Things I Love About Summer: Part 5

It really has been a pretty good summer even with how busy it has been.  I have been able to enjoy some of the things that make summer what it is.  Quick trips are one thing I love about summer.  Over the 4th of July weekend, I was able to make a trip to see my mom in Indiana.  She moved there several years ago to be closer to my sister and moved into a complex a step above assisted living. 

I try to see her two or three times a year, wishing it could be more as we are thankful to still have her with us, but a few times is better than none.   

I got to help her pick up her apartment a little, go through some papers, visit with some other residents, and have dinner together.  We were going to watch fireworks on T.V., but we got so hung up in conversation that we both forgot to turn the television on.  She asked me a question that really threw me for a loop, but it was a good reflection for me. She asked me what I want to accomplish in this stage of life.  This question forced me to sit back and think.  My gut response was just to make it through each day.  I see retirement in the near future, like the light is just now shining at the end of the tunnel, but, yeah, it is still a trip to get there.  

After some nervous laughter and thinking, my best answer is to help my daughters through the next steps in their lives.  They will both be freshmen this fall, one in college and one in high school.  I have spent a lot of time this summer preparing myself for this change, but my mom's question kind of changed my perspective.  

I don't get this kind of visit any other time of year, because there is the worry of hurrying back to work. 
Or, something about the short days of winter just doesn't encourage sitting back and taking time.  

Part of the joy of small summer trips like this is the drive.  It was a seriously hot and humid set of days, so there were a lot of trucks with blown-out tires from the searing hot pavement.  This image doesn't exactly summon up feelings of summer relaxation, but the drive on a hot, sunny summer day with blue skies and puffy white clouds do shape together a relaxing day.  I had time to reflect on my time with my mom and look forward to what is ahead.  There aren't many times in the year where I allow myself to relax like summertime, which is why quick summer trips are one of the things I love about summer.  

Things I Love About Summer Part 4

Summer Reading!!  Doesn't that bring back memories of being a kid and going to the public library at the beginning of the summer to sign up for summer reading?  That was always fun to get rewards for reading books in the summer.  I wasn't the best at reading a ton or getting many prizes, but the effort of opening a book on a rainy summer afternoon wasn't the worst thing in the world.  

When I made my way into junior high the motivation for reading waned a bit as I got my first job working at the local swimming pool hocking pop corn, Ding Dongs and soda in the concession stand.  But then, a neighbor introduced me to the X-Men and The Hobbit.  This was summer reading where the prize wasn't something a librarian gave me, the prize was imagination and discovering characters I could get behind.  In high school, summer reading got me through the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.  

Today, summer allows me the time to read books that aren't necessarily just for work.  Yes, I have a summer reading group with students that meets three times through the summer to discuss three books we have read.  Those books are a hit and miss on stories that I like, but the discussion with the kids are always fun and insightful.  Many times they convince me that I shouldn't have liked the book that I liked, and that I should have liked the books that I didn't.  I can never win.  

Then I get to the books that I really want to read.  Most of them fall into a few categories that I will never tire reading: Star Wars, fantasy (Forgotten Realms, DragonLance), graphic novels and comics.  I save the non-fiction for the school year when it feels a little more, scholarly.  

This summer I have continued my read-through of the X-Factor comic run of the 1990s.  I keep up-to-date with my current comics both in print and digital.  I finally started reading the classic X-Wing series from the 1990s.  I found Rogue Squadron by Michael Stackpole to be as exciting as watching the trench run through the Death Star.  What a great book!  I blew through it as I found it hard to put down.  

I am now, on July 19, between books and struggling to choose.  I am in the mood for fantasy but the lure of book 2 of X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble is really strong.  So, as I decide, I consume comics and graphic novels.  

This is one of the things I love about summer.  I get to read and read and read, take some time between books to decide what is next, and enjoy the real prize of great stories and good relaxation.  

Things I Love About Summer: Part 3

I am not one to sleep deep into the morning like 10:00 or 11:00, but sometimes it sounds really nice.  Often when getting up for work, I just wish I could go back to bed.  That is one of the things I love about summer, sleeping in or at least the idea that I could. 

There is something absolutely wonderful about the idea that, if I wanted to, I could just keep hitting
snooze and not get up on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or even Friday.  I love that about summer.  Or, what's better, not even setting an alarm at all.  

As mentioned above, I don't typically sleep much past 6:00 am on most days (even summer), but recently I slept deep into a morning to where I debated if I should just hold off about 30 minutes and have lunch instead of breakfast.  I must say, when I have a day like that, it isn't as much fun as I think.  Yeah, I feel more rested, but the guilt and thought that I lost half a day normally tortures my mind that it doesn't end up feeling great.  I have to wonder if other people (adults) feel that way.  

I know my children don't!!  They have no problem on summer break or weekends for that matter sleeping in until noon.  Actually, I can't complain, I remember doing that myself.  I was notorious for staying up late in my bedroom as a teenager making Dungeons and Dragons characters and dreaming of their heroics if I actually got to play them in the game.  I know, that sounds weird, but if you play the game, you know that for some people, making the characters is a large part of the fun.  I made so many characters late at night that while I played the game all the time with friends, there was no way most of those characters would ever see a dice roll for them.  But, I would stay up to the wee hours of the night doing that or reading a book (most of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was read either in a canoe or in the overnight hours), and I would easily sleep until noon.  

Noon was actually an important wake-up time during my teen years, because I would start work at 12:45 pm at the town swimming pool as a concession stand worker and later as a lifeguard.  On days I didn't work, it was not an uncommon occurrence that my mom would let my friends in the house to wake me up around 10:00 am to go to lunch or garage sale shopping or whatever else it was kids did in the morning in the summer during the decade of the 1980s.  

Even thought sleeping in isn't something I often do and even thought when I do it is often followed by a certain guilt or FOMO, just the thought that I could if I wanted to is one of things I love about summer.  

Things I Love About Summer: Part 1

Fifteen years ago, I dropped 4 very short posts about things I love about summer.  You can see the first one here in August of 2010.  See?  I mentioned, they are very short.  

I have been inspired again to revisit and reflect on things I love about summer.  The summer months are quite meaningful to me largely because I work in education and have these months off from the day-to-day of being with students.  I still work, but it is a completely different environment when the students aren't there and my schedule is much more flexible.  But, I recall before I went in to education, the summer months were still notable.  The long days of sunlight and warm to hot weather definitely create a Jimmy Buffet "changes in latitude, changes in attitude" sort of feel.  

Here I plan to share some of my favorite things about summer.  I hope it inspires you to stop and smell the roses of summer wherever you are.  Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments right here on Seeking Positivity in the Galaxy.  

To begin, one thing I love about summer are the gatherings of friends outdoors.  Just the other night here in late May, my family and I went to an annual gathering at a good friend's house to watch fireworks that are held during our town festival.  We gather in the driveway for drinks and snacks where we visit and catch up on things like how the high school softball team qualified for the sectional championships earlier that day, and how we all enjoyed or didn't enjoy the newest summer movie releases.  We join in the annual harassment of how the Cubs or Cardinals are great or terrible or in an intense race for first place early in the season.  It is always a good time to catch up. 

Then as the sun decides to retire around 9:00 pm, we all make it to our seats on the driveway for the annual fireworks show.  It isn't the greatest show on Earth, but it is our show in our small Midwest town.  It is just fine, because it isn't about the greatness of the fireworks themselves, but it is about the friendships and sharing this experience every summer.   For that, it is one of the things that I love about summer!  

Balancing Act of Life

If you've ever walked through a school building in the summer when students are on break, it can really look like a mess.  Work that needs to be done on the building always waits for the summer months so it doesn't interrupt student learning.  Yearly maintenance like stripping and waxing the floors takes place so the school looks its best when students return.  

What all of this means is that classrooms are packed up and moved to the hallways for waxing and other maintenance.  It is a feat stacking and balancing to take the contents of a classroom out of the room and fit it into the hall in a short amount of time.  

I encountered a stack of desks that caught my attention recently.  I had to stop and take a good look to see how many desks were in a stack that was in front of me (see picture).  I couldn't help but think of the balance and work it took to stack all of these and how that can be related to life.  Sometimes we are taken out of our comfort zone to balance a lot in our lives.  It may seem impossible.  It may seem hopeless to tackle.  It may seem like a tangled mess.  But if we approach all of the things we need to do from our 9 to 5 jobs, spouses/significant others, to taking care of children, maybe caring for a parent or spouse, fulfilling our own lives with our hobbies and social activities, it can really add up.  Like those who stacked these desks, if we really look at our tasks and responsibilities and try to balance them, we can make it work.  We also need to realize that maybe it is too much!  There is a ceiling after all.  

Anyway, I hope when things seem to be piling up, we can think of the desks in the hallways of a school in the summer.  We can stack them in a well-balanced way to make it all work out or say no to a few things to make it all balance out.  

P.S. I believe there are 5 desks per stack.  Nice work to our custodial and maintenance staff for their balancing and their amazing work to make our schools look awesome at the beginning of the year and all year long.  

When things seem uncertain...

A couple weeks ago, we were shocked to look out on the back patio where we have a hanging basket of flowers to discover that the flowers had died.  We swore that we had just watered the hanging basket, yet the entire basket had dried up. 

Alas, I put the basket on the ground to await the next garbage day.  It was nearing the end of the summer and even though the flowers were sure to have several weeks to continue offering beauty, it was a nice basket of flowers for the majority of the summer.  Well, I forgot about the basket of flowers when garbage day came, and it wasn't until the next week that I remembered to head back to the patio to pick up the basket and toss it.  To my surprise, two flowers had, apparently, revived themselves and had two flowers and several buds going.  I was shocked!  So, I hung the basket back up and we are now enjoying the hope that something beautiful can come from something that was so hopeless.  

I will take this reminder with me as I head into the remainder of this year.  Even though so much has gone wrong and so much is not the way it was supposed to be, we can create newness and beauty.  It is possible to move forward when so much seems uncertain.

One Thing I Love about Summer...Part 2 (2010)

One thing I love about summer is visiting Chicago! I never know what I will see in the city. This summer, early on a Sunday morning while walking to the starting line of the Rock and Roll Marathon, we stumbled upon the set of the Transformers 3 movie. What an amazing undertaking! They closed down about 2 blocks of upper Wacker Drive and brought in lots of destruction for what looked like a post-battle set. 

It appeared that the crew was setting up for shooting as members were moving props into place.  There was smoke coming from different areas of the set like from some of the cars that were upside down and on their sides.  There was "damage" to the side of one of the buildings.  It looked like something large had hit it about 2-3 stories up.  They must have worked all night to build up this scene as this street was open the evening before when we arrived in the city.  

About a block away after we had passed the scene, we saw what looked like extras in uniforms and other "official" looking costumes.  They appeared to be heading to the set with their coffee and breakfast pastries.  

All this work for what will probably be 5 minutes in the actual movie. It was amazing to see, and, sadly, they were all done for the day when we returned from the race that afternoon.  Oh well, surprises that we get to see when we visit Chicago in the summer!  

(Updated 7/27/25)