Summertime no blues part 6 : Dad as mediator. Dont let your summer slip behind you

 

I think every family with more than one child, has to have someone playing the role of mediator.  There will always be the problem of friends of siblings causing jealousy or anger in the siblings.  That is, if there is a friend for one daughter, but not a friend for the other daughter, it can be a problem.  As the parent, you cant take sides.  But you can give some support to the daughter with no friend.  

My older daughter has had a friend here on vacation since she was 1 year old.  For the last couple of years, before covid and now after the friend has been vacationing up here again.   The two girls get together for the short time they have.  Often it was just a day or two.     

Let me explain. My very good friend now comes back up here to vacation.  We grew up here together.  Both our parents, or his grandparents were friends and our cottages were two houses apart.  For several years though he stopped coming up as his grandmother sold her cottage.  Then my mother sold our cottage in 2018- But I started coming up to the rental cottage very nearby.  Now since 2021 he has been coming up and renting the same cottages with his daughter.  His daughter is friends with my older daughter.  We have a third generation of friends.

My friend s daughter is a bit older and my younger daughter doesnt have a friend.  Last year in 2021 she was angrier and I had to tear them apart more.  For some reason she felt like she had to revenge herself for something that happened in 2019.  My younger daughter was angrier.   

This year, she seems better.  I was actually dreading the week when the two friends would get together. It was going to be a full week of "togetherness" But in fact, it wasnt so bad.  I did play more catch football with my younger daughter.  And when it was evening anyway we settled into a great little TV watching time.  So, it was a nice evening, friend or no friend.  

We had some outings together.  We went to the sand dunes this year.  I drove.  It worked out well, until we were going to the beach to swim.  Then we couldnt find a good space on the beach and people were getting angry.  So, we just drove back to the cottage and swam there.  

We had a nice pizza party one night with smores.  And a hot dog, wurst roasting night, with smores.   

I cant rightly put my finger on what happened except that my younger daughter sort of "got over it" and accepted her position and exorcised her demon against the older friend.  She was fine with the situation, but I am not sure that i had anything to do with it.  Besides that i tried to give her a bit more attention.  I lucked out.  My daughters are in a serious fighting mode at their ages right now, but somehow this wasnt the problem.  

My older daughter told me when vacation finished, "dad, dont let me stay inside next year.  Push me out and into the sun.. " or something to that effect.  She said this when vacation was finished.  She realized that she had had limited time and she shouldnt have squandered it .   Too late.  

Sometime in the last week I had to push her and yell at her to get outside.  Dont stay inside to sleep in the summer.  She didnt have her telephone, I was mostly taking it away from her, but still she was settling into a sort of lazier, oh i dont want to go outside, mode.  She regretted it later.   Too late.  

When you are in the thick of summer it seems you have enough time.  Then when it s over, you realize, you didnt take advantage of the beautiful time you had... enough.  Too late.  

Dont let the summer(s) slip behind you.  Take advantage of them and do good, nice things .   Summers are special.   Push your kids to get outside and do everything outside.  The play stations and on line games on the telephones and ipads have to stop.   Especially if you have an outdoor swimming pool or lake or river... dont let the time disappear with their eyes glued to a stupid screen watching ticks and tocks.  

I had a great summer.  I hope you did. I hope your kids did.       

Summertime not blues part 5. Traverse City Film Fest

 Michael Moore is a very controversial character.  Some would call him the epitomy of the liberal left agenda promoters.   But one very great thing he has done is not connected to left or right, but just great movies, where ever they come from.  That is he is one of the founders (Doug Stanton and local TC photographer John Williams being the other two) of the Traverse City Film Fest begun in 2005, located of course in the Northern Michigan town of Traverse City.   

For several years now the kids and I have been going to the Film fest, to several of the movies.  Even when my younger daughter had trouble    understanding the dialougue which was pretty mature, we went.  They were in awe when we passed the director of Bathtubs over Broadway on the street.  He was like a huge celebrity to us because we had just seen his film and he had answered questions after the movie.  The movie was a documentary.  I think my daughter was 7 or even younger.  

This year was even nicer to go because it had been cancelled for the last two years because of the pandemic and we really missed seeing films we wouldnt ordinarily get to see.  And just going to the movies more was fun.  I especially loved going this year because over the past year I have been reading so many comments from people who say film theatres are dead and they should just pass the way of the horse and buggy.  Michael Moore not only loves making films, he loves cinema.  He has put a lot into refurbishing all the local movie theatres for no other reason than he wants people to enjoy seeing films  in a good atmosphere.  And the film fest is part of that. 

The nicest part probably are the dusk films outside.  Somehow we have never gotten rained on.  These films are usually more family oriented mainstream films, or older films.  You go at 9pm and stake out your patch of lawn and lay your blanket down and spread out your pizza and food and drinks.  Once we bought the pizza on site, but it wasnt very good, so this time we brought a peegeos pizza, the best pizza in the world with us, but I think we finished it before the film started. 

This year I was so happy to see the Wizard of Oz with my kids at the dusk movie.  They never would have seen it otherwise and I havent seen it since I was a kid and I used to see it once a year every year. I miss it.  AND it was in color. I never ever saw it in color.  That was great.   

Later in the week we saw Singing in the Rain.  Another great one.  I have never seen that film. There was no chance I would ever have seen that film either.  So I was happy to see it here and at dusk.  And I must say, it was a fine film. I dont usually like singing movies, but it was very nice.   (A note from dad, they cried and cried to see Alien which was going to show at the dusk show, but I said, no that one is not good for you guys, not yet, no way).  I usually hate driving in the dark, but I wouldnt miss going to some dusk movies even if I hate driving after dark.  That is how great they are.  Very good for families. 

In the past, it was more difficult to see the movies, because they are usually documentaries, and maybe difficult for my youngest daughter to understand. But now she is getting older and gets them, so we can see more mature films.   So my choice was to see a documentary on the history of Kurt Vonnegut.  He is one of my favorite writers.  But I think it may have backfired.  Because it wasnt the best movie.  The others we saw were, admittedly way better, and then I was disappointed to find out, and also my daughter, that he left his first wife just as he was becoming a "hit".  I never knew that before and it has  darkened my fondness for him.  

I have to be proud of my girls because they chose very mature movies and I have to say they were very good.  My older daughter chose a story of Kapernick vs America about the football star who knelt on one knee before football games when the anthem was being played.  And Youth vs Gov about a group of teenagers who are suing the national government for not curbing climate change even though they knew about it quite a bit earlier, or had an inkling about it, like from the 70s.  

At any rate, these were tough subjects to understand and for the first time my daughters really understood them and "comprehended".  So not only were the movies very educational, but also very enjoyable. I was proud that they wanted to see these movies.  I really cant understand people who want to see the death of movie house films, maybe just to make a killing on the stock market.  

Becasue the real reason behind Michael Moores support of the film

The founders of TCFF

fest and the reason we go is because it is a whole lot of fun. It is great to see a film at a theatre. It is great to have a family outing at a film and even tough films can be enjoyable, even to pre teens. It just isnt the same seeing them on some stream sitting on your couch and hitting pause when you have to go to the bathroom.  This is something we all like and look forward to now every year.  Taking the family to a film is still the cheapest "night out on the town" if your pocketbook is stretched as it is.  Especially this year.   

For fathers bringing up their kids, I strongly recommend taking the family OUT to see a film.  Get off your tushes and get out of the house.  Really people need to move.  Streaming is fine, but people are not meant to stay home day in day out, they gotta go out too and the films are really good family fun.  It can even be an educational film

The TCFF official picture

Suffice to say that the film fest is now a tradition in our summer vacation and I as a father trying to keep up a steady stream of fun in the summer I can not go wrong with the film fest.  Thank you Michael Moore and co founders for providing this quality fest now which will become a strong traditon in Traverse City.  But try not to miss the cherry and blueberry and asparagus and maple syrup national weeks either.  Those are also a lot of fun for families.  And dads, you can not go wrong with any of them.  So get up and move and get out of the house.  These fests are great fun for the whole family. Dont shy away from educational films.  The kids will even like these.  I guarantee it.  Go for it.  

Thanks for reading

 

Summertime no blues 4: Getting back to being a Dad. Perfect Combination

 

When I take my summer vacation I have a perfect combination of time for me and time with the kids.  Its only three weeks.  Too short.  I know you probably get even less vacation and three weeks is LONG, but believe me, its short.  

Anyway.

Each summer is different of course.  Last year we played an inordinate amount of Monopoly and we were doing that together for a lot of time.  This year we didnt play once.  But we had our schedule.  

Its nice because my kids sleep late in the morning and I dont care. They can sleep as much and as late as they want.   Usually till around 10am or so. Then they read in bed. I always got up around 9 and went out rowing on the lake every morning.  Its great to do exercise every morning.  It makes you feel good if you dont do anything more in the day that you got your dose already and you did good.  Kind of like getting your daily dose of Vitamin C and vitamins.  

My older daughter liked to read still till noonish but I would play some board games with my younger daughter till about the same time.  If we had a reading day, we would read till 2pm or till lunch time.  For some reason sometimes we had lunch extremely late in the afternoon.  More like a midafternoon big snack.  But many of the days we had a late breakfast then we had our "outing" for the day.  

Our library

This is the time when Dad was on his toes and being a dad, this chunk of afternoon.   In the first week we had outings from around 11am after breakfast.  Ie a big shopping at the grocery store on Sunday, clothes shopping on Monday, library on Tuesday and then reading day on the dock for the rest of Tuesday, though we spent like three hours at the library.  Maybe Wednesday was a reading day too.  Saturday was a reading day too.  Thursday, Friday something or other, we may have done the museum one of those days.  

For some reason, or a calculated use of time, we would make it back by mid afternoon and a group effort of preparing lunch, around 3pm or even later.  Lunch was always the same. I dont care to indulge and you would call me a bad dad, but my kids have this affinity to a special American canned food which they eat continuously on vacation for lunch.  

5 pm seemed to be the time for our afternoon swim at the island.  This should

The island for swimming

have been a together thing, but it got pulled apart a bit because one daughter loved to play catch with the football in the water which we did for most of the time. While the other daughter played some, then swam by herself.  This was always prime fine time together.  Also swimming is so nice and relaxing and exercising at the same time.  Being in the water is ... is .... heavenish?  And where we swim it is a sandy bottom. I feel sorry for those who have to swim in rock bottoms.  Not fun.  The boats going by in the main channel sending us some big waves sometimes.  There were still some people left at the swim place, but less than at 2pm.  I dont want to say I died and went to heaven, but, it was VERY pleasant. 

Depending when we started swimming, the end of the swim and after the showers was about time to start preparing dinner. 

I have to criticize myself and say that my dinners this summer were rather a weak point.  When you are a single parent, you have to play both parents. And I didnt learn any new dishes this last year and my old ones were not as popular.  They said, I am not allowed to prepare lasagne as that is strictly a school year dish.  The spaghetti was different and awful. The corn wasnt in stock yet locally where as last year we were on vacation all August when the local corn was totally in season and we ate it most days.  What did I make for dinner?  Boy, I really have to increase my repertoire for next year.  I have to say I did a bad job at it this year, 2022.  Bad job.  I want to improve on this. 

The thing about this schedule though is that dinner was so late that it put us on a path to stay up later.  By the time dinner was done there was no time for another swim or a nice healthy walk, just a small one in the oncoming darkness, or a row on the lake, but not a long one as we didnt have lights and the sheriff can come and ticket us without lights.  So... I guess this is a downsider of our schedule.  But I guess my whole family are "owls" and not morning people.  

TV living room relaxin area

From 10 pm it was TV time together or a bit of reading, maybe a game of Chinese checkers.  TV was great this year.  We found a serial we all liked and watched every night during the week.  I had to yell at them to have the lights off by Midnight.  A bit late I guess even though they were both staying up later even during the year.  I think I got them on a bad schedule as far as that goes. But I dont really see that changing next year unless I put my foot down and say midnight is lights out.  In the summer I hate to do the lights out routine.  If they are reading that is good.  

I had a bit of time for myself at this time, but in fact when I started yelling at them to turn their lights out, they usually came in my room and turned my light out too.  Touche.  

The title of this post is the perfect combination. It doesnt seem like I had a perfect combination. I had my free time for an hour or two in the morning. Not much.  But somehow it worked out during the day or on reading days that I could do the things I wanted to do too.  Anyway, more important to me was getting back and being dad to them fully.  A bit of free time for myself on the side.  ha.  I guess that is as perfect a combination as it will get for getting back to being a DAD!  That is OK,  I think I prefer that. 

An end note. I didnt mention anything about viruses and covid.  Although they were less this year especially with coming and going, they were not eradicated, as it doesnt seem like the viruses will be as we get a rise in monkeypox and even a resurgence of polio.  But thankfully or by our own doing, for most of the vacation, we really were not in close contact with many people.  Yes there was the film festival which I will talk about next post and some friends visited us for the last week, but besides that, we stayed to ourselves. We dont go to restaurants (order take out) and besides for the film fest, we dont get into any groups or among groups.  Even the summer before, 2021,which was much more dangerous, wasnt a concern to us.  So, thankfully it is not something which we really have to concern ourselves so much with, helping the summer vacation to be totally pleasant and relaxing.   

More summer post still coming next even though it is into September as I write this.  I cant get enough of the lovely summer it was.  

Was listening to a classic Indie Rock album and band