Summer is usually wonderful. Well, duh.

 Its October now, but I still have summer on my mind.  And I am still going to write about summer. Summer is keeping it chilled. Getting a lot of sleep. Not stressing about how we look to others. Diminishing anxiety and stress.  Doing what we feel comfortable doing but being healthier too. 

In the summer everything is kinder. In October my daughters and I are still playing monopoly at least two games a week. But I had to stop one game in the middle because my daughters started fighting and then wrecking the board and getting vicious.  My temper line was crossed and I spit fire like a dragon at them and told them to go read.  Game over.  

In summer we never had fights like that.  We had one fight because a friend of one daughter came to visit and of course the other daughter who doesnt have a friend got jealous and started to provoke.  But we would go back to Monopoly every night even when the friend was there and play till 11 ot 11.30 pm

Now, we have to look at the clock and try to finish the round at 9.55. (oh come on dad, one more round, its not ten o clock yet).  I want them to get as much sleep as possible on school days, and I wish it could be 9 hours.  But it hasnt been hitting that.  Only on the weekends.  In the summer I didnt really care how long they slept.  In fact the more the better. I think our whole family is a late to bed late to rise family, so.... no point to resist. If we are awake at midnight and sleeping at 9 am, we dont have to get up to feed the farm animals.  

I DID always
get up and go rowing on the lake. I would come back and they were getting up, slowly.  No worries man. They were getting over 9 hours of sleep, 9 and a half.  More and better development for their brain with more sleep.  Overall good for the development of their tween and teenage selves.  

Speaking of development of their selves.  Have you heard of the studies out now that Instagram is bad for teenage kids and their image? I would guess that most kids try to look as beautiful as possible, "Look at me, arent I the most beautifulest?" And the other kids who cant live up to the beauty get depressed and get a negative image of themselves. Here is an article written by a teenager which sums it up the best  So, in the summer, my oldest daughter didnt have her telephone with her so she couldnt do IG or FB or those other social sites.  I didnt have to keep her from messing around  on her sites and wasting time indoors when she should have been outside.  That was much nicer.  I was spared the mental anguish of having to deal with that. You can look at all my

A Devil where his soul should be

posts and see how many ISSUES I have with gadgets.  

During the year it is always a struggle to keep her away and at a maximum of an hour a day watching or messing around on her telephone, usually playing games. She is an addicted gamester.   

At our summer place, she didnt have it. We swam and played monopoly and did a couple outings but nothing big.  

Speaking of outings, my wife organizes the outings, the big walks, the hikes, the travels. I am not so good at it.  But I think we compliment each other. So in the first half of the summer my daughters had big hikes and outings.  When they went on vacation with me, we had lots of monopoly games and an outing was a trip to the grocery store to buy food for the next couple days.  But one daughter is not a fan of big hikes, so she was relaxed and chilled on our vacation.  

Sleeping is a family activity

We did what we wanted.  A little bit more. I tried to keep the anxiety to a minimum which for me is very difficult because I get anxiety attacks having to get up in the morning. And driving is a major stress creator.  But I TRIED to keep my stress down.  For all of us. And ... to some extent .... it worked.  

Summer is nice. Summer is usually wonderful.   Our problems and anxieties melted and were buried in  the sand for a couple weeks.  

I have been listening to the echocord label.  Just discovered.  Techno dub.  Ohhhhhh great stuff.  

Comng out soon a triple lp collection to recognize their twentieth year.  I ll be ordering that!