Want

So as I sit here with my monitor totally covered with bugs -- not sure how they got in, but there are like 20 of them all over the screen -- I am listening to the rain fall and I am pretty convinced that I am not happy about the end of summer.

I love summer.

I always have.

Now I don't need a lot of excuses to be irresponsible and care free, but summer really brings out those qualities in me in a big way. And I embrace them, and more often than not I bring my children along for the ride. It is very important to me to instill in them a sense of eking out all the oomph out of summer. Stay up late, eat ice cream instead of dinner, swim when you are hot and pack a huge cooler of food and drink and just sit on a dock for hours. And hours.

Earlier in the week we went to the ocean. I am an ocean girl, pure and simple. If asked would I like to live on the ocean or on the lake, I would scream out ocean and head in that direction. If I was then told that they were just kidding and I had to live on a lake, I would say you suck and go to the lake and deal. But I wouldn't be happy.

(I must say that writing with a ton of bugs on your screens is weird)

Anyway, my kids go to private school so they are not put through the indignation of having to start before Labor day. And this of course works for me because I abhor the end of summer. So anything that keeps it going -- say to the tune of thousands of dollars -- then I am in! This last week was particularly HOT ... and I must admit it is difficult for me not to complain about that. While I do so love summer, I do not particularly enjoy sweating while employed in the strenuous activity of sitting still.

But there is still that "back to school" feel in the air and it is unavoidable to pretend otherwise. And while I do enjoy the predictability of a schedule after living with no schedule at all, it is only a few months before I am chafing at the constraints of having my day compartmentalized in hours of this, this and that. I am, however, looking forward to alone time -- to having the house to myself, myself to myself and many hours stretching out with just myself! I can tell, as the summer draws to a close, that I am no longer interested in socializing ... This is the second hardest change of seasons for me. The first is fall changing to winter ... that is brutal and generally requires a few days of real-to-goodness depression. This one isn't quite as bad because fall really is a beautiful time of year, and a wonderful opportunity to hike in weather that doesn't want to kill you (as this oppressive hot weather has been known to try!) But I still have to wrestle with the thought of losing my favorite season of all.

I am excited to have huge chunks of hours to devote to finishing my book (and not having that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that if I don't go out and enjoy the sunshine and summer day soon it will all be gone and I will rue the fact that I didn't!) I still want another fabulous beach day, and definitely at least one more night on the boat with a blanket of stars covering us and the sounds of the loons filling the air. I want. I want. I want!