Monthly Archives: May 2013

Why I Hate Summer

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Memorial Day weekend is upon us and with it the unofficial start of summer. School will be out soon, vacations are planned, sunscreen and bug spray have been stockpiled and we are awaiting the infestation of millions of cicadas. The excitement is almost palpable, etched on little faces like its Christmas Eve.

And I hate all of it. Well, not the school part.

I am a pasty-white girl with frizzy hair and the sweetest blood this side of the Mississippi. I spend summer slathering and re-slathering my skin in SPF 75 and I will still freckle. My hair will look like I stuck my finger in a socket for the next 12 weeks. Mosquitoes will flock to me like I’m a walking dessert buffet. I will spend the summer smelling of zinc oxide and DEET.

I hate sand in my shoes. I loathe getting saltwater up my nose. Chlorine turns my expensively-colored hair all sorts of hues. Shaving my legs is a chore and bikini waxes are the ultimate revenge for Eve biting that goddamn apple.

My genetic make-up was refined over a millennia in the cloudy climes of Ireland, a place where they built a temple so the sun’s rays could take the souls of the dead at the winter solstice. I therefore sweat constantly and profusely in a vain attempt to keep cool. My skin can turn pink after 15 minutes of sun exposure. My husband’s family lives near the ocean in Orange County, CA and on the occasions he brings up moving closer to them I remind him we’d have to invent a giant sunscreen bubble I could live in just to survive.

Compounding all of this is the addition of children to the equation. More sunscreen. More bug spray. Shoes and clothes and hair filled with sand. Stinky, sweaty feet. Complaints about bug bites and it being sooooo hooooottt mom….

It’s not all bad I guess. I do love thunderstorms and boardwalks at night. Barbecues and baseball games with hot dogs and a freezing cold beer are some of life’s small treasures. Well, until I try to peel myself off of the stadium seat I’ve become glued to. I like drippy cherry Popsicles and frozen lemonade and county fair funnel cake too. A cool summer evening with the breeze coming up off the ocean and a chilled glass of wine is a delight. But still.

Our air conditioning crapped out last week and we thought we might need to replace the unit, a prospect we can’t afford at the moment. The thought of spending the summer pregnant and then with a newborn in a house without AC was terrifying. Thankfully it only took a few pounds of freon and a simple repair to fix, and so I can spend the next few months holed up in comfort, Miss Havisham-style.

I look forward to autumn, my favorite season, where cool breezes replace hot winds and humidity gives way to crispness. I love warm sweaters and fuzzy slippers, tall boots and patterned tights. The smell of fireplaces in our neighborhood burning away while I sip hot cocoa and wrap myself in my favorite blanket. We’ll carve pumpkins and make pies; pick apples and start a leaf collection. Stews and hearty meals will simmer in the crockpot while the girls play outside in a bug-free yard. I get to buy brand-new school supplies for my little kindergartener and walk her to the bus stop in galoshes and light jackets.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Now to just get through the next three months…

…Often Go Astray

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Shutters, half-done. Judge for yourself!

Shutters, half-done. Judge for yourself!

So remember that grand plan I announced here two months ago about moving to Charlottesville?
Yeah, that’s not happening.

House was on the market for six weeks. In the grand scheme of things that is not a long time, but the housing market in the DC area is incredibly tight and we figured we’d have a contract in a couple of weeks. In fact we thought the house would sell too fast and we’d have to rent back for a little while until we found a place to move into. But the weeks dragged on, the strangers traipsed through our house, and none made an offer.

It is now early May. If we got a great contract tomorrow we wouldn’t close until the end of the month at the earliest, realistically mid-June. That could work, but we are rapidly coming up to the arrival of baby #3 at the end of July. The longer the house sat, the more I saw myself 9.5 months pregnant, trying to pack up our house, only to unpack days later a couple hundred miles away. And register for school. And find someone to deliver the baby. And get a pediatrician.

We lowered the price, twice, to the lowest we could accept and break even. We dangled an incentive for buyers who didn’t like our small, dated kitchen- we’d contribute some money at closing towards a renovation. We had 3 open houses and more than 40 buyers come through. Many of them liked the house, with the exception of the aforementioned kitchen and its proximity to a major road. Those are two things we can’t do anything about. Our house is gray; with pinky-raspberry colored shutters that the previous owners had thought was red but didn’t quite turn out that way. I enjoyed them- they made the place look cheery. Our realtor (and our house-painter neighbor) thought it might help if we painted them black, so we did. It didn’t.

I also can’t articulate what a pain it has been to keep the house clean when you have two kids, and the inconvenience of being kicked out of your house unexpectedly between 5-7 on a weeknight. It was starting to wear and we felt like we had used all the tools we had at our disposal. In the meantime life moved on around us- kindergarten orientation was around the corner, Bridget was given a spot at a part-time preschool, and the universe just seemed to be sending the signal that we weren’t going anywhere.

We don’t have to move, so we’ll stay. We’ll re-evaluate things next year. For now I don’t know if it’s my nesting instinct kicking in or what, but I’m taking comfort in familiarity – the same doctor and hospital that I had with Bridget, supportive neighbors and friends, Maeve going to school with the boy next door. We’re kind of relieved actually- we may not have gotten what we wanted, but maybe we got what we needed.

Except for my pink shutters. Those I want back.