I always envied the kids that did cool things on their summer vacations. My back-to-school essays were more on the order of “We visited my cousins in Virginia, and I read a lot of books.” The PseudoStepkids, on the other hand, have a wealth of things to write about because they travel so much. Theirs from this summer, for instance, would read “We went to Paris, and London, and Austria, and Israel, and Turkey.” (I just combined several of their trips there, but still, no dearth of material for them. This year, I am somewhere in between my younger self and my kids. I did not leave the country, but I did do the following:
- Went to Atlanta and met my best friend from high school’s baby daughter.
- Went to Pittsburgh for a family reunion, where I was told by no less than three people “Wow, you look like a White!” (that’s my mother’s maiden name, not a commentary on my pasty appearance), met a lot of cousins I had never met before, and saw my high school band director and his wife. Also, went to my first casino.
- Went to Philadelphia, stayed in a hostel, and did research in the American Philosophical Society where I got to examine the originals of letters from Benjamin Franklin’s wife, daughter, and sister. I also ate a cheesesteak while I was there.
- Went to the Berkshires several times.
- Went to the beach.
- Started working out on a semi-regular basis.
- Heard Foster the People live in Prospect Park. I didn’t see them because there was a barrier around the band shell and I was outside the barrier, but they sounded great!
- Celebrated nine years of being with Rick.
- Got into my first fender bender, which was really just an epic fail on my part while trying to parallel park Rick’s car–I don’t get a lot of practice and I cut it way too sharp. I scraped and dented the side of Rick’s car on someone’s bumper. Since this only happened on Friday, I still feel pretty awful about it, even though he has been amazingly nice about the whole thing.
There are also the things that I did that I wouldn’t write into an essay, like:
- Drank a lot of wine.
- Taught Charlie how to beg for food on his hind legs like a meerkat.
- Knit a wee bit.
- Did some thesis work, but not as much as I might have.
- Watched a lot of True Blood and Torchwood, which is directly related to the bullet point just above this one.
- Actually, the working out thing from above should probably go here, because it’s kind of mundane.
- Was bitten by approximately five million bugs.
- Made it halfway through my Invisalign treatment (so far, it’s not like I quit after I got there).
- Wasted a ton of time on my iPad.
- Read the entire Hunger Game series, some of the Game of Thrones series, and am still reading the latest Julia Grey mystery.
Things I’m going to try to cram into the remaining two weeks of vacation because I either haven’t done them or haven’t done them enough:
- Go to Governor’s Island.
- Hit the Rickshaw dumpling truck.
- Go to the beach at least one more time.
- Go to the Bronx Zoo with my goddaughter.
- Back to school shopping and a haircut, because kids should not be the only ones who benefit from this time of year.
