SUMMER BREAK - DAY #1

This is my first summer break in three years that I have not been attending grad school full-time.  This is also the first summer in two years that I have not been planning nor living through children's weddings, which is sad because both weddings were a blast.  I have plenty to keep me busy if and when I get to it:  Going through a three-foot-high tall pile of files from school, going through a two-foot-high tall pile of thesis drafts, de-cluttering the spare room, clearing multi-files off my desk-top computer, and cleaning out the basement.

So, which chore shall I tackle on my first day of summer vacation?  Here's my schedule:

5:30 a.m.  --  Wake up like it's a usual school-day; realize it isn't; go back to sleep until alarm goes off

7:00 a.m.  --  Alarms goes off

7:15-7:30 a.m.  -- Make youngest child's lunch and dinner (working two jobs today) for his cooler

8:00 a.m.  -- Check email; Post blog; decide to take a walk

8:45 a.m.  -- Download Map My Walk app to cell phone

9:15 a.m.  --  Finally get out the door to begin walk; start all up hill for a mile

9:15 - 10:15 a.m.  --  Walk all over the place, through Phillips Academy, touch Harriet Beecher Stowe's grave marker, head to the middle school track, realize construction of the youth center is destroying said track, walk halfway back up the hill, cut over, get sprayed by a lawn sprinkler, double-back over my original tracks, arrive home and realize I only went about 2.41 miles and spent way too much time stopping to inspect things.

11:00 a.m.  --  Make a fruit smoothie because I intend to be healthy; take vitamins for the same reason.

12:00 p.m. -- Shower

1:00 p.m.  -- Pick up friend and head to New Hampshire to exchange a shirt I bought my son; see construction blocking south-bound lanes of I-93 and make mental note to go home a different way; return one shirt and buy two more.

1:45 p.m.  -- Driving home the back way, we remember to find one of the two bakeries that sells fresh pita bread and hummus, and the owner thinks we're insane (because we are so excited) so he gives us a discount (and locks the door behind us...)

2:00 p.m.  -- We sit in the shade of friend's backyard for a few hours and eat hummus, pita bread, pita chips, and some spinach/feta/onion concoction that is amazingly tasty.

5:00  --  We decide to head to the grocery store so I can get sandwich meat (for youngest child's lunches) and my friend can get a cucumber for her gazpacho.

6:15 p.m.  -- I get home and still feel good about myself for eating healthy on my first day of vacation; then I stuff my face with chicken and corn bread.

6:45 p.m.  --  Turn on air conditioners all over the house because it's in the high 80's outside with high humidity, and I don't want that inside my house for sleeping weather tonight.

7:00  -- Run laundry because youngest child needs clothes for work.

8:30 p.m.  --  Bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies (the cheating kind that you buy in the refrigerator section and cut into squares); eat three of the twenty-four cookies I make but drink down a glass of milk, too.  Does this make me healthy still?  Isn't chocolate a food of the gods?

9:00  --  Fold laundry.

9:30 p.m.  --  Youngest arrives home from both jobs; I show him the new shirts; he is properly and politely appreciative.

10:00 p.m.  --  Watch the live weather radar as four inches of rain dumps all over parts of northwestern Massachusetts and southwestern New Hampshire, flash-flood warnings are issued, and I hope to God that shit doesn't come here with the same vengeance.

11:00 p.m.  --  Write up the retrospective of today's First Official Day of Summer Vacation and declare it an absolute success.