And So It Was...

It seems to just now be heating up in earnest in my part of California...99 degrees today, probably a few degrees hotter by the weekend. Ah, but it's a dry heat. And yet, here is my farewell to summer.

I have a lot to say. SO MUCH to say about what's been going on in my head the last couple of weeks or so. Tectonic shifts are in store, synchronicity and it's markers are popping up like crabgrass all around me. It feels exciting, and scary, but at least it feels like something, and that's a lot.

But I would feel amiss if I didn't first say an official good-bye to the summer of '09. Yes, summer still has about a month of livin' to do, but with school back in session and Oriental Trading sending me Halloween party catalogs in the mail, it's hard not to feel like true summer is over. It was an okay summer -- camping and our wonderful trip to Big Sur, water parks and pool play and lots of lazy mornings, lounging in our pj's until noon.

Still. Still, I wanted more from this summer, not the least of which was a trip to one of our Southern California beaches. The beaches of north San Diego county are only about an hour away, and yet we never once made it to the beach. I feel horrible about this, and I know it's not too late to remedy it, but aaargh. We all have our ambitions, our mental images of what something should be, and summer doesn't feel complete yet, for me. I had also hoped for more board games, more impromptu trips for cheap ice cream cones from the Rite Aid counter. It was hard for me to be spontaneous, this summer.

The picture above was taken at Pfieffer Beach in Big Sur (just like my sandy toes post). Those two screamed at the water and the waves as though they were landlocked Midwestern children who had never seen the ocean. Nor-Cal beaches are not "true" Beach Boys/surfin'/Coppertone kinds of beaches, though. The coast is rocky, the water is colder, the waves choppier. We need a trip to the shore, before this summer is truly through.

Summertime Toes

So! I thought I was remiss in only having a post or two in July -- and come to find that I didn't write a single post for the past month. Oops.

Back when I last posted, I said the weather was still a bit unseasonable and cool -- not at all the case now, in the first week of August. We definitely have our chlorine and pool-scented skin days upon us now.

So here was a bit of July..
On the 11th, you would've found me here:
Sitting poolside with my sister at our home association's public pool. We've gone to the pool more this summer than in previous years -- and that said, we've still gone less than a dozen times, so far. Lily has learned to swim pretty well though, and that has been a very life-changing thing, in terms of the hassle and stress of making sure that my two children won't drown on my watch. Now I just have to get Tucker to the same level (next year?), and I'll be one of those enviable women I've often gazed upon, sitting alone with a magazine or book in the shade while the kids frolic in the deep end.

So that was July 11th, and then just a few days later, on July 13, I was here:
at Pfieffer Beach in Big Sur. Wow, that was a great trip. So great, I guess, that I haven't much felt like recounting it here. Suffice to say that it was good, and much needed, to train my eyes out into the great expanse of the sea and sky and landscape of the big and gorgeous world. Now I'm back home, and my eyes have been re-focused once again onto the small scale: the minutia of packed snacks and scraped knees, of saying farewell to Lily's first pet, a betta fish named Alexa who was well-loved (if frail from the get-go), of trading babysitting dates with friends and cooking meals for another friend with a newborn. Good things, important things in my life and neighborhood, but....AH.

Those things are not this, either, are they?

No. So, here we are, here I am, it's the first week of August, less than 2 weeks to go before summer break is over, and as Perry once sang, the summertime rolls. But truly, I am more in the same mood of the great Keith, circa Exile on Main Street:The sunshine bores the daylights outta me...