Summer 2024 - Week 9 - Still not doing much

This summer has been an interesting experiment in what happens when we don't do much during the week. There have been two parts to why this summer has been a lot more chill than other summers. 

1. NO THERAPY. Several months ago I realized I wanted this to be "No Therapy Summer."  For the first time in five years we would have a summer that didn't involve therapy of any kind. Derrick didn't really need behavioral therapy, OT, or speech therapy this summer. And Veronica made a lot of progress and didn't need therapy for her anxiety. She also didn't need physical therapy. She finished vision therapy a few weeks into the summer. And we made the decision not to sign her up for summer school or tutoring during the summer. 

So taking therapy off the schedule really freed things up. 

2. NO SUPERFULOUS PLANS. I started to plan a summer with lots of other things. We were going to do weekly hikes and invite friends to come along. We were going to have fun activities planned for the mornings I was off of work. I was going to keep these kids moving and doing all summer long. 

But somewhere around the end of April and beginning of May I was trying to talk to Brandon about how I felt like we needed things planned for the evenings at our house. I didn't want everyone just kind of doing their own things in the evening. I wanted us to be doing things together.  Well that blew up in my face.  Brandon was like, "Why do we have to plan everything. Can't we just let things happen spontaneously?" Basically he told me he didn't care about having things planned in advance.  

I was hurt by what he said because planning in advance is kind of MY WHOLE THING, and I got really petty about it. I decided that if nobody actually cared about all the work I did to make things happen I should just stop and see how long it took them to care. If everyone wanted to be bored to death during the summer - well that wasn't my problem any more. 

So our summer calendar is much more empty than usual. There have been no hikes with friends. Or morning trips to the park. Sure we've camped a lot. And swam a lot, but that's basically it.

And you know what? It's actually been okay. Nobody has died from boredom yet. (Though I got really close on Tuesday.) 

I don't know if I want every summer to look like this, but I'm feeling okay about this summer being really chill. 

So let's look back at the continuation of our boring month of July. 

Monday's have become one of my big days at work. I often go in at 7:00 and stay until 11:00.  But this week was different - I slept in a bet and didn't make it in until about 8:00. I needed to call the orthodontist and make and appointment because Derrick broke two brackets while eating a jolly rancher on Sunday. When I called them the only available spot that day was at 9:10. So I was only at work for about 40 minutes before it was time to go back home and pick up Derrick.  I just took the mail with me and planned to work from home after Derrick's appointment. 

Derrick's appointment went well and they got everything put back on. 

Then we went home and I processed the mail from home. 

At 11:00 I had a Board Meeting for Idaho Parent's Unlimited via zoom. It was a good meeting. My kids watched a movie while it was going on. The movie ended about 15 minutes before the meeting. So all the other board members were treated to seeing my kids on camera as they came to talk to me. I had us on mute so it was fine. 

I'm struggling to remember if we did anything that afternoon. Nothing is coming to mind. So let's look at garden pictures. 

My Rose of Sharron started blooming. 

I was able to harvest tomatoes.

The plums are starting to get purple.

Here's the sunflowers in the very back of the yard. 

Here are cherry tomatoes growing. 

All the tomatoes are doing well.

Brandon had rehearsal that evening and I took the kids to the pool. It's been so hot lately that I don't even hesitate to get into the water. 

On Tuesday I really wanted to stay home in the morning and get some yard work done, but the AC still wasn't fixed yet. In theory it was getting fixed that day, but I didn't quite trust that news. So I went to work in the morning. 

I was very happy to get their and see the van for the heating and air company out front. They did whatever it was they needed to do and after a while the AC was working. But it took a while for the air in my office to cool down. 

I went home and "helped" Charlotte and Lydia pack for Youth Conference. Helped isn't really the right word for what I did. It was more like, "was physically present so they could ask me questions and to keep them motivated."  I did help get their sleeping bags and other bedding into big trash bags that I labeled, but when it came to what they actually packed in their bags - I had no input.

The girls were leaving for Youth Conference on Wednesday, but they needed to drop off their stuff that night. They were not exactly excited for Youth Conference. This was their first year and since they don't turn 14 until the end of October they would be some of the youngest participants. They didn't know what to expect and they did not believe me when I said it would be fun. 

That afternoon at home was ROUGH. I was super bored. All I really wanted to do was go work on my garden, but it was just too hot to do that. So I was stuck inside. I didn't feel motivated to do any of the inside projects and so I just kind of hung around. 

I thought about taking the kids to the pool, but they don't like going in the afternoon. They prefer to go in the evening. 

So I was just kind of home and bored and not doing great. 

It didn't help that I kind of had that waiting mode paralysis. We had to drop off Charlotte and Lydia's stuff at 7:00 and so my brain was like, "we are just going to wait for that and not do anything else."  Here's a tweet that kind of sums it up.

They say this is a symptom of ADHD. But I don't have that. For me it's more of an anxiety thing. It's like my brain thinks we are going to miss the important event so that's the only info it wants to focus on. 

A little later in the day I realized that I felt like I was just in waiting mode in general. Like I was just waiting for something to happen. Or waiting for news of something happening. It was like I could sense a change in the wind coming - but it hadn't happened yet. 

Maybe that change is the fact that school starts in three weeks. Or maybe that change is that Brandon is planning to leave his job by Labor Day (with or without a new job lined up). Or maybe that change is that it's time for me to take on more roles at work. Or maybe it's all three combined. 

All I know is that there is a change coming. 

And that realization kind of snapped me back into feeling like myself. After dinner I made a few lists in preparation for the weekend and lists always help me feel better. 

Anyway, 7:00 FINALLY rolled around and we could take Charlotte and Lydia's stuff to the Stake Center. I was really impressed by how organized the drop off was. We were greeted by the Stake Young Women's President. She asked, "Which one of you is Charlotte?"  We've never met this lady (as far as I know) so I was impressed that she recognized the girls. 

She directed the girls to their group leaders. The kids were all organized into groups of about 15. They had adult couples over each group. Charlotte and Lydia were in the same group (because I'd specifically asked for that. When I registered the girls for Youth Conference I'd told the leaders that they were the type of twins that you didn't want to split up.) 

The leaders were all sitting at a long table with a canopy over them to shade them from the sun. Charlotte and Lydia's leader gave them orange ribbons to tie onto all their stuff. I gave her the permission slips. I also gave her the "very special letters" that each mother was supposed to write. Only I hadn't written them. Brandon did. They've been doing this "letter from mothers" tradition at girls camp the last three years and I'm super burned out on the whole thing. So I told Brandon to do it this time. He had fun with that. 

After Charlotte and Lydia tied the orange ribbons onto their stuff they took them over to the biggest covered trailer I've ever seen in my life.  (I really wanted to take a picture, but I was trying to be cool.) They gave their stuff to some guys who loaded it onto the trailer. 

And that was that.  The whole thing took like 10 minutes. 

We went home and Derrick and Lydia got into their swimming suits. Charlotte and Veronica felt like staying home. So I took the ones who wanted to over to the pool. 

Wednesday was a very good day.  After all my wishing for the ability to do yardwork on Tuesday I was determined to make the most of Wednesday morning. So I got up around 6:00 and started moving bricks out of the firepit area. 

I did that for about an hour before I had to go inside and take a shower to get ready for the day. Around 8:00 I went over to Castle Therapy to get things done there. I entered payments and then made a phone call to try to straighten some things out regarding a claim. Ivan works with some clients at their home on Wednesday mornings so that's why I always go in then. He got done a little early and came back while I was still there. (He actually tried to scare me and then felt really bad when he realized I was on the phone.) So we were able to talk about some issues with other claims. It was a really productive morning.

Normally I have to be back home by about 9:30 because I have Scripture Study at 10:00. But I'd cancelled it for this week. Two of the ladies who normally come had other plans. And I had to drop off the girls at the stake center at 11:00. So it made sense to just make this week a study at home week. 

I finished up at Ivan's office and then came home to make sure Charlotte and Lydia were out of bed. They were. They were both very apprehensive about this whole Youth Conference thing. Youth Conference was actually happening at a camp in the same valley where my in-law live. My in-laws were even going to pick up Charlotte and Lydia from Youth Conference on Saturday so they could spend time with them. I kept telling the girls. That if Youth Conference was absolutely terrible we could arrange for them to be picked up early - BUT they had to give it a chance first. 

Dropping the girls off went really fast since we'd already dropped off all their stuff. They just had a small backpack with them this time. They wanted me to walk into the stake center with them. As we went in the doors the Stake Young Women's president welcomed them by name. I heard another leader ask her, "I don't know how you know everyone's names."  She replied, "I've been studying the pictures on LDS tools for MONTHS." (Which was still pretty impressive because I haven't updated our pictures in like 6 years.)

As soon as Charlotte and Lydia saw a friend from our ward they were like, "Okay mom, you can go now."  I was like, "Have fun."

There were five school buses parked in front of the church so that's what they rode down in. They sent me a few texts along the way. But the texts stopped after a while. I figured they'd been told to put the phone away when they got to the camp.

Veronica had come with me to the drop off. I wondered if the Stake Young Womens President looked at Veronica and wondered, "Did I miss one?"  But no, Veronica is just 10. She won't be old enough for Youth Conference for three more years. 

She and I went to DI looking for new sandals, but ended up finding new school shoes for her and Derrick. Then we went to Winco and did the grocery shopping.  We had fun buying treats for the weekend. 

That afternoon I went into work to make up for the time I didn't work on Monday.  It was WONDERFUL to be there in the afternoon and not be in danger of heat stroke. 

That night Derrick had a Young Mens activity for the first time in a while. They went to Orange Leaf and planned a campout. Derrick came home and told me all the flavors of Frozen Yogurt he'd had (cotton candy and root beer float) but couldn't tell me much about the upcoming campout.  All he knew was that it was on a Friday. But he'd had a great time and felt really included. So that was great. 

And I got the campout details from the group text the next day.

I spent the evening moving the rest of the brick. Here's my pile at the end. 

And here's the fire pit without the brick. 

I also stained the little half door that Brandon built for my garden shed. It still needed a second coat, but it looked so much better. I suddenly wanted to stain EVERYTHING. 

That night we had our first bit of rain that we've had in weeks. It was so nice to hear it outside. 

On Thursday I was so happy that I didn't have to go into work that morning. I went outside and took care of some weeding and also put the second coat of stain on the door. 

It looks so good. 

I love it so much. 

Around 9:00 I took Derrick and Veronica to Walmart. I've been planning to buy them each some new shorts all summer. So we went and bought new shorts. These are also kind of new school clothes in a way. Veronica's school is always super warm inside so she wears shorts to school until about October. I really don't even bother getting her school pants until about mid September. 

We had a really nice time shopping without feeling like we needed to hurry. 

We stopped at the library on the way home and picked up the Mummy and the Mummy Returns. When we got home the kids were like, "So when are you going to work?" Because they wanted to watch the Mummy. I let them do that while I took a shower and then I went to work. 

I was home around 3:00. Brandon was home, but not for long. He's CSI job is up and running again. He works there on Thursdays for the next month and he also has some Tuesdays scattered in there again. He's doing a unit on Hydraulics right now. 

So he left soon after I got home. A little after that a HUGE storm rolled in. There was a lot of wind and a lot of rain. Lightning and thunder too. My friend later posted on Facebook that her tree was hit by lightning. 

The whole time the storm was happening the group chat for the Girls activity was very busy. The girls were supposed to have a Water Party at one of the leaders houses at 4:30. It was looking a little iffy there for a while. 

But things cleared up enough that we decided to go ahead with it anyway. (This was before I knew about the lightning strike.) So at 4:30 I dropped Veronica off. She had so much fun - even when it started raining again at about 5:20. 

It rained a couple more times that evening and the weather cooled off so nice. It was so needed. 

At some point that afternoon Charlotte and Lydia called me. When I saw their names come up on my phone I was like, "Oh no, what happened?" 

But when I answered I heard from two girls who were VERY HAPPY. They said, "Mom, we want to apologize for being so grumpy about Youth Conference. It's actually really fun. We didn't know."

And I was like "YES YES YES YES YES"

They said it was all really fun and they were having a great time. I was so happy to hear that. They liked their group and they also got time to spend with their friends outside of their group. They liked that they had their own copies of the schedule so they knew what to expect.

The night before there had been some sort of reenactment of Lehi's dream with fog machines and an iron rod. 

There were lots of games to play - including 9 Square which is the girls favorite game. 

They had bandanas with their group color. 

Overall everything was going great. I was very relieved. 

That night I watched the Mummy Returns with Derrick and Veronica. It was kind of dumb - but Derrick LOVED it. He was definitely the target audience. When he watches movies he loves to jump up and down during the exciting parts. He also loves to shout advise to the characters. He gets very into movies. 

Brandon came home from CSI around 9:00. He'd been thinking he'd run over to rehearsal, but they weren't working on any of his scenes. I was just about to go on a walk with Derrick and Veronica so Brandon came too. We went to the school. Veronica brought her basket ball so she and Derrick played with that for a while. It was a nice end to the evening.

On Friday I went to work. I was planning to leave around 11:00 but I was trying to finish up some things and so I stayed an extra 20 or so minutes. I was like, "Wow, I was able to stay past 11:00 without starting to sweat like crazy."  I will NEVER take air-conditioning for granted again. 

Brandon came home at 1:30 and Derrick was so excited. They were going camping together. At first the plan had been for Veronica to go to and I could have a weekend to myself. But Veronica doesn't enjoy camping as much as the rest of us so she decided to stay with me. One of the lists I'd made on Tuesday night was of all the fun things we'd do together. 

While Derrick and Brandon were finishing packing Veronica and I said goodbye to them and went to our first activity - hair cuts. 

We both needed hair cuts.  Veronica's last haircut was a year ago. She's been growing it out since then, but it really needed a trim to give it some shape. 

And my hair was just ugh. The bottom 4-6 inches were pretty damaged from the two bleach treatments Hillary gave me. Add in all the chlorine and sun from the past few months and it was turning into a frizzy mess.  I realized it was time to chop it when I put it into a pony tail every day for a week. (And a pony tail was kind of the best case scenario. Most of the time I just put it in a weird bun. And since the bottom half of the hair was so fuzzy and blonder than the top it looked like I'd pinned one of those plastic mesh sink scrubbers on my head.)

Since I was cutting off so much hair it would basically be the same length as Veronica's. So we decided to try to get the same haircut. Here's the picture we ended up taking together to show how similar our hair turned out. 

Veronica wanted to see the back of her head so I took a picture. 

I don't even miss the 6 or so inches that was cut off my hair. 

One of the things Veronica wanted to do together was to make a cake. So we did that almost as soon as we got back home. 

Then we went down to the basement to hang out. Facebook keeps showing me clips of the TV show Young Sheldon and I've wanted to watch the full show for a while. So I suggested we watch that together. Veronica LOVED it. Sheldon is a very smart boy with very little social awareness. Some of the things he does are the kinds of things Derrick would do. Veronica really identifies with Sheldon's twin sister Missy who gets embarrassed by her brother. 

We watched like 10 episodes over the weekend and have plans to catch the other kids up on the show and watch it together. 

At 6:00 we went to the library for their end of summer Streat Dance. Which, thanks to the terrible air quality from a billion fires, was held inside. 

It was still fun though. The first thing we did was the face painting. We thought about getting matching face painting, but the line was long and I didn't want to take a kids turn. So just Veronica had her face painted. She got a spider. 



We had snow cones and yogurt. We also played games like corn hole and giant Jenga. Ivan was there representing Castle Therapy so we played his floor is lava game. 

We had a great time! (And please take minute to admire Veronica's new sandals. We bought these at Walmart when we bought the shorts. She often has trouble finding her shoes so when she picked these out I was like, "Well those will never get lost." She loves bright colors so these sandals are totally her.)

After about an hour we left the library and came home. We made pizza on french bread and then ate that and other treats while watching Cruella. That movie was okay, but it was fun to watch with Veronica. Neither of us had ever scene it so that made it special.

Then we watched 101 Dalmatians. (Well Veronica watched it. I played on my phone.)

We finally went to bed around 11:30. Veronica slept in my bed with me. 

In the morning I slept in until 7:55 when I got a phone call from Charlotte and Lydia. They were wondering if their Bestemor could come pick them up soon instead of waiting until 9:00 liked they'd planned. I was a little groggy so it took my brain a minute to process that it was Saturday and they were done with Youth Conference. 

And then they were like, "Oh she just texted us. We'll text her."  And I was like, "Okay you do that."

Later they texted me that they were at Bestemors and having a great time. And that's literally all I've heard from them. I'm planning to call them today and get more details on the rest of Youth Conference. 

I got up and started watering everything and then I did a little bit of yardwork. I moved the ashes out of the fire pit. Veronica came out and helped scan the ashes with the big magnet to get more nails out. 

I also weeded the carrots. 

I wanted to do more, but the air quality was so bad I didn't want to do much strenuous stuff. So I went inside and watched Young Sheldon with Veronica. 

We'd watch and episode and then do a little bit of cleaning and then we'd watch another episode. 

Brandon and Derrick came home around noon. They'd gone camping at a reservoir near Oakley which is southeast of Twin.

Here are some pictures that Brandon took.  They swam in the reservoir. 

They saw a snake. (This is the first thing Derrick told me about when they got home.)

Here's their random campsite. 

And their view. (You can see how smoky it was.)

Here's their fire. 

And another view of the reservoir. 

I was surprised that I felt kind of annoyed when Brandon and Derrick got home. Veronica and I had had a great time together and I guess I wasn't ready for it to be over. I also was a little tired. So I decided to take a nap. I ended up sleeping for THREE hours. When I woke up I felt a lot happier. I was like, "Oh I wasn't mad, I just needed a nap."

At 7:00 Veronica and I had one last activity together. We went to an Open House for Mormon Women for Ethical Government. It was held at a ladies house here in Twin. The chapter leaders from Boise came. They've been my facebook friends for a long time, but this was the first time we met in person. Also Emma Adams the Co-director of MWEG was there too. We've been Facebook friends for a long time too. 

It was so good to interact in person with so many amazing women. MWEG has always been an online thing for me so seeing people in person was a little surreal. 

Veronica got a little bored, but she hung in there for the treats at the end. She left with a big stack of cookies so I guess it was worth it for her. 

And yeah, that gets us caught up. 

I thought next week was more full than this week, but when I looked at the schedule I realized the only thing out of the ordinary is a doctors appointment for Derrick. And at some point well get Charlotte and Lydia home. 

So yeah, we still aren't doing much and I'm learning to be okay with that.