This summer has been weird.

Fast and slow and disappointing and absurd and full of unmet expectations and a little burnout.

Is it me or is it the creeping dread of an existential American crisis?

There's been too much screen time and work crammed into the margins. Grumpy kids and a grumpy mom.

Missed events due to Covid.

There have been some delicious, summery moments. Watermelon and popsicles and cold Prosecco and a giant slip and slide for the kids. Pretty flowers and warm cherry tomatoes eaten straight out of the garden.

A concert in the park and early morning walks and iced coffee and late night four square competitions with the neighbors.

But it just feels different this year, you know? I'm trying to pinpoint it.

I'm exhausted, beaten down a bit by my never-ending fatigue. The kids are older now, so we don't have the absolute necessity of getting out of the house each day for everyone's sanity. It's harder to find the wonder in summer when you're a teenager. So maybe it's a part of growing up?

It feels a little harder to find joy this year. It's there in the wee hours sometimes. It's there on the baseball field. It's there in a sweaty, exhausted kid at the end of one of those delicious summer days. It's there in the wildflowers we planted from seed back when we were feeling optimistic and hopeful.

Have we forgotten how to be? Have I forgotten how to be?

Maybe I am being overly romantic about what summer should feel like.

NARRATOR: Melody is overly romantic about everything in the world, so those of us pulling the levers in her brain would like you to know that this is most likely it.

Maybe it's expectations I had set without articulating them to anyone else?

Maybe it's all just a little bit exhausting.

Each week, I try to combat all of this. On Sundays, I yell at my family that we will MAKE PLANS AND DO FUN THINGS. I write out the calendar. I loosely plan a few activities. I have high hopes. I even think about meal planning.

Then somehow Monday starts off balance and I end up at Costco spending eleventy billion dollars on frozen pizzas and bread for sandwiches and chips and vodka and nobody meal plans anything and we eat mostly grilled cheese.

I blink and then we're halfway through the week and the boys' rooms smell musty because they've been sitting at their computers for hours on end with the door closed and somehow it's more humid than the rest of the house because.. sweat?

My work to-do list gets longer and longer no matter how many things I check off.

Some politician or judge somewhere makes terrible decisions.

After picking the kids up from summer camp yesterday (THIS WAS DELICIOUS AND SUMMERY IN ALL THE BEST WAYS), we calculated that there are more days left ahead in summer than behind us.

This feels hopeful.

So I will Sunday my heart out. I will write out our calendar. I will wash the wet, smelly, possibly moldy camp clothes.

I WILL WRITE A BUCKET LIST IN AN INSANE FIT OF OPTIMISM.

I will schedule something somewhere that I want to do. Everyone else might complain, but at least I can point to that one thing and be like LOOK I DID THAT FOR ME AND IT WAS SUMMERY.

I will find a pool for us to swim in and buy tickets to a movie in the middle of the day. I will possibly work in the early morning like I always say I'm going to do instead of scrolling through Instagram and reading the news.

THAT LAST ONE IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY.

But if you shoot for the moon, you're bound to land among the stars, no?

I will do all this starting in a few days because obviously one of my camp children came down with Covid. Which all seems correct in this Summer of Our Lord 2022.

How do you course correct when summer is being cranky, Reader?

How do you shake your attitude up like a snow globe so everything redistributes in a little bit different place?