Random thoughts on summer

The smell of summer. I spent the summer after my sophomore year in college studying in Venezuela, in a mountain town not far from the border with Colombia. Nothing can bring me back to those days faster than the smell of diesel on a warm summer afternoon. It's such a strange smell to love but I do... it's one of the best smells in the world. I associate it with men carrying huge bunches of bananas riding burros down the sidewalk, advertisements for the discotecas soaped onto the windshields of cars, run-down rusty vans careening down the streets taking people where they need to go, chocolate cake and mango shakes for breakfast, tiny stone chapels hidden in the unlikeliest of corners, the warm crumbly corn taste of arepas, the vivid cacophony of reds and fushias and turquoise all mixed together in indescribable beauty.

The act of summer. It's an ongoing experiment for us. Three years ago we were in two Moms groups, a playgroup, a weekly scrapbooking group, enrolled in 2 weeks of daycamp, members of a pool club and vacation bound x 2. At the end of that summer, I realized my kids had not spent more than 2 afternoons just hanging out in our own yard. Since then we've cut things back one by one until this summer only the pool membership and the scrapbooking remain. We're going to try out some new things like the summer reading program at the library, maybe a day or two at the municipal playground program, maybe some craft afternoons at the local craft store. But mostly we're going to hang out and have fun together instead of rushing from one activity to the next. There is going to be a lot of sprinkler and sandbox time, a lot of popsicles and a lot of hot, lazy summer afternoons with nowhere to go. So says the plan.