Summer, and the end of it

The year I'm not excited to set up my classroom and shop for school supplies is the year I should no longer be teaching. Thankfully, I don't think I'm anywhere near that. We arrived home last night from the longest vacation we've taken -- well, ever, really, and I haven't even finished unpacking my suitcase yet. I did, however, head into school today to get my classroom ready. I left it in pretty good shape back in June, but I needed to work on the walls a bit and clean my desks and organize things. It's more or less ready to go, and I'm beginning to get excited.

The rhythm of the seasons is like this, always: I end the year a little burned out and more than a little tired. This past year, for various reasons, I was more stressed than usual. I was so ready to get out of there in June. But at precisely the right moment in August, something clicks -- it's quiet and subtle and I almost don't realize it's happened, but I reach a point where I can consciously say to myself, I am ready to go back. I want to buy new notebooks and pens. I want to sit with my planner and my notebook and a stack of novels and flip through my poetry collections and figure out how to talk about it all with kids. It's a good feeling. Sometimes August is like one long Sunday afternoon -- there's a certain amount of dread involved, combined with a strange inertia -- but at some point, anticipation for September kicks in.

September is nothing like Monday. September is golden, optimistic, hopeful. September is warmth and crunchy fall leaves and the transition from shorts to sweatshirts. September is a huge box of markers my students haven't yet ruined, it's new shoes, it's stacks of crisp white paper. September is kids who haven't grown too comfortable or too complacent yet. September is settling into a rhythm that hasn't yet become routine, hasn't yet become drudgery. September is falling in love with my life all over again, the way I do every autumn even when I am stressed and overwhelmed and seriously doubting my own competency.

So today, today, on this first day back after vacation, I decided not to dwell on the fact that summer is essentially over. I decided, instead, to look forward to the start of a new school year. I am stressed and overwhelmed; I am teaching a lot of brand-new stuff this year, including two brand-new classes. Frankly, I'm sort of terrified. But I'm also excited and desperately hoping I can rise to the challenge, because if I can pull this off, I'll be teaching my dream schedule.

Also, also, this is the year my daughter starts kindergarten. This feels so huge and wonderful and scary to me. I'm not quite sure how much I'm going to write about it on this public blog, to be honest; as she grows, I wonder if I should be a bit more selective in what and how I write about her in such a public space. I also feel a little protective about her schooling experience, knowing how opinionated people are about school in general. For now, I'll say this: we're blessed with what seems to be a great neighborhood school, and she's excited and ready. And I'm working on feeling ready myself. It's wonderful, it's bittersweet.

I can't believe I'm already writing about school. On the other hand, while we always talk about summer passing so quickly, it seems about right. I've had an absolutely lovely summer, and planning our vacation for August meant that I had to let go of a lot of my usual anxiety or I wouldn't have enjoyed it so much. And I did. We spent almost two-and-a-half weeks on the road between all the places we love the best. Our vacations right now always involve trips to visit our families instead of, I don't know, more exotic locations, but at this point in our lives I am really very okay with that.

I wrote a lot on the road, but I'm not really sure how to condense it here, and anyway, I'm not sure how interesting it would be to the general public. Instead, I'll share some things I've learned (or had reinforced) in the past couple of weeks:

It is very, very difficult to be vegetarian in North Dakota.

Planning for time out of the car is crucial on long driving days. I know where to find a park in just about any town between Seattle and Minneapolis.

I am not as patient as I want to be.

Spending so much time in extremely close quarters with my family really enhances all of our, um, quirks. Maintaining a sense of humor about all of this is absolutely key to our survival.

Moses Lake, Washington and Miles City, Montana are so very hot in August and there is just...no relief anywhere. Moses Lake has no shade. Miles City has way too many bugs. And yet, I have an inexplicable fondness for both towns.

I don't think I am ever as truly relaxed as I am when we spend time at Pleasant Pines in Minnesota.

Mosquitoes still love me. Especially in Minnesota, where they are big enough to shoot.

My best friend is happier than I've ever seen her, and even though this has come through in our various forms of long-distance communication, it was wonderful to see in person and I'm so honored to have been a part of her wedding day. Also, Dan has turned her into a big old softie, because we both bawled our faces off when I hugged her good-bye. (Should I not write that in public? Sorry, Carmen.)

The wedding was in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota and it is beautiful there. It would challenge all of your assumptions about what North Dakota looks like.

I don't know if MacKenzie River Pizza is actually the best pizza in the world, but I have such a fierce devotion to it that I still tell everyone it is. Same thing with Pickle Barrel sandwiches.

If someone throws up in Bogart Pool in Bozeman, it closes for the rest of the day. (Thankfully, it was not because of either of my children that I had to learn this.)

Splash parks are perfect for our family right now. I fell in love with two of them on this trip, and I'm not one of the moms who sits on a towel and watches.

I need to do a much better job of breaking in my hiking boots before hiking ten miles.

Emerald Lake with all those alpine meadows full of wildflowers is still worth the blisters.

Suzannah prefers to be barefoot as much as possible, like I do. She hardly wore shoes at all at the lake; she looked so golden and brown and summery by the time we left.

My parents will still happily sacrifice their dignity to please the children they love. They both ran through the sprinkler in their backyard in their work clothes because it delighted Suzannah. (I never had all that much dignity to begin with, so you don't even have to ask if I joined in the fun.)

To my children, Grandpa and Grandma's house is better than Disneyland.

I was really naive to believe that my children were too young to find so many creative ways to a.) annoy each other and b.) annoy me during our long hours on the road. Let's talk about how Suzannah taught Isaac how to make vomit noises. And the "Smell my feet" game. And the way they managed to yell "Mine!" at each other for like a hundred hours straight -- they sounded like the seagulls in Finding Nemo. You'd think they'd have grown tired of these things after the first ten hours of driving, BUT NO.

Despite all that, I still love road trips.

The more time I spent away from Facebook, the less inclined I was to check in. When I did, I wondered how I sort through so much noise on a daily basis. Now I'm wondering how to continue to use it in a way that doesn't suck so much of my time/annoy me/frustrate me and still stay "connected" to people I care about.

Making sure I build in time for exercise on vacation makes a significant difference in my mood, energy level, patience, etc. Matt and I went for long runs, long swims, or long hikes pretty much at least every other day -- until this week, because my heels are in bad shape after Wednesday's epic hike. Today was my first run since then, which I needed because I'm running a 5k in less than a week. Also, I've spent a lot of time in the car again over the past couple of days, it's been hot, I ate way too much pizza for dinner last night, and I feel just generally kind of gross.

After living in our little house for eight years, I still love the way it smells when we walk through the door after a long absence.

Sometimes it takes a trip through time, so to speak, for me to realize how lucky I am to live exactly where I do. I can't even articulate how much I love Montana, and in many ways I also feel perfectly at home in Minnesota and would probably be happy living there as well, but I really do think of the Pacific Northwest as home. And it feels so, so good to be back.