Five Things I Learned The Hard Way This [Five Month Long] Summer

1.     There are totally enough hours in a day.

I don’t know about you, but for me the days went on for freaking ever this summer. I swear each day had approximately 729 hours in it. I started fixing dinner food for breakfast in hopes that nobody would notice and we could just start bathing and brushing our teeth at 8:45am. I called it dreakfast. It didn’t fly.

2.     You actually have to launder the thing that’s on your body every day.

Inevitably we’d all wear our masks at least a couple times a day… to the grocery, on our way in to the pool, to cover the smell of not brushing our teeth, you name it. 

I’m not particularly good at laundry and if you want proof, just ask the gal who does it for me. She separates colors and knows which buttons to push on the machine and returns the clothes to the drawers on the same day she launders them. The whole thing confounds me.

It wasn’t until there were ketchup stains on one of my kids’ masks that I realized you have to wash masks, too. Like, on the reg... almost as often as undies. 

Have I ever told you that sometimes I rewear those, too?

 

3.     Bears and COVID don’t mix. 

We planned a family trip to the Estes Park YMCA this summer. It was Ah-ma-zing. One night, though, at about 2:30am we heard some ruckus out on our cabin’s deck, then scratching on one of our window screens. My husband started jumping on the bed screaming like a girl while I took a machete and braved the scene. Sure enough, a creature had tried to get in our open window. Luckily, it fled at the sound of Scott’s soprano (Gotta keep that guy around).

Security came the next day and confirmed the claw marks on the screen were indeed that of a bear. He said the things got super comfortable around campus during the couple of months COVID had forced a people-less shut down. Now they’re all walking around with full bellies of stolen people food being like, “COVID made me do it.”

Meanwhile, my husband says he’s never going camping again. Should I tell him that a cabin with plumbing and a full kitchen is not camping? 

 

4.     It’s expensive to clean cupholders.

Our minivan was looking and driving like shit. We shelled out a couple thousand bucks this summer to: buy a new battery, replace the alternator, fix the electrical components of the sliding doors, and such. Finally, on the way to the mountains when a new girgling noise made us all suspicious of more trouble, we started discussions of replacing Roxy our beloved Routan minivan. 

Sentimentally, I was in favor of hanging on to her. Unsentimentally, my husband was in favor of replacing her. 

Then, on one day when I was strangely motivated, I crouched back to the rear seats set to de-crudify the cupholders. Nine point two seconds later I emerged, nauseous. 

Two days later we have Sydney the Sedona. 

 

5.      Kindergarten after COVID is priceless.

Y’all know I love my kids. But I take turns being lovingly obsessed with them and completely and utterly burnt out by them. May I say it? COVID Summer 2020 was pretty much 100% the latter. 

Y’all also know that my five-year-old baby girl is a capital H Handful. I’ve had one day of in-person Kindergarten under my belt and I feel like a million bucks. 

That’s all I wanted to say about that: School, when it’s in-person, is amazing.