"It's Summer Time and The Living is Easy"

This is the last week of school. My house will soon be teaming with teenagers. This seems to be the place where they prefer to hang. I'm not certain if it's because my grandkids are so popular or because I prefer to have the 'gang' here where I can see and hear what is buzzing around in their hormone charged brains. Besides, I really do like young people. There is only one major drawback. There will be no peace in 'Mudville' for the next three months. Last year at this time I wrote an entry about the beginning of summer. Betcha this beginning wont be much different!

JUNE 2004

"It's summer time and 'the livin' is EASY" .... or so the song says. The person that wrote the song obviously had never spent summer vacation with a 12 year old grandaughter and a 14 year old grandson, a John, a dog, a cat, and a melting brain. The week before school let out all I could think about was how nice it was going to be not to have my day fractured by a "school starts" and "school ends" time allotment. I looked forward to being able to accomplish a whole list of 'to do's' without incremental interruptions. Boy talk about fantasies. The 12 year old girl has reached her epitome of dramatics and the 14 year old boy is pitching for total independence without parental involvement. John stays outside (literally) reading all the books that "I" stacked up for summer reading, the dog has gotten old and has trouble with routines being broken, so he gets up early every morning and sits by the door waiting for me to take the kids to school, finally gets disgusted, falls asleep, and snores so loudly that I need earplugs, and the cat is having a wonderful time bringing dead field mice, birds, and lizards in the house. My son goes to work every day holding dear to the thought that his children are safe and sound because he has left them in the hands of his intelligent, kid loving mother. He's as delusional as the man that wrote the song touting summer. My brain feels like it has turned into mush. I don't remember the things that I am supposed to remember, I cry unexpectedly, if my legs worked yesterday they wont work tomorrow so my shoulders are killing me lugging this body from wheelchair to chair to wheelchair, my perfect blood pressure has started soaring (Dr says from stress) so I have to take a diuretic that keeps me in the bathroom for a major part of the day, if I decide to do something that is on my almost obsolete 'to do' list I gather steam and materials and head for the to do list place then forget what it was I was going 'to do'. The other day I decided I needed a large bowl that was on the bottom shelf in the back of a kitchen cupboard. I reached and reached until I reached my butt off of my wheelchair and plopped flat on the floor with my "good????" leg folded under me. There weren't any dramatic/independent grandkids in the house and John was outside reading one of MY summer books with the radio turned on to the ball game. I yelled when my butt slipped off the wheelchair, I yelled when I hit the floor on my folded leg, I yelled when I found my head half way into the cupboard, and I yelled when the dog woke up to investigate and decided I was doing what he did best (nap) and laid his big body on top of me and settled in for another long nap. Since no one but the dog heard me yell (and he was snoring) I had to lay sprawled on the kitchen floor and feel sorry for myself until I realized that that was the most relaxing time I had had all summer. AND this is only the second week of summer vacation.