It feels a little funny to say we've been in a lull when we have basketball almost every day and soccer three nights a week and Jacob just started a new school and Carter is wrapping up his year with all the things, but that's what it feels like. We had almost three weeks without travel or any major adventure, and that's probably a really good thing, even if downshifting from adventure is still causing me a bit of angst.
The one thing that was notable over these last weeks was Carter getting to sing the national anthem at the Red Wings game over last weekend.
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| The band and orchestra accompanied them (off to the right) |
They did a great job, not that you can tell from my camera work below. I was trying to record on two devices so I could post from my phone and have some zoomed shots from my real camera, but it did not work. I apologize for the mess, but at least you can hear them!
While waiting for the action to return, I tried to take joy in sprouting seeds and a slowly-coming-along-but-stunted garden, which was such a joy during the height of the pandemic. But we're in that slow, in-between point where things are starting to grow but will still take weeks to get truly impressive. And wishing that time away is no good because then it'll be July and the peak of summer and I always hate knowing that summer is on the downslope. I haven't even been able to effectively pull weeds or expect any sort of amazingness because it's been about three weeks since it's rained anything of significance. We've had a few drops here and there--not even enough to wash the pollen off the patio table. Things always seem to explode once we get real rain--the hose water only goes so far--but usually it's far later into the summer when we have this problem. The hose water keeps them alive, but the real growing comes from the rain, I swear. While the pleasant, sunny weather for a solid couple weeks was nice, it's too early for everything to be so brown!
Notice I said "was". For much of this past week, our weather was dominated by Canadian wildfire smoke. Orange-red ball sunsets have been the norm for a few weeks, and lately we've had some air quality warnings, too. A few days this week were downright crazy, the worst I've ever seen here. It was at a point where it was dangerous to everyone, not just people with respiratory issues. You could even smell it, apparently--not that I would know. Sometimes even the view across the street looked hazy. Normally I love the view of downtown Rochester from the new highway flyover, but that was completely obscured on Wednesday, and the sun was a dull red ball during that commute, too. I'm glad Carter's class got in their Jr. Olympics on Monday because they started keeping the kids inside on Tuesday. It closed zoos and canceled sports, too. Soccer was canceled for three days and even high school lacrosse playoffs got moved. Jacob heard rumors his school could get canceled because so many kids walk to school, but no such luck for him. It's really shocking to have this happen here. I've always heard about the orange glow from fires, and while we didn't quite have that, it was definitely yellow. New York City was full-on orange, though. Off-the-charts bad. Even when it was less thick, it casted such a weird glow on everything. Very filtered, almost imperceptible sunlight casted orange rays through in the windows all day, which is something you usually only get at sunrise or sunset. It was eerie and a little scary to think about what we were breathing. I looked at a webcam in Ottawa on Tuesday, much nearer to the source and on a purple "hazardous air quality" level, and it was shocking how bad it looked. That severity moved to Western New York by Wednesday. Say what you will about climate change, but the presence of wildfire smoke has gotten worse in recent years around here and this was as bad as I've seen it. It seems to be getting much better now, though it's still not great.
In the next couple weeks, the kids will finish up school and Jacob will turn 15. Hard to fathom--a decade and a half. A year from driving. Technically old enough to start working. When you have that first baby you can't even fathom what your life will look like when they become a teenager, and I definitely can't say I imagined we'd be here, going on middle school #3 and sending our kid off to what is essentially a city high school next year. For starters, in my vision we would have been finishing up that first year of high school right now, but I can't say much of this school journey has gone according to plan! Not to mention I have this giant six-foot elite basketball player, which probably would not have been my first (lacrosse) or second (baseball) guess, especially given my height. But here we are. He insists he doesn't want anything for his birthday except for us to go to Disney for our vacation. Sigh. I'm just not sure how to make this work. For one, Disney (even without park tickets) is expensive. Two, we know it's oppressively hot (and thunderstormy) in the summer and I'm not sure I want to do that again. Three, there has to be a way to do what he wants to do at a lower price point. He really just wants a bunch of resort time with a basketball hoop, pool, and significant downtime. Not that Carter and I couldn't go off and do fun stuff while we're there, but he would not want that to be an expectation of him. I'm mostly fine with that, but it also needs to be relatively tropical and feel "special". He wants to be able to take the boat to Disney Springs. He wants Dole Whip at the ready. He wants good food, which admittedly would be a challenge elsewhere. But is it really feasible? Ehhhhh. We spent a lot on basketball travel. Not that we wouldn't do anything as a result of that--Carter deserves some adventure, too--but that feels like a lot again so soon. So, we keep trying to think through what might work. It's not going well.
Speaking of not going well, I still don't have a summer plan for Carter. His school district camp booked up way earlier than usual and I'm struggling right now with sitting down to tackle the mess that is filling up a summer week-by-week. With being hybrid and Craig having some flexibility, it's not terrible, but it's also not ideal. I know we wouldn't need anything until after 4th of July week since my brother and his kids will be in town and I took off, so at least I have a little time beyond these last couple weeks of school. But I really need to get on tracking down options now. I really feel like I'm struggling with big things like that right now, almost an ADHD-worthy level of procrastination where I'm unfocused and anxiety-ridden about anything of significance. I've found myself struggling with writing email drafts or starting big projects at work, organizing Carter's room, posting all of our no-longer-needed stuff on a Buy Nothing page or bagging up donations, plus the aforementioned travel and camp issues. I'm guessing this is some sort of brain cycle (I've started noticing some of that lately) and I'm hoping it will snap and I'll get back on a productive streak again soon.
I'll admit I'm missing all the travel and adventure a bit. I don't miss the aftermath of those busy periods or the stress of planning or execution, yet I find myself aimlessly scrolling through my phone photos looking back on good memories and bemoaning the lack of new photos. When I go into "dry" periods like this, it always bums me out a bit. It's fine; things can't always be exciting. But with the spring we had it's hard to downshift sometimes. I'm grateful for all I've gotten to do, though. I just wish I could drop myself back in time in those settings again for a little bit because the day-to-day at home is lacking right now.
I don't know if it's just my brain cycling, or anxiety about our summer setup, or concern with vacation plans, or frustration over Jacob's school and basketball situation, but it's been a bit of a challenging few weeks on the energy and motivation front. I think I realized when I was doing all of that traveling how much I tended to put things off because of the travel, and once it was over I had to face reality and start working through everything I put off. I think that's been part of my challenge--feeling guilty that I need to be working on the boring stuff but haven't really been in the mood to do it. I am probably longing for more travel just because my brain prefers that as a distraction compared to the mundane things of life. Unfortunately, Jacob seems to have inherited that trait because that's part of why he's been fixated on the vacation thing--he wants to go now to avoid school and basketball and just get a break. That's definitely not possible so he's going to need to suck it up--as do I--but just because I understand his frustration doesn't mean we get to do anything about it. We have another week and a half of school, and I have another couple weeks of work before I get a break. Then maybe we'll start figuring some things out.
Anyway, we got back to some action this weekend--for better and for worse. More on that in the next post...
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