This Week's To-Do's

Or: my quest to get everything done before summer begins... which appears to be... next week?!

I consider it one of my achievements as a mother that I can readily admit that summer sucks— or at least that it can suck. I feel like so much of the summer mythology for kids is how great summer is, but the truth is, my kids find the season deeply unsettling. I have learned that they find it slightly less unsettling when I say out loud, “hey this kind of sucks, huh?” We miss their schools. We miss the routines. We miss their friends. We miss the adults who know their habits and keep them occupied and thinking.

I’ve also learned that summer generally sucks specifically for me when I’m trying to be too many versions of myself at the same time, striving to be the mom who organizes and produces art projects and who keeps the bathroom clean and who exercises most mornings and who makes a lot of delicious food from scratch and who is happy because she got to work in her garden and who surprises everyone with a trip to a fun beach nearby and who packed the car with everything everyone needs for the day, and oh yeah, the mom WHO GETS TO WRITE BOOKS (or even just literally the occasional sentence).

Anyway, for this reason, I figured out a few summers ago that I have to let my ambitions for my work go dormant when it’s summer; that way, I get to really enjoy being with my kids (which is often, truly, such a joy) and experience pleasant surprise when I find myself with a few unexpectedly quiet moments to string together some salient thoughts, instead of framing it the other way around and feeling constant flames on the side of my face. [And: I know it is a privilege to move work to a back burner in order to be with my kids, but I’ll be honest when I say it doesn’t always feel like one (which is how privilege often works)].

Anyway, summer begins NEXT WEEK.

Summer.

Begins.

Next.

Week.

WHATTTT

And there is a lot to do before everyone is… around!

So here’s but a small glimpse of what I’m hoping to get done before then (I don’t think there are enough hours between now and next Friday to physically accomplish all these tasks, and these certainly aren’t all of what’s on my list by a long shot, but that is not going to keep my Type A personality from trying):

• Look at the notes I just got back on an essay from my editor on an anthology about failure

• Think some thoughts about those notes

• Make changes on the essay based on those thoughts

• Send the revised essay back to the editor

• Clean out the rain gutters

• Fold all the laundry in Laundry Mountain

• Vaccuum. Literally anywhere.

• Send in the rebate for my new contacts

• Put up the two cattle panel trellises over our raised beds (I cannot achieve this alone, and the fact that it has rained 11 of the last Vermont Saturdays has not helped matters)

• Mow the front lawn

• Mow the side yard

• Mow the back lawn

• Plant the two basil plants I just got in the raised beds

• Plant the two salvia I just got (on clearance! because who can resist basically free salvia!— only a monster, that’s who) in the side yard

• Water every little baby seedling coming up, and fret over them (oh what sweet little beans and peas and sunflowers and lettuces and kale and bok choy! The babies!)

• Cut up that watermelon I got at Trader Joe’s and remember to offer it to my children

• Work on my AWP panel proposal

• Write a document to the people who have agreed to be on the AWP panel with me, about what I need from them for the proposal

• Send that document, and follow up on it until everyone sends me back their info

• Turn in the AWP panel proposal

• Order my 8yo water shoes

• Volunteer at my 8yo’s jog-a-thon

• Go to my 8yo’s Math Fair

• Take my 8yo to her aftercare end-of-school party (which takes place on a day she doesn’t usually have aftercare)

• Figure out what we are giving our 8yo’s teachers as an end-of-year gift

• Get those gifts

• Give those gifts to my 8yo’s teachers

• Hydrate

• Send that email to that guy

• Send that text to that lady, and the fifteen other texts I have been avoiding sending

• Make my dermatology appointment

• Call my doctor to check in about that thing

• Clean up the living room

• Clean up our bedroom

• Go through my 8yo’s drawers

• Distribute all the things my 8yo has outgrown, to our network of hand-me-down receivers

• Make my 16yo clean up his room, no, but actually, like REALLY YOU HAVE TO CLEAN IT UP

• “Clean up” the family room (which is actually cleaning up 8 zillion abandoned art projects which everyone will be mad at me for destroying)

• Clean up my office/the guest room to prepare for our summer guests (this room is currently… chaos. Books… everywhere.)

• Hang that mirror I just thrifted over my bureau

• Power wash the adirondack chairs

• Power wash the deck

• Weed the garden

• Go through the garage and take everything to Goodwill. (Everything. Who needs any of it!)

So. Yeah. Certainly going to get all of that done! No problem. I GOT THIS.

What’s on your to-do list this week?

M.