get to take a shower and if I am very lucky there may be a few trickles of hot water left, I might actually pick up a bottle of shampoo that isn't empty and once in the while there is actually still a full size towel left in the cabinet to dry off with, if not I have learned that hand towels work too. But the best part is I still get to stay up late!! There are times when it is almost time to get up by the time I get to sleep.

Then there is morning while they are all sleeping in late, and I am up early. I stumble to the kitchen to discover I can't find the sink!! Seems it is a requirement in my house for each operson to use four or more glasses and various other dishes after I have gone to sleep as there is some sort of rule that mom must wake up to sinks full of dishes! And did you know that lightning bugs must come in our homes at night and eat all our food, because in my house food is eaten in the middle of the night by no one here and they also leave dishes for you.

But soon summer will end, things will slowly return to a more normal state, and just as I begin to get comfortable with that......it will be winter break!!