Summer blog topics I have no idea about:
Beachy summer hair
Fun flat lays of summer fashion trends
Healthy green smoothies
Best rosés
Flirting with your summer crush
Homemade gourmet popsicles
These are not things I know anything about anymore – or maybe ever.
My hair is pulled back in a perpetual messy knot, my “summer outfit” is a T-shirt I got for free for giving blood and a pair of jeans I got from my mother-in-law, I fed my kid Nutella toast in the car this morning on the way to zoo camp and am looking forward to a glass of “generic white” wine from a bottle that’s $3 at Rouses, my husband and I are having a date night tonight that’s really just pasta and Netflix, and the only popsicles in my freezer are the entirely artificial grape ones that no one likes and that are so old that they stick to the paper in purple strands of goo.
My hobbies so far this summer have included: sending Amazon packages to Ruby at camp, scrubbing homemade slime out of the bathmat, Googling images of impetigo to try to diagnose a rash, fixing the Roomba after it ate too much glitter and Barbie hair, and trying various products to remove the smell from my minivan after Georgia forgot some chocolate milk under her seat in the middle of July.
I used to love summer. I mostly still do love summer. But…
I remember taking a vacation to Orange Beach with my family when I was newly pregnant with Georgia and pretty much dying from morning sickness. I couldn’t eat anything; my husband was judging a raw oyster contest, and just that combination of words alone – “raw” and “oyster” and “contest” – sent me fleeing for the bathroom. Even if I’d found raw oysters somehow palatable, they’re verboten during pregnancy. I couldn’t have a drink. I couldn’t get in the hot tub. And I remarked bitterly to Robert that being on vacation when you’re pregnant just meant a new toilet to throw up into.
Summer vacation now, as a mom, just means a hotter car for spilled milk to fester in. It’s still nice to be free of homework and the threat of tardy slips, but overall, the glamourous life I live is exactly the same, only with a heat index of 105.
Obviously I love my kids – sour milk and impetigo and all – but I do long for the days of rosé and fun flat lays and flirting with summer crushes with the best-ever beachy hair.
Do you love or hate summer as a parent? Or is it the same but hotter?