first day of summer vacation

(or "How I May Have Shot My Wad Too Soon")

Tuesday was the first day of summer vacation for my boys. As the great prophet Alanis Morrisette once said, isn't it ironic that the day dawned with a monstrous rain and wind storm. Thanks, Mother Nature. Thanks for taunting us like we're hormonal teenage boys hoping to feel up your bosom when you flash us with your warm temperatures and sunny skies, only to have you give us flashes of lightening instead. You're a little minx, Mother Nature.

Left peering out the window like two unwanted orphans watching their little orphan friends drive happily away with their new families, my boys turned to me in hopes that I would be their summertime savior. All before I'd had breakfast!

I've declared this "The Summer We Don't Watch TV/Play PS2/Get On The Computer/Act Like Emo Teens Who Just Broke Up With Their Girlfriends (So Please Go Outside Already So Mommy Can Do Those Things)," but I've not had a great deal of time to bulk up my bag of tricks to make this plan possible, and the rain and their forlorn looks kind of caught me off guard. I spent several minutes repeating "Give me a minute, would ya?" until I came up with some standbys. So far for summer vacation, we've:

• baked blueberry muffins. From scratch!
• debated how the passage of 15 minutes feels vastly different from the whip speed frenzy of five minutes. Here's some magic for you - it's like three times as fast!
• read five books.
• answered 555 questions (seriously!)
• baked three dozen chocolate chip cookies. From scratch! (Thanks, Mother Nature. You're a temptress AND an enabler, and my ass says no more, dammit!)
• chuckled to myself at the idea of my ass actually speaking, then explained the reason for my giddiness to the boys without actually using the word ass.
• Alas...used the word pee and poop a lot in a debate about who and what pees and poops. Just because it's summer vacation, it doesn't mean the learning hast to come to a constipated halt. I finally won the discussion by referring the good book...
• ...or so I thought until we made up songs about peeing and pooping (sample lyric: "Peeing is freeing, you can do it while you're kneeling. Pooping beats snooping, you can do it while you're stooping." I smell Grammy, my friends! And that's ALL I hope I smell!).

When there was finally a small break in the storms, I slathered the boys in sunscreen and hustled them out to the car so we could exploring new parks in hopes of finding one that wasn't too muddy. We thought we'd discovered the perfect one when we spied one teeming with young kids monkeying around the bars and slipping down the slides. So many kids, in fact, it made it far too difficult to do any of Backpacking Dad's playground workout, thus forcing me to find a comfortable spot at a picnic table after playing with the boys a bit, and search out a moment of peace in this first full day of summer vacation.

The weather calls for rain the remainder of our week here, and I'm a bit concerned that I may have given all I've got to this summer vacation before one full day comes to an end. It's quite possible that by around 1:38 p.m., Thursday, I'm going to be out of ideas to make this a great summer for the boys, and will cave on the whole "...Summer We Don't Watch TV/Play PS2/Get On The Computer/Act Like Emo Teens Who Just Broke Up With Their Girlfriends..." thing, much to the boys' delight (and, I actually think, perhaps their plan because, and I could be wrong, but I think I heard them chanting something that may have been a prayer to the rain gods as I was yanking that first dozen cookies out of the oven because seriously, the kids love the Playstation). However, if that does seem to be the case, I can fall back on the tried and true standby. Sing it with me, won't you?

"Peeing is freeing, you can do it while you're kneeling. Pooping beats snooping, you can do it while you're stooping."