Summer, you are killing me

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Oh summer. Summer summer. Summer! I love you and you are killing me with your demands, with your late nights and early mornings, your travel time spent in highway traffic going to far-flung soccer tournaments, swim meets, and beaches, and I realize how privileged that sounds -- and is -- but I've been to Toronto (twice), Ancaster, London (twice), Kincardine, Ottawa, Sauble Beach, and Kingston in the last five weeks, and if I have to spend another kilometre on the road I might dissolve into genuine rage. Or tears. I might come undone. Oh wait, summer, you're sending me to Elora tonight for a soccer match in a rainstorm. Okay. I will do it. There's seems no other way but through.

Summer, there's more. I know I'm putting this all on you, but I have to tell you. You are killing me with your lack of school. It's my own fault that I have four children. I take full responsibility for that. But there's no substitute for school. Despite no lack of planning and foresight, summer, these four children, or some combo thereof, have taken over the house all day long. And for large portions of the evening too. I've started going to bed before some of them do. They are right this second making themselves elaborate lunches in the kitchen. I can't even discuss the state of the living-room.

And the laundry. I weep.

I have told my four children to leave me alone for twenty minutes, which, frankly, seems a lot to ask given all the elaborate lunch-making currently underway. I am going to my office, I cried, and you must pretend that I am not here for twenty minutes!

I see my time is nearly up.

I am about to get in the car and drive to another set of swim lessons.

I have a message from a publisher, waiting, regarding a book cover. I have a magazine pitch to work up on a story I'm really excited to dig into -- on women in sports. I have an essay waiting to be finished. Not to mention the book-writing writing that is on-going, and that I try to make an every-day event, but which is suddenly -- summer, this really is on you -- a rare occasion, shoved into corners, typing away in a car at a soccer field behind a high school in Elora. You know? It isn't ideal. I don't think it's conducive to top flight work, summer.

And what of the lounging with gin & tonics, summer? Can you slide that in somewhere, please? Could you give me an evening out with my husband to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary? Could you let me lie around and read a book?

I'm putting this all on you, summer, but I get it, I do. I'm the one setting the course, running the race, putting in the miles. While you while away. So maybe it's not you; maybe it's me. Whatever, as the kids say. What's clear is this: one of us is killing the other.

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