With Age Comes a Touch of Wisdom

Some days, it’s hard to be a grown up, especially during the summer.

When I drove home at lunch today, there were several houses with children playing outside. Summer vacation is here and as far as they’re concerned, time is a wide open expanse filled with play time, swimming, late nights and sleeping in the next day.

I miss that sometimes. I don’t think it matters how much you like your job, I’m sure there isn’t a working adult out there who hasn’t, at some point, longed for the carefree days of summer vacation. Certainly, most of us can use some of our precious ‘vacation time’ at work and take some time off but…it’s not the same. Having those seemingly endless weeks without anything firm to do just seems like a luxury we didn’t really appreciate when we had them.

It’s ironic, really. The old adage goes “with age comes wisdom.” The trouble is that it would be nice if we’d had the wisdom earlier so we could appreciate things a little more. The older I get, the more I appreciate the small things. Being a working adult for the better part of 15 years has made me remember the days of summer vacation and wished I’d appreciated it a little more when I had it.

The same goes for school though. In high school, I was shy. I was one of those unfortunate individuals who cared too much about what other people thought. As I’ve grown older, I’m far less shy and I’m far less worried about other people’s opinions of me. I still care, naturally but I don’t care enough to let it stop being me.

I suppose that’s a form of wisdom that I’m slowly gaining as I age. It’s just that I wish I’d known that when I needed it back then. Yet without that experience, I probably wouldn’t have gained the wisdom in the first place. It’s a strange circular pattern.

I didn’t waste my summers when I was a child by any means. There were always friends to be played with, books to be read, games going on in the street in the evening. There were trips to the park, to my grandparents’. There were long walks with my dad in the evenings when the sun didn’t start to set in England until way after 9 p.m.

When we moved to the States, our summer vacation was longer. In the UK, it was always 6 weeks. Here, in the U.S., it was closer to 12 weeks. Those summer vacations were filled with trips to the swimming pool to escape the heat. Trips to the mall because we didn’t have air conditioning at home yet and the mall did. There were get-togethers with friends. I had one friend who had MTV and we didn’t have cable so I’d go over hers and watch MTV while her parents’ were at work. They didn’t really approve of her taste in music- she was into Hair Metal. I learned to appreciate it during those MTV times.

As I got older, responsibility stepped in and I started to babysit a little to earn some money. Then, when I was old enough, I got a job and from then on, summer vacations stopped being a stretch of disorganized time and it became time that was blocked off based on my work schedule and my friends’ work schedules.
I don’t think I can say I truly wasted my summer holidays as a child. It’s just that I don’t think I really appreciated it quite enough. I had that sense of entitlement that children often do in that it was something I was just handed because you couldn’t go to school ALL the time.

I think if I had 12 weeks off now, I’d try to savor them more. I’d use the time to write a lot, to work outside, to spend with my family and my dogs. I’d do all those little things I keep meaning to do but never quite have the time, all those little projects that we’d all like to do but whenever we have any free time, something more necessary comes up.

Yet, the truth is, I don’t have those 12 weeks. I have two weeks’ vacation time per year which is not a bad amount of time but it’s time that must be spent wisely and not squandered. It’s not like those 12 gaping weeks that used to happen every summer from the time I started going to school until the time I stopped and became a working adult.

For the most part, being a grown up is definitely better than being a child. I mean, nowadays, if I want ice-cream, I can go get ice-cream. Granted, I tend to try and go for the Skinny Cow type of treat because, well, with age comes a slower metabolism. However, I can have it whenever I want it. If I want to see a movie, I can go see a movie. If I want to go to the library, I go to the library. You get the picture.

It’s just that sometimes, on beautiful days today when the sun is high in the sky, the temperature is 78 degrees and the breeze is perfect, I do have a bit of envy to those children I see playing carefree in my neighbourhood because they can stay outside and enjoy the day and not have to go back to work after lunch.

They really don’t know how lucky they are. But they will, someday when wisdom catches up to them.

Happy Tuesday!

Muddled Days...

Do you ever have weeks where everything feels like a muddle? For me, these are weeks where my house needs cleaning but I don't have time. The table is cluttered with mail that should be sorted, the floor is messy with dried leaves that the puppies have accidentally brought in from outside by getting them stuck to their fur and even when I do the dishes, the kitchen cries out for organization?

This is one of those weeks. I haven't had time to get much done in the evenings and I'm feeling like my house is just one big jumble at the moment. My desk at work is also cluttered and just my general feeling towards life is that it's a bit complex at this present time.

I don't know why. I'm using my ever ready excuse of the change of the seasons. It's not quite autumn yet. Even though tomorrow marks the official first day of fall, it's going to be 90 degrees. It still seems like summer has her hold on us. Until she lets go, we're stuck in a pattern where we feel like it's wrong to use the air conditioning because it shouldn't be necessary and yet without it, we swelter. It feels odd to wear summer colours when summer is over but our autumn clothes are too heavy for the current weather.

It's just hard to dive head first into autumn when it's clearly not ready to be autumn quite yet. Fortunately, we are supposed to get some crisper weather next week but, for now, it feels a bit muddled.

Which, I'm thinking, is why I feel a little muddled. I've realized that, as a person, I tend to like things to be organized. I'm not fanatical about it but I like things to be simple and tidy. For example, let's take ice-cream. I find that two components are about as much as I like in my ice-cream. Mint Chocolate chip, rum raisin, vanilla, raspberry ripple…that's as complicated as I get with my ice-cream. No Rocky Road or Chunky Monkey for me. I don't really like to combine things; I think that's it. I like my salty on one side of the plate, sweet on the other. I'm one of the few folks who doesn't like salty-sweet combinations very much. I don't like to dip Oreos in milk. I'd rather eat the cookie then drink the milk.

So, you can see why I don't like this combo summer/autumn thing that's going on. It's got me in a muddle. It's either summer or autumn. Right now, the weather feels like summer but the world around me, both nature-made and human-made is ready for autumn. The clothes are in the stores, the scents and foods have crossed over seasons. It's just hard to embrace it when it's not in the least bit autumnal in temperature outside.

I suppose it's why I was always grateful to escape to the Midwest for Christmas when I lived in L.A. While it was a nice novelty to sit outside after Christmas shopping in 75 degree weather on the ocean, it never felt right. Christmas should be snow covered and cold. It should not be balmy and warm with palm trees and flowers blooming. I'm sure it's dependent on what you're used to. Me, I'm used to it being snowy and cold on Christmas.

What I'm trying to get at is that I think my current state of muddle is rather due to the fact that I can't define it as autumn or summer. It's a weird hybrid. I'm not big on hybrids. I like things to be what they are. Hybrid cars are ok but that's only because they're cute, quiet and nifty. Also, since I don't understand automotive engineering, I find hybrids to be rather magical and anything magical is ok by me.

But you get my point, right? We're still in transition of the seasons and so I'm feeling trapped in the middle. It's hard to move forward but we can't move back. This explains my state of muddle. My subconscious doesn't know what to do and thus, it's not doing anything. We're caught in a state of stasis. It's peculiar.

Perhaps if I clean my house and tidy my desk, I'll feel better. I've still been feeling like I'm missing something in my life though that feeling has been a little better lately, especially when friends have told me they understand exactly how I feel.

Still, for now, I'm sitting in a state of muddle. I need to move forward and embrace the autumn. Yet it's still 90 degrees out there.

Maybe I'll wait until it cools down. Autumn…where are you?

Happy Thursday!

Hot Summer Days...

It was another quiet day in the office. I’d complain but I have to admit, it’s pretty nice. Tomorrow brings the start of the Office Olympics. Today, we decided to create a pre-Olympic event called “The Eating of the Ice-Cream.” There’s apparently a great ice-cream place in Cincinnati that even Oprah cites as her favourite ice-cream in the world. It’s called Graeters and I have to say, it is pretty fine ice-cream. Most of the people who sang its praises added the addendum: “It’s expensive though.”

I think I lived in L.A. for too long because a scoop of ice-cream- a generous scoop, I’ll add- was $3.25 and two scoops was $3.75. To me, this seems to be a reasonable price for a bowl of delicious ice-cream. It’s no more expensive than Cold Stone Creamery, Ben and Jerry’s or Haagan Daas. Also, it’s still cheaper than a large cup of fancy coffee at Starbucks.

It was a nice treat on a warm, quiet afternoon in the office. I’m starting to get used to the quiet. It’s nice to have freedom; all of the managers are at the conference. We’re policing ourselves which is rather a nice luxury.

I’m really quite enjoying not having half the staff in the office. The week is going quickly. Normally, I wouldn’t mind but next week, everything will return to normal. The conference attendees will return, full of information and stories and we’ll all have to listen to them. I’m sure that I won’t be the only one who will try to appear interested but wish I could just walk away because I honestly don’t care that much. It’s a sad thing but true. I’m sure that, as usual, there will be drunken evenings, stories about clients, inside jokes… the usual thing.

The rest of us will probably sit here with our own inside jokes. We’ll know who the best rubber-band archery shooter is or who can win a race by wheeling themselves in their chair down the hallway. It’s a trade-off but I can’t help but be glad I came down on this side of the trade.

Still, with the week going quickly and the weekend approaching, things are definitely looking up. The humidity faded a little this afternoon and it’s finally tolerable to be outside without feeling as though you’re going to burst into flames because you’re spontaneously combusting from the closeness of the air. It’s been horrible for the past week- damp, muggy, buggy and hot.

The puppies don’t seem to like the heat either. They run outside and within a few minutes, resurface in the living room, their tongues lolling out of their mouths to show how hot they are. They run out again and run back in again quickly. It’s a constant routine. They’ve taken to hunting the evil bunny that steals my vegetables and flowers. It ate all my swiss chard, my corn and now my lone sunflower. I see it running through the yard at breakneck speed every so often, usually chased by two little dachshund puppies. They’ll probably never catch it but they’re certainly trying.

Of course, they don’t just hunt bunnies outside. They dig holes. Rory has become a champion digger. She’s quite amusing to watch because she has a bit of a temper. If the ground doesn’t give way to her furious attempts to burrow, she starts yipping and ‘yelling’ at the dirt, clearly upset. She stomps and whines at it and then tries to bite it. She’s awfully cute and I don’t mind because it means there’s going to be less of a hole if the ground doesn’t give way.

Fortunately, she does seem to have given up digging up my plants which is nice. Instead, she digs near them instead, sometimes accidentally flattening them. If she isn’t the one to sit on them, Sookie is. She likes to watch her sister try to dig a hole. I now have several squished squash plants from Sookies’s observations.

I’m trying to train them to dig weeds which is a losing battle. We’ve had so much rain that the grass and weeds are growing way faster than I can keep up. The weeds are the worst. No matter how many I pull up, there’s ten ready to replace them. I’m trying but I’m losing. Some of them are quite pretty but others are mean little invasive things that try to choke my actual plants.

Nevertheless, summer officially starts in just a few days. It now means that I’ve made it through an entire year of seasons in my house since I moved in during summer of last year. The summer is the hardest because of the heat. It’s hard to not put the air conditioning on because otherwise, it’s just miserable. Winter was hard because of the snow but I didn’t mind the shoveling and I love snow so no complaints there. Autumn was nice with an unexpected Indian summer tucked in there. Then there was spring…that’s one of my favourite seasons and it felt like it barely got a chance to stand up between Winter and Summer before Summer kicked it out of the way and tried to take over. I’m hoping Spring wins back a little and can inflict some cooler days on the calendared days of summer but we’ll have to see.

In the meantime, I’ll take today’s lesser humidity and sunshiny day as a sign that Spring is still trying to win. Even though it’s hot, it could be way worse. Besides, today there was ice-cream to cool things down.

Ice-cream makes everything good. Having the office to ourselves makes it even better. Sometimes, I actually like my job.

Happy Wednesday!