Summer Camp...Respite and Retreat

I'm typing this on the deck...it's 85 degrees at 9:30am but breezy. It's the last day of summer camp for the kiddies. Today they'll make candles and homemade bread. They're having a great time...and...so am I! I thought I'd be bored...lonely...miss them...NOT! lol.

I feel like that lady in the Staples commercial who is frolicking through the back-to-school aisles while her kids, sullen, drag slowly behind. I used to hate that commercial when my kids were little and quiet...and entertained. Now they're older, whinier, argumentative, combative with each other (oh! A hummingbird just buzzed by!) and bored. This week they came home so tired, they didn't have the energy for fighting or whining. This is the first time I've had the house to myself in....I don't remember when. With hubbie working from home a few days a week, I'm hardly ever alone.

I did stuff I never do this week. Read magazines. Floated in the pool. Did laps. Drank a beer and had a sub. (I eat fancy food at work for lunch...a sub is a treat for me!) I put a bikini on (with many towels on the deck railings shielding me from neighbors) and tanned. I got sunburned. I bought a new book. I read a page then remembered that I still had housework to do even though it seemed like I was on a tropical vacation somewhere.

I have to go back to work next week. This three weeks off makes me seriously consider becoming a teacher. Yes, yes, I love kids and like developing young minds, but c'mon...summers OFF! Snow days OFF! Holidays OFF! It's gotta be worth all the headaches and noise, noise, noise from kids and flack from their parents. Right??

Anyway...a few more hours of quiet. I'll have lunch with a friend today at a new place on the river. Maybe we'll have a cocktail. I don't think they give out crayons at the door. I'm happy about that.

I'll look forward to the kiddies coming home. They'll save me a bite of bread and in two weeks, their herbed vinegar will be ready. (My daughter asked me if bread lasted two weeks so she could dip her homemade bread in the homemade vinegar...I told her we'd make more bread. If a mom who works at the Culinary can't make bread...what good is that?!) We've done more stuff together this week at night than we usually do when they're home all the time. We played games in the pool. Watched TV. Hung out and talked. It's been good. For them and me.