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