Welcome back to Home Alone! Words cannot express my delight at finding myself once again on my own at home. Because I was not Home Alone during the summer months, it felt false to try and write while the children were squabbling, or wrestling, or sighing dramatically in the background.
I hope you had a wonderful summer. We did not. I realize that everybody wants everyone else to always be having the best time of their lives; that somehow it is our duty to have had fun and then to report this joy with exuberant smiles whenever someone asks, but I have no illusions -- we had a crap summer. The top two adjectives that come to mind are relentless and monotonous, with heavy emphasis on relentless. We had a few fun days, especially as the summer wore on and I wore down, but overall, it was hopeless. No one is to blame, not having encountered a genuine summer break before (we home schooled year-round), we didn't know how to manage. And in this instance ignorance was not bliss.
It only took two months, but by mid-August it dawned on me that the children missed their friends from school. Conveniently, part of the super-fun package of social anxiety I possess is the unequivocal dread of setting up play dates for the children. In fact, one of the best parts of home schooling for me was that we didn't really know any other kids, so I never even had to consider coordinating play dates. But now these dates of play are oft-requested and much-anticipated. So with a month of summer still to go, and the desperation ever increasing, I pulled a play date together.
And even after all the angst and worry I poured into said play date had come to fruition, it still didn't go off that great! I served incredibly bland food to a child that has all the makings of a future James Beard (this same child informed me that "pimentos and a dash of paprika are a refreshing addition to ham salad," and also bestowed helpful, step-by-step instructions for ordering seasoned meat at a local Mediterranean restaurant). In addition, the children that belong to me completely forgot the notion that when one has a friend over, one occasionally allows opportunities for the friend to speak. No wonder the child had to impart cooking wisdom to me, I was the only one who shut up long enough for him to gather his thoughts and utter a few sentences.
Oh well. If it had been a stellar event, the children would have had higher expectations for the remainder of the summer. As it was, they both considered the day the spouse forced us all to endure a muti-mile family hike (lovingly dubbed the "death march") as the most fun they had all season.
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