It’s officially summer. The calendar reads June, the heat and humidity have arrived and most importantly, school is out.

I feel like most of this snuck up on me.  Maybe not June so much, I mean, I could see that coming on my calendar, but definitely the last two. May was cold and wet right up until Memorial Day, when it suddenly got warm and appears to be staying that way. (As it should I suppose.)

And school, it’s not like I wasn’t counting down to the end of it – no one loves the end of that imposed schedule and routine more than me, believe me.  I think it has more to do with the fact that my girl will officially be starting high school in the fall and this past Friday morning, as I was picking up a bass for her to practice on this summer from the high school, I had this sudden realization I was totally unprepared for this.  It was  similar to the feeling I had when we brought her home from the hospital  – and one I couldn’t shake for months after that. The feeling that her real parents were going to show up and thank us for the effort, but that we’d been doing it all wrong and they’d take it from here, thanks.  That feeling, thrown in with a feeling that I’m not at all sure I’m mature enough to be the parent of a high schooler.  It just feels like a whole new level of parenting is expected from me at this stage, one that caught me by surprise. But that’s parenting in general isn’t it? Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of one stage, they move on to the next, constantly keeping you on your toes.

At any rate, last week, with the Memorial Day holiday making it a shorter week to begin with and then being the last week of school, which is always a doozy and one in which you can either be a parent or have a job, you really cannot do both, was a bit of a whirlwind. There was a time out for a swimming hole one afternoon though – because my girl might be growing up, but will still insist that a swimming hole in the river is way, way better than a swimming pool any day. She’s got a point.