Summer: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Bikini Bottoms

Summer a.k.a. misery and swimsuit angst.

We ended the school year with a nasty cold. Monkey came home an absolute grouch on the last day of school. Not what you’d expect from a kid who’s been looking forward to summer break since, oh, September.

Turned out he was sick and the misery has made its way through the family, which is why I’ve been MIA. When all you can come up with to blog about is the quantity and consistency of mucous, it’s best not to post.

But now we’re finding our summer groove and despite my first sentence, I’m feeling optimistic about the next two months.

For one thing, Kory has been court ordered to take a vacation. Well, not quite. But he’s about to max out on vacation time, and was told he better take time off. I, of course, have been telling him he needs a break for months. Not sure yet what we’ll do. Nothing too spectacular. That’s just not how we roll.

In order to avoid constant guilt over letting the boys have too much screen time, I set up some daily requirements for math, reading and exercise. They’re pretty minimal but at least at the end of the summer I won’t be handing little Neanderthals back to the teachers.

My mom sent up a box of old comic books—Hagaar the Horrible, Beetle Bailey, B.C., Peanuts—and the boys are devouring them. Great literature? Maybe not, but everything counts when you’re nurturing a life-long Neanderthal, I mean, reader.

Monkey is taking drum lessons, going to band camp, and banging the heck out of his snare drum on a daily basis. He’s not interested in using the practice pad, so we’re urging him to keep the pounding to daylight hours.

I wish I could say my yearly swimsuit search was over. As if I didn’t already need Xanax just to face swimsuit season, this year Target.com is determined to fit me with a straight jacket for all my water fun needs.

I ordered a swim top and shorts and received the top and a pair of bikini bottoms. The bottoms were … unacceptable. I tried again and received another bikini bottom instead of the shorts. I called and had the pleasure of speaking to a highschooler about my swimwear needs. He told me the website was in error and to try ordering my shorts again in a week.

Today I went back to Target.com and it’s obvious someone attempted to correct the error. The swim shorts that were incorrectly labeled bikini bottoms have been changed to swim shorts. The verbiage is correct for the black swim shorts and the blue swim shorts, but the purple swim shorts I want are still labeled bikini bottoms. I called and talked to someone from Mexico about my problem. He said he’d submit a report and I could check back in a few days.

Meanwhile, I have that funny old ad snafu running through my head:

Our swimsuits are sensational! They’re simply the tops!

Looks like I’ll be making do with last year’s bathing suit a little while longer.

If you’re luckier than me, lounging by the pool in adequate swimwear, and looking for a good read, I have a suggestion.

My friend Carla’s book Five Days in Skye is just the kind of delicious escape read that begs for a towel and umbrella drink. It releases today!

So what does this summer hold for you?

The Summer I Lived with a Mime and a Grizzly Bear

Raise your hand if you’ve cleaned slushy out of your car seats in the past two weeks.

Yeah. It’s definitely summer now.

My house is a wreck. I’m out of band-aids. My pantry is empty. I find myself near tears at least once every day.

And, yes, my blog has been neglected.

So here’s what we’ve been up to in the past few weeks.

We had a garage sale and got new-to-us couches. Somehow these two events have resulted in the complete rearrangement of my house. There are toys all over my normally off-limits front room and couches and nightstands in my garage. We plan to move Monkey into his own room this summer so the upstairs of our house is in flux. I’ve decided as long as my bed is where it belongs when I finally fall into it, the rest can just take care of itself.

Chunky, who was wearing all black and obsessed with vampires two weeks ago, has now moved on to mimes. Yes, mimes. He is always demanding that I watch him “stuck in a box” or “walking down stairs.” Unfortunately, he seems inspired to perform while we’re in the car, so every red light has me twisted around in my seat applauding “running while stuck in a booster seat.”

Mimes? Really? Is this better or worse than vampires? You tell me.

Monkey has spent the last few weeks being ten-going-on-thirteen. He is really, really cranky. He sleeps till 10:00 AM then spends the rest of the day trying to meet a caloric quota that would have me wearing a tent by the end of the week. I think he’s also grown an inch since school got out. I tiptoe around the office where he's holed-up and frantically wave food offerings whenever he pokes his head out. It’s a lot like living with a grizzly bear.

So there you have it. If I wrote a book about this summer it would be called The Summer I Lived with a Mime and a Grizzly Bear. I just hope the final chapter doesn’t involve the grizzly bear eating the mime. Maybe the mime will turn out to be a vampire mime and thus an even match for the grizzly bear.

Speaking of writing books, I finally finished this round of edits on The Immortal Heathcliff. I would feel good about this if I wasn’t nauseated by the mere mention of The Book that Tried to Kill Me. I’m excited to get back to work on my dystopian/steampunk novel, provided I’m not devoured by a grizzly bear.

For the writers out there, what does your writing life look like in the summer time?

For the older moms out there, are there any foods that keep a growing boy full longer than five minutes?

For the psychologists out there: 8-year-old vampire mime. Should I be concerned?

Vampires on Bicycles

Ah, summer.

The other day my 8-year-old rode down the middle of the street on his bicycle wearing all black and spouting his own version of vampire lore. Did you know wearing black is lucky for a vampire?

It’s a good thing I’m past caring what the neighbors think.

Our first week of summer has been stressful. I have great plans for getting my kids on a schedule and improving some bad eating habits that have slipped in. Relax, none of those habits have anything to do with blood! But first I need to finish a rewrite. I’d hoped to have it done before school got out, but with one thing or another…

So this blog will be short and sweet. Well, sweet if you think vampire-obsessed 8-year-old’s are sweet. Since I'm also considered a moving violation when I’m plotting and walking at the same time, I find Chunky’s world-building charming. I’m sure some parents would be concerned, but having lived through his leprechaun stage and countless “I’m a puppy dog” scenarios, I know to let the “story” play out.

Speaking of stories, just today I saw that there’s a graphic novel version of Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow. I loved reading it in college so I think I might have to pick it up.

I just started Divergent and it promises to be good. On my summer reading list with the boys are The Invention of Hugo Cabret and The Lightning Thief.

I’d love to hear what you’re reading this summer. What’s on your TBR pile? If you have kids, what are they reading?

Oh, and in case you need something to look forward to, check out the trailer for Les Miserables. It gave me goosebumps!

It's Harder Than It Looks

With the exception of housework, I don’t like to leave things undone. So much so, in fact, that when I’m singing a song and I can’t remember the words I will finish it by saying, “The rest of the song.” My husband finds this hilarious and will wait for me to hum myself into a corner and be forced to sing something like, “la, la, la, yeah…the rest of the song.”

Right now I’m just about out of my mind because I’m nearly done with the novel I’ve been working on for a year and a half. But it’s summer, the kids are home. They are so home. So very, very home. Help! Somebody save me! They’re HOME!

I try all day to keep them busy, entertained, and not killing each other. Bedtime comes late. I wish I had the energy to write once they’ve finally gone to sleep, but instead I end up slouched on the sofa, watching Mr. Bean and thanking God that I made it through another day. And hoping my ADHD kiddo doesn’t grow up to BE Mr. Bean.



Even though I’m not getting a lot of writing done, my Work In Progress is on my mind all the time. Kory is forced to live in whatever story world I’m working on and has become accustomed to me rattling on about fictional characters and problems. Sometimes he listens and gives me great feedback. Sometimes he nods and says, “Uh, huh.”

The other day I was rambling about a plot problem, just thinking out loud while he relaxed on the sofa—probably wishing for some peace and quiet. I finally figured out how I was going to cause the disaster I needed to precipitate the book’s climax. I must’ve stopped babbling abruptly because Kory looked up from his position on the couch, quirked a brow at me and said, “The rest of the book?”

Exactly. I wish it were that easy!

Lemonade Economics

We tried an experiment this week. We’ve been looking for new and effective ways to promote books and subsidize my mom’s jewelry-making habit, so we decided to try our luck with a booth at a local farmer’s market.

Thinking this would be a good opportunity for the boys to learn a little about commerce, we suggested that they run a lemonade stand next to our table. They really got into the idea, so on Wednesday we loaded tables, chairs, a canopy, boxes of books, jewelry, a cooler, and two little boys into the van.

Setting up was a nightmare. Just putting the canopy up requires an engineering degree. I’d only had a crash course on the front lawn given by my overworked hubby. When I couldn’t get the framework in place, I called him. He was on his way home from working a night shift at the test lab but agreed to come to my rescue. Thankfully, help came from several of the other folks at the market, and Kory got to go home and sleep.

With everything set up, more or less, we were open and ready for business. That’s when we learned a hard truth about retail. Selling something is easy when you’re seven and nine-years-old and adorable. In fact, you can sell a small cup of lemonade for twenty-five cents and people will give you a dollar and say, “Keep the change.”

The boys made a killing.

Monkey, in particular, got into the whole salesman thing. He hollered, “You want some lemonade?” at every passerby, and when things were slow, he went out and tracked down customers. He hounded the other merchants in our row so relentlessly that I thought he’d get some cross looks. But they were all patient, and most eventually gave in and bought some lemonade. Unfortunately, being Monkey, he didn’t remember they’d already bought some and continued harassing them.

It’s nice to know he has career options if his whole playing-video-games-for-money plan doesn’t work out.

But you should have seen the boys' faces when we told them they had to pay Daddy three dollars for supplies. “What?” “Are you kidding?” We explained that in a real business, you have to purchase your supplies and that money comes out of your profit.

I almost told them they had to pay me for actually making the lemonade, but they were so indignant about their overhead I didn’t want to bring labor costs into the picture. Next time.

As for the other, less adorable and less obnoxious members of our enterprise, well, we did all right. Decent, in fact. But I’m not sure if we’ll try again. The canopy snapped halfway into the afternoon, and we had to enlist the help of some customers to take it down before it crashed on our heads. We lost a few necklaces to the wind. They were blown off and broke on the pavement. We did sell some books and met some great people, but it’s kind of humiliating to be outsold by a couple of little boys trying to earn enough money for a Lego set.

Then again, if anyone ever tells you the life of an author is glamorous, they're probably trying to sell you something.

In honor of the boys success, I think it's appropriate to share this YouTube of a clearly ADHD duck and his take on lemonade stands.