The Summer of Too Much

“That was terrible, but I finally learned my lesson.”

Narrator: “He didn’t.”

At the end of the school year, all of my children’s sports were suddenly and completely over. I’ve never been so happy in my life. Champagne may or may not have been served. Not to the kids, of course. It was their turn to sit there bored and watch me be happy. The end of school and sports meant they’d be home with me even more, but I was okay with that tradeoff. I’ve finally realized it’s easier to deal with them trapped together in the house than it is to deal with them trapped together in a car on the way to every practice and game in the greater metropolitan area. At home, at least I can send them outside. That’s not really an option in a moving vehicle. With our schedule open, I felt like I could finally breathe. But then I looked at the calendar and gasped so hard I nearly choked on air. All of my weekends were booked solid. And the horrible villain who filled them up was none other than me.

This is, without question, the busiest summer of my life. I took all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t during the school year and squeezed them into June, July, and the first weekend of August. (Summer break here is only about two months since the schools want the kids back for some reason. Those poor teachers.) Individually, each one of these weekend activities sounds awesome. Collectively, they just make me want to take a nap. They say travel is only glamorous in retrospect. The same is true of fun. It sounds wonderful after the fact, but while you’re actually trying to have it, it’s a lot of work. I didn’t consider any of this when I was proactively turning all of my “someday” plans into “this summer” plans. Now, those are suddenly “this weekend” plans, and I’m freaking out. If there’s anyone who’s repeatedly caught off guard by the steady passage of time, it’s me.

The first big event was Winston and Virginia’s wedding reception, which I talked about in the last newsletter. The pandemic delayed it by two years, so I made sure to squeeze two years worth of enjoyment into the weekend. At my current age, that means I now need to sleep for two months. In your thirties, hangovers are measured not in days but in seasons. Any other year, that would have been enough activity for the entire summer—if not the year—and I could have stayed home until Christmas without feeling any guilt. This year, it was just the warmup. I’ve made a terrible mistake.

Next, there’s the race. I can say “the” because, at this point in my running career, I only do one a year. I used to pick this particular race because there was unlimited free beer afterwards. Now that I don’t drink beer, I mostly pick this one because it’s slightly less terrible than all the other options. That’s adulthood in a nutshell. [Last year], I fell in mud and was forced to slowly limp the last two miles. I was in so much pain, I thought I’d broken my leg. It turns out I was just a wimp with a bad bruise. This year, I’m going back, not to prove myself, but to pass on the suffering to the next generation. For the first time ever, my twelve-year-old, Betsy, is doing the race with me.