Since we're in beta, we're learning a lot, and one thing I'm learning is that if I'm gonna be everyone's friend, and my last blog post is going to show up on your home page, I really can't leave the same post sitting there for a week or more. But I did this week, and I'll try not to do it again!
I had an excuse, as I let everyone know in my last post. And just briefly: The graduation was terrific, the graduate was gorgeous and very, very happy, the party was great, my visiting family behaved very well, it all was lovely. Now it's back to real life, and here's the real kick in the ass: I realize, it's endless summer for me, and I really don't like it! Now that I don't have to wake up and help get Nora to school, I don't have to wake up until I feel like it. Luckily, I feel like it, generally, early enough to get to work, but not early enough to go to the gym and/or read the New York Times or get a jump on email or...really, do anything besides shower and get dressed.)
This is going to be a problem. For 15 years, since she started preschool, I had getting Nora up early to shape my morning and order my slacker life. Every summer I've struggled to stick with my exercise and news routine and mostly failed, but I've known September (really late August here in California) would get me back in shape. But now I'm on my own, permanently.
It's OK. I've enjoyed being a slacker this week, I deserved a break. But what happens next?
DakiniDancer
Niece of Dakini
Sheldon The Wonderhorse
Susan Walsh
Big Uncle Jack
jimmymac1025
Salon.com
Comments
All joking aside, you are starting to make me nervous. I've been looking forward to my empty nest. But the more you blog the more I realize that much of my motivation to be normal and do stuff like get up in the morning has to do with having kids I need to get up in the morning. Left to my own devices I will likely will sleep until noon.
Perhaps I should stick the youngest in a box to keep them from growing up and convince them that they are perpetually a child? Then I won't have to self-motivate for just myself. Or maybe adopt a whole colony of cavies.
"What comes next" will probably surprise you. I advise just going with the flow, for a while at least. It is the first opportunity you have had in at least 15 years to see what happens when you are free to just see what happens. And if nothing else, the process will give you something to write about so your thousand or so open-salon friends won't get tired of seeing that stale old post.
You might even meet some interesting people at the gym too -- maybe somebody that would like to walk on the beach with you and go to concerts and stuff like that. :-) Too personal? Sorry.
Paying a trainer might be a good idea, except...I'm a curmudgeon. Working out is alone time. But come September, I'll have plenty of alone time, so that might work.
Is it true that this particular YMCA is the one the Village People sang about? I always liked to think so, even though it didn't seem that overtly gay when I was there.
J.D., that restaurant changes annually, but we'll go to it, whatever it is.
Nice to know
The cats here have dossier on everything that moves around at night.
So it's Starbucks then Joan. That place never changes! :-)
You will talk upon the phone
To your daughter far away
Who will tell you of her day
It will almost be the same
As when she lived in your same
Household where you watched her grow
Bigger than a run-on sentence by Conanson, Joe
Now you can concentrate on your editing
And all the projects you were forget-eting
Once again you'll be Salon's greatest hero
And fight back the machinations of Walter Shapiro
With your thorough command of language
You'll deftly avoid the users' haranguage
And much less frequently will they pillory
You over your defenses of campaigning Hillary
Joan Walsh's sublime verbiage will relaim top slot
And be regarded as a punditocracy bon mot
Worthy of saving and printing out to carry in a wheelbarrow
To show and shame and impress Joe Scarborough
Whose cell-phone texts will be full of humility
At your vocabulary's rhetorical agility
So the next time you question Reverend Wright
And praise Hillary's glorious will to fight
Remember that just because you're tall
And just because you're a regular on Hardball
Doesn't mean you can make an issue
Of the tears you cried into a tissue
While watching your daughter get a diploma
Because we still expect you to support Obama
What I really don't get is how all of those Obama fans can go on and on about what a unifying presence he is (and I mostly agree) while they themselves do just about everything possible to alienate Clinton's coalition. I didn't even start out in it (Clinton's coalition). I wanted Dodd first. Then Edwards. Then it could have been a toss-up between Clinton and Obama, except for Matthews, et al. on MSNBC, and all of the rest of it... I'm over 50, so I just couldn't ignore it. I remember things that a lot of them don't.
You must be racking up an awful lot of karma points...
First things first: pretend_farmer, thank you, I would love that. XH, all is forgiven, this is hilarious. Stellaa, thank you, it's been really, really hard, as you know. I've gone weeks without reading my letters. ktm, thanks, it's been wonderful to have you on Open!