Auld Lang Summer

Today (and yes, I know I'm late again with the blog) I'm taking a Mental Health Day off from the Day Job.

Nope. I'm not writing (except for this.)

Nope. I'm not gonna Twitter (not much, anyway.)

Instead, I'm going to take The Kiddo to her last day of swimming lessons, because this summer she has gone from terrified of water to swimming like a fish, and I have yet to see a stroke of it.

And then I'm going to let her play at her friends' house, while I do something supremely important.

Absolutely nothing productive.

Yep. No projects. No grocery shopping. No back-to-school-clothes shopping. No cleaning. No de-cluttering. No writing. No research on a WIP. No research on agents or publishing houses. No research on DIY projects. Or getting organized. Or chasing down that 25th hour of the day.

I intend to have a summer day like I had when I was ten. Unstructured. Unproductive. Because I've been waaay too productive lately when it comes to my life.

I was somewhat lucky growing up. My mom was at first a stay-at-home mom and then a work-at-home mom. Summers were an endless string of come-what-may days, where there was no rush, no worry, no fuss, no muss.

We were productive, don't get me wrong. My mom was always one to have a project going -- usually building herself yet another kitchen on our hill. Summers also meant produce -- corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, okra, squash. We grew it and picked it and shelled/husked/peeled/cut it, and then we canned or froze it. It was hard work, but it was fun work, and I don't remember any deadlines save for food safety ones.

I remember one day, very clearly, that we'd spent the morning shelling purple hull peas (for you Yankees, think field peas, but much, much better) outside by our pool, where we wouldn't make a mess in the house. Even in the morning, the Georgia heat and humidity sweltered. My mom took one wistful look at the pool, set aside her big pan of shelled peas, and jumped in the pool, clothes and all.

If there was one thing that I could give The Kiddo, it would be a single summer like that: a summer where I didn't have to get up and put on dry-clean-only clothes and go work with my brain all day in an office, while she had to get up early and go to the sitter's. It would be a summer where there was no rush, no worry, no fuss, no muss. And if we had a pool, we would jump in with our clothes on.