And they're off

It's a strange start to the semester, in many ways. This year's election has been surreal; we all swim through its constant downward spiral as if waiting to wake up from a dream, and there are still more than two months to go. Our retreat weekend with the incoming students has been moved up so that we're leaving tomorrow -- after only one class with them. And although I have worked steadily all summer, producing a journal article and 2/3 of a book, I still feel like I napped my way through these three months.

But here we are. Cady Gray has started grade 7 (accelerated math, we love you!), and Archer is warily wading into grade 10 (AP Physics, Algebra II and Programming woo-hoo, AP World History and Pre-AP English, not sure yet). A new batch of Honors students has landed in my class, and will be anxiously trying to keep their heads above water as they learn to navigate Blackboard and post their first assignments. I have two new teaching assistants and two new thesis students to mentor. And I'm on the search committee for our new dean, while at the same time the university searches for a new president.

It doesn't all happen at once, that's the saving grace. Except when it does. Which are the times I feel like nobody's got their hand on the regulator. More than anything I hate the feeling of a bunch of things, even little things, going wrong at once -- I start to get squirrelly when even one of those things happens, like something breaking around the house, as some primal part of my psyche whispers "this is how it begins."

That's because more than anything I like it when things are going right, when everything's under control, when there are no clouds on the horizon. Yesterday I listened to PJ Vogt, co-host of the podcast Reply All, describe how his mom obsesses about the health and well-being of everyone in her extended family. The only time she's truly relaxed and able to enjoy herself, Vogt said, was when everyone is gathered for a holiday or a reunion. That's when she can directly surveill the entire brood. No one is off falling ill or getting into an accident. Everyone's OK.

I don't have a worrying problem at this level, but I do have an addiction to security and safety. It's a trait that serves me well occasionally (saving money), but more often leads me to forgo even small risks or, worse, steer my children away from them for my peace of mind. Letting them go to camp this year was big in that regard. Maybe I can keep on taking those next steps toward their independence and my mental health.

They both had a great time at camp, by the way. Archer's favorite was all-you-can-eat meals at the cafeteria; CG's was the friends she made. You don't know how teary-eyed that last bit makes me, still, a month later.

In suspense

It's halfway through the summer. I'm in the middle of writing a book (the volume on the theology of the human being for the Homebrewed Christianity Guides series) -- just finished chapter 3 (of 8), and plan to have two more completed before school starts. Still months to go before this uniquely horrible election season ends. And both Archer and Cady Gray are at their first-ever sleepaway camps.

Cady Gray is at Camp Mitchell, on Petitjean Mountain, about 45 minutes away. She's been there since Sunday. We haven't heard a peep. Every batch of pictures that the camp staff posts on Facebook gets scoured minutely, but we haven't found her in any of them. Is she having fun? Making friends? Homesick?

Archer is closer to home, at choir camp on the UCA campus. I've seen him once, texted with him a couple of times. He seems in very good spirits. I was never worried about him being homesick -- just maybe being discombobulated by a whole new set of rules and routines. But then, there's nothing he loves better than a new system to absorb, understand, and explore.

For both of them, it's a necessary push out of the nest, hard as it was for their parents to do. They're capable and confident human beings. They'll become more so as they experience some independence.

Meanwhile Noel and I hang suspended between their leaving and returning. We pick up Cady Gray tomorrow morning, Archer on Saturday. It will be good to have them back. All the fraught and frightening things in the world seem more so without the family together. (They're bad enough on a normal day.)

I look forward to hearing about their experiences, to seeing whether they've grown or changed. I'm praying it's been a completely positive experience. But even if not, it will be one that helps them learn.

Right?

Happiness is a warm pupper

I always appreciate the way that Noel tries to make Mother's Day both special for me, and not actively annoying to me. He gets the kids to pick out cards and little treats. He asks if I'd like him to make anything special for dinner, but if I don't have any ideas, he comes up with his own (delicious) ones. Otherwise he knows that I want what Frankie Heck wants: a Not-Mother's Day. No pressure, no pomp, and for God's sake, no brunch.

That's exactly what I had on Sunday, and darned if it wasn't one of the happiest days I've had (in the midst of a very happy season of a very happy year). I laughed and played games with the kids, I ate delicious food, I took a long walk with my podcasts, and I watched television with my husband. The exact definition of good times.

And the next day the A.V. Club published a list Noel and I put together of the most useful shorthand quotes from Charles Schulz's Peanuts, a comic that definitively shaped both of our childhoods and helped to bring us together. It was so wonderful to collaborate with him and to enjoy the reaction of those who shared it and commented on it.

School is out, and the living is easy. I'm working on a qualitative research task brought to me by some faculty in the physical therapy department, part of a paper about use of an outcomes assessment tool in students' clinical rotations. It needs to be done by the end of the week, so I'm working through it chunk by chunk. Once that's done, I'll start on my writing project for the summer -- a book for Fortress Press's Theology for the People series.

It's only week 2 of the summer, by even the stingiest accounting. There's much warmth and many pleasures to come.

Prep work

While walking to the office today I was congratulating myself on making it to the end of the school year. The summer, much longed for in the darkest days of February, was suddenly and gloriously here. My calendar: empty. My schedule: my own to determine.

I still have quite a bit of grading to do. But I can do it in the order I prefer. I can do it fast or slow. A couple of assignments unrelated to class lurk on my task board; I owe some researchers an interim report, and an editor an essay. Not behind on them yet, though. Just know that I need to find a little time in the next few days to move forward on them. None of it affects my chill.

Then at about 11:30 this morning, something triggered my memory. I don't recall what it was. Maybe a student assignment I was grading, in which the student innocently asked about Catholic soteriology ... but I think it was long after that. Maybe the teaching assistant for next semester who arrived for an appointment I had forgotten I'd made ... but I don't remember panicking at that point either.

At any rate, I suddenly remembered that I'd agreed weeks ago to lead a discussion on Augustine for a group at church. Was that tonight? I wondered, with rapidly growing suspicion that it was. It was.

I suppose I should be grateful it came to mind at all. I have in the past simply blithely failed to show up to something I agreed to do, for lack of checking my calendar or getting a check-in from the organizer. (If you ask me to do something, send me friendly reminders. I need them.) I dug up the email with the assigned reading, made a few notes, and in 30 minutes I was ready.

What surprised me was how much of my sang-froid was troubled by the event. It wasn't that I had an appointment, or that my anticipated free time was interrupted. It was that I had to prep for something.

I have to prep for things almost constantly. Every day at work I am prepping for a class -- usually a class that meets in a day or two, but (more frequently toward the end of the semester) a class that meets in an hour or two. To prep, I read, take notes, formulate questions for the seminar, occasionally design an activity, and preface it all with reminders about upcoming events and course logistics. I also have to prep for committee meetings by reviewing the agenda, minutes, documents.

I thought that my happiness about summer break was mostly about my calendar being empty -- about not having classes and meetings and a rapidly rotating schedule of deadlines. But now I think it's because I have nothing I need to prep for. When a prep necessity popped up today, I was unaccountably deflated. I hadn't realized how much I look forward to not having to look forward.

Every now and then I hear our song

Colleagues on campus who foolishly ask what I'm up to are likely to receive a lengthy explanation of how I've never really had an academic summer. If I recall correctly, I taught a summer course my first or second year at UCA, and then went straight into an administrative position that offered 10.5 month employment for a few years, followed by a long stretch of 12-month administrative contracts. That ended in summer 2013 with a summer sabbatical, the only kind available to administrators. I took two week-long research trips that summer and spent every remaining day researching, conducting phone interviews, traveling within the state, correcting transcripts, and scrambling to be ready to start writing my book. But during this sabbatical, my dean pressed me for a commitment on whether I would continue in administration, and I declined to do so. The summer of 2012, then, would be the last I would spend working full time.

Turns out I would continue to do phone and local interviews into the early months of 2014; the only part of the book with a complete draft by the time classes ended that spring was the introduction. So I spent every day of summer 2014 writing. By the end of August, with classes already underway, I had six chapters done, with four more to go before my Christmas deadline. As I wrote in a January post, that summer I wrote a chapter every 2.4 weeks.

I got a very helpful reader report from my editor on March 2 of this year, and immediately began revisions. Once classes ended in early May, I was in the office full time every day doing additional research, editing, and rewriting. I turned in a revised manuscript on June 10.

And since then, it has been Summer. The kind where I don't have to come to the office, where no one is expecting me. I have work to do -- classes for fall to prepare (including a new one), some assessment (done), some faculty reports (done), and then the research and dreaming and thinking about the next scholarly projects -- but it's completely up to me when I want to make progress on that and when I want to do Summer Things. That's the life a lot of faculty live. Yes, many of them teach summer classes or take other temporary work (scoring standardized tests, teaching at summer programs), but many just have a Summer. Like the one I'm finally having.

I come to the office most days. I have research I want to move forward, and interlibrary loan books that I can only keep for a short time. Reading and thinking is a pleasurable occupation, especially compared to the stress of rewriting and cutting and checking citation formatting on a deadline. I give myself plenty of leeway to follow my train of thought wherever it leads, chasing down information on a stray inquiry if it grabs my interest. 

But I also take a walk every morning before the heat and humidity build to unbearable levels. Today I listened to podcasts, but most days I just think for half an hour. Yesterday I took the kids to a nearby state park and hiked a trail along the river. Now that Summer is here, I am going to do more of that.

Summer seems very short when the first six weeks of it are eaten up by deadline work. In July the kids have camps and Noel has trips; my days will not be my own, like they are now. In August the new semester will be on the doorstep. But Summer seems so long, so luxuriously empty, on a day like today. 

No retreat, no surrender

Now it can be told. The new publishing venture that I mentioned in my last infrequent update, the one that Noel is helping to launch (and his first salaried, non-freelance job in decades) is The Dissolve, a new film site from Pitchfork Media. Right now they're just a placeholder site, a Tumblr, and a Twitter account, but the first real content will hit the streets next month. (And notice how cleverly I titled that last post, before the name of the site had officially been announced.)

Noel is energized and feeling creative, both doing administrative thinking like mapping out how the DVD reviews will be assigned and scheduled, and writing essays and reviews that will start appearing when the site goes live. It's a terrific place for him to be in his early forties: starting a new venture that builds on all the experience and expertise he's developed in the past twenty-odd years of critical writing.

And me? Well, I'm almost as happy as he is. Happier, maybe. I set out with some trepidation on my first research trip last month, to Hartford, Connecticut. This was the acid test. Could I find prayer shawl knitters to talk to? Would they want to talk to me, if I found them? Would my questions elicit the kinds of information I needed to know? I was elated by the result. I talked to 15 people in 8 interviews over the course of 6 full days in Hartford -- mostly in the surrounding area: Windsor, South Windsor, Farmington, Stafford Springs, Vernon. They were generous with their time and with their organizational energy, helping me get in touch with other members of their groups. And they seemed to appreciate the questions I asked, both the prosaic ones that allowed them to explain how their ministries worked, and the more unusual ones that asked them to reflect on what it means. I came home with about eleven and a half hours of interview recordings. And with some new ideas, too, about what themes might be present in this subject matter and in these women's experience that I hadn't hypothesized. That's how qualitative research is supposed to work; you continually reshape your hypothesis and redirect your investigation based on what you find as you explore. How relieved I am to find that it's happening here!

In a couple of weeks I head to Seattle for my second research trip, and my calendar for the six full days I'm there is already chock full of interviews. I'm trying to push myself to make maximum use of my time in the field, but I know now from experience that doing these interviews is hard work. I was glad in Hartford for some downtime, an empty morning or afternoon here and there (my evenings were almost all taken), to be alone and rest from the effort of connecting with other human beings. I was glad for flexibility in my driving schedule, so I could head out early if need be to avoid rush hour traffic and the frequent heavy rain that blanketed Connecticut while I was there. Knowing I was not so tightly scheduled was important for my peace of mind.

I've also used my freedom while on sabbatical to think about my mid-life crisis, to examine my reactions to this research activity and to being free of administrative duties, and have some preliminary thoughts about what I want the rest of my academic career to look like. Just preliminary; every time I follow them too far down the road to prospective action I get cold feet. But I'm remembering what led me into this life in the first place, and what fed my fire in those early years. I'm different now, but it's still useful to ask the question of what I would most regret not accomplishing twenty years in the future, based on what I wanted to do when I started out and what I've found that I have to offer along the way.

More to come, of course. Meanwhile. bookmark The Dissolve, and if you're in the Seattle area, let me know so we can cross paths while I'm there.

Summer's end

Labor Day weekend is the unofficial end of summer, but the weather has picked this moment to give us a last blast of heat and humidity. In the wake of Tropical Depression Isaac, which brought us some much-appreciated rain, the heat index is soaring into the triple digits again. Regardless of how it feels, though, some things are coming to an end, and other things are beginning, just as they do every year.

I'm focusing on the things that are ending. It's not just nostalgia or regret; some of those things I'm glad to see end, at least temporarily. Two of my major summer writing projects, the TV Club Classic coverage of Sports Night and the regular coverage of Breaking Bad, are going on hiatus until next year, and it's a relief. Those pieces take a lot of concentration, time, and anxiety every week, and it will be nice to have them off my plate for a while. Sports Night's last season 1 post went up this past Wednesday, and Breaking Bad's last episode of the current half-season is tonight. It's still a couple of weeks until the other shows I cover regularly (How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family) start their seasons, so I've got a nice break coming up.

It's also pleasant to have the kids' birthday party and the Ravellenics behind me. Last week I went to the Rhea Lana sale and bought most of the clothes they'll need until next spring (I hope). I still haven't cleaned out their closets of too-small items, or unpacked the bags of jeans and jackets I hauled home from that sale, but at least I'm more than halfway ready for colder weather. And with all the Ravellenic administration in the past, I've gleefully started what I hope is a binge of knitting things to keep other people warm, whether they are friends or strangers in need.

We've been having our master bathroom remodeled this summer, and that's nearly done, too. The pace would be considered too leisurely for people more outcome-focused than ourselves, or for a room where the loss of function is more disruptive. But we're just proud that we've gotten the process underway after years of knowing it needed to be done.

That's also the way I feel about starting a conversation with a financial planner this summer. We haven't finalized much yet, but stuff is in the works: more life insurance, rearranging some assets to provide more focused retirement funds, college savings, and an easier way to keep track of it all. I'm so pleased with myself for finally moving in this direction after living so long with the uneasy feeling that I wasn't properly taking care of business, that I'm not in too much of a hurry to get everything signed and squared away; it's enough that the ball is rolling.

Maybe this change of seasons isn't really about things ending, or about us moving on. It's about not having wasted the time we've been spending. And that goes for time with the kids, too, which right now is not a matter of long looks backward, but lovely moments that still linger in the now.

When you know down inside that I really do

Today's post about dressing a growing girl for summer is at Toxophily.



And summer it almost is, at least by the holiday calendar here in the U.S. Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

Bullet points

I've got bullet points on the brain, since it's the name of tonight's episode of Breaking Bad (my recap post will go up at 10 pm Central).  But I've also had a bunch of random stuff on my mind today.  Here's some of it.

• My unsweet tea regimen on weekdays and diet soda indulgence on weekends have left me little room to try other summer drinks.  But in need of refreshment on the road last week, I tried a frozen strawberry lemonade at McDonald's.  Mmmmmm ... surprisingly tart, cool and utterly delicious.  I had another one today.  Nothing cuts through the heat of this brutal summer better.
• Over the years living with a man who keeps shaving cream on the vanity, I've noticed that the cans always get rusty around the exposed metal rings at top and bottom.  Which makes me wonder -- why are they typically made out of metal?  Is there something about the foam or gel contents, or about the aerosol propellant, that precludes a plastic container?
• It was the first-ever back-to-school sales tax holiday in Arkansas this weekend.  We took advantage both yesterday and today, getting just about everything on the kids' supply lists and some work clothes for me.  The crowds were certainly out, but we shopped early on Saturday and late on Sunday, and seem to have avoided the worst of the crush.
• I thought this piece by the great Robert Lipsyte about the punishing ascendency of jock culture in this country got to the heart of the matter a bit more than the usual handwringing.  Short and thought-provoking.

Prerequisites

If you're a Mac owner, the big deal this weekend is OS X Lion, the new version of the Apple operating system.  It's got a number of very interesting innovations, including being distributed without discs or boxes, and bringing some iPhone- and iPad-like interfaces to the computer.

One fascinating feature of the distribution is that a single download of the OS can be installed on all the computers a person owns.  I have a copy of the installer, but I'm not going to double-click until I free up a lot more space on my (rather skimpy) MacBook Air hard drive.

I'm doing that by splitting my 35 GB iPhoto library in two and putting all the older photos onto an external disk.  But I don't feel secure having the only copy of those files in only one place, so I'm not deleting the photos from my laptop iPhoto library (and getting back that disk space) until I upload a copy to Flickr.

Which I'm doing as fast as I can.  But it points to a character trait that bedevils me sometimes.  I can't start something I want to do unless I feel ready, and that often means getting a bunch of preliminary things done first.  I know people who would just dive in, but  not me.  I'm a scene-setter.  I'm a two-steps-backer.

It doesn't always make me happy, this need to get all my affairs in order before enjoying myself.  In fact, it sometimes keeps me from doing things I want to do.  I end up frustrated and feeling impotent, having gotten nothing done because I couldn't get far enough back to get the requisite running start.  And I have plenty of good examples where taking the opposite tack -- jumping in with both feet -- has paid off handsomely.  When nobody's life or livelihood is at stake, when the worst that might happen is that you'll learn something by making a couple of mistakes, why not just do it?

What I'm most concerned about, I think, is my precious time.  If I've got a free afternoon or evening, I want to do something rewarding with it.  Then the search for something rewarding becomes a high-stakes affair, and nothing seems good enough.  That's when I start convincing myself that I can't do x until I've done y and z, and if I do y and z today I won't get to x, and y and z are not a rewarding way to use my limited free time.

The problem just gets worse when free time begins to be in shorter supply, and that's the case here at the end of the summer.  Nevertheless, I have managed to overcome my self-defeating procrastination and get some things done.  I hope that when my schedule returns to academic-year normal, I'll look back on the summer and feel like I made progress on things I wanted to do three months ago.

Challenging

One week of Summer Laureate University For Youth -- SLUFY -- is done.  It's our second year with both kids in the day camp, which is produced by the Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Last year we really struggled to get the kids down to Little Rock and back every day.  The camp runs for five hours in the afternoon, not enough time to be worth the thirty minutes each way of commute, so whoever drops them off winds up hanging around coffee shops and libraries until it's time to pick them up. This year we have a carpool partner, so we only have to make half the trips per week, but it's still brutal.

But we decided after last year's experience that it was well worth it for our kids.  The classes are wonderfully interdisciplinary and advanced.  Take the first week of Cady Gray's class on ice cream as an example.  The students conducted taste tests; created their own flavors (each using a base flavor, a fruit, a nut, and a candy ingredient); wrote a letter to Ben & Jerry's about why their flavors should be adopted and produced; designed packaging; and shot a commercial using Flip cameras.  Any kid would love to do those activities, but collectively they create a self-directed, creative, and educational picture of the food business's many facets.

We're lucky that both our kids have been able to qualify for this camp two years running.  Archer's classes are Game Show Probability (and how perfect is that -- today they explored the Monty Hall Problem) and Burning Issues (about fire).  In addition to the ice cream class, Cady Gray has come home with facts about medieval times from her Knightly Days class (we've heard about the plague or "the plaque" as CG termed it, the unfairness of the feudal system, and the code of chivalry, and a lot about the cardbox box and tube castles they've made).

I could wish that all their education were like this, but I'm thankful that at least some of it is.  One more week of SLUFY -- I hope they enjoy every minute.

The hissing of summer lawns

With my kids now old enough and self-aware enough to look forward to their long summer break from school, I'm remembering how I felt about summer when I was their age.

Summer meant waking warly and eating cereal while watching cartoons, before anybody else was up.

Summer was bike rides around our neighborhood, up and down the street and venturing onto the steep hills that surrounded it, always with the little thrill of danger and freedom.

Summer was going to swim at the Cumberland Youth Organization pool while our parents played tennis, and begging for money to buy an Icee from the concession stand.

Summer was weekly trips to the library to bring home a towering stack of the thickest books I could carry.

Summer was the grinding sound of the electric ice cream maker turning cream and sugar and fruit into homemade ice cream.

Summer was chasing fireflies in the front yard.

Summer was Vacation Bible School, Little Debbies and "suicides" from the Coke wagon.d

And summer hasn't changed a whole lot, if we're honest, four decades on. I expect my kids will make a similar list when they're grown and feeling nostalgic.

It's really here

I'm always fascinated by the rhythms of life in higher education. I don't have my summers off, like my colleagues who are on nine-month contracts, but things do change in the summer. The schedule is empty, the office is empty, and everything slows way down.

When you have kids, the slight mismatch between their academic year and yours creates interesting eddies in the flow. I've been done with classes since the first week of May, and with major office work since mid-May. But Archer and Cady Gray's last day of school wasn't until today. That means there were three weeks where I was on summer time, as it were, but with the added luxury of having the kids occupied during the day.

That's the interval where one probably ought to really focus on getting important stuff done. But it's also the moment when you most need a breather after a full year of work and (for me, this year) a very hectic and unusually intense spring semester.

I have made good use of these weeks -- better than usual, anyway. Plenty of writing, progress on research. And as administrative tasks have come up, I've been able to respond quickly. There are several long-term tasks for the summer still ahead of me -- some big (sketching out my major conference presentations for the fall), some smaller (overhauling the syllabus for my handcrafting class to reflect lessons learned from the first iteration), and some ongoing and collaborative (producing an annual report for the academic year just past, designing a curriculum workshop to be presented after the national honors conference in October, coming up with a strategy for creating an Honors Handbook).

Now that the kids are officially on summer vacation, though, there's one more thing on my plate -- helping out with kid care whenever I can to allow Noel to get his work done. The respite while the Conway School District was taking care of that for us is over. Summer may still be a more relaxed time work-wise, but we still have to face the reality that there are going to be two kids underfoot in somebody's office until day camps start ... at the end of June.

Earning it

I've done my share of work this week.  I dealt with some complicated situations regarding student scholarship and retention status -- ones that required more thought and careful wordsmithing of communications due to factors like medical conditions and incomplete grades.  I wrote and circulated a new set of letters designed to provide official notification of scholarship awards and renewals.  I proofread the copy-edited manuscripts of half the chapters in my forthcoming co-edited book (with my co-editor slated to proof the rest).  I attended some long meetings, wrote a piece for a former student's webzine, and of course posted a couple of TV writeups.  I even helped a colleague with her knitting questions.

But as I was working on one of the final tasks of my to-do list, revising a set of lengthy e-mails containing summer assignments for students enrolled in my handcrafting seminar this fall (they are customized to the various skill levels already present in the class, as determined by a survey I had them all fill out), the college secretary knocked on my door.  She said our boss had given her permission to go home early.  I checked my watch -- 1:30 pm.  My boss had popped in an hour earlier to say he was taking a half-day vacation.  When I looked out my office door, I saw that I was the only one left in the office.

It didn't seem right to abandon my revision project in midstream just because the building was emptying (helped along by the gloomy skies and occasional heavy rain outside).  So I carried on for another hour.  Really, though, I was wondering if I had earned an early start to my weekend.  Even though I'd accomplished quite a bit during the week, I'd also enjoyed the summer's much more leisurely pace in its first full week.  I took two mornings off-campus to work on research, completing an intensive self-education in qualitative fieldwork methods.  And I spent a couple of late afternoons on my running, ducking out a few minutes early to get in a couple of miles before heading home for dinner.

When I finally did leave, fully two hours before official closing time, it was a strangely joyless moment.  I actually lingered, packing up my things, rather than racing for the car and freedom.  Normally I enjoy the Friday afternoon start to my weekend wholeheartedly, celebrating the sharp distinction between the difficult, time-consuming obligations of my work and the relaxing pursuits of my leisure time.  It's one of the lessons that needs reiteration throughout life, lest one imagine that a life comprised solely of avocations would be equally as fulfilling: without contrast, that singular joy is dampened.

All our summers

One more video before we let summer go completely.  The kids had a wonderful few months and turned a year older.  See if you can see them leaving childhood behind in the course of these six minutes.

The rising tide

It's starting to feel just a little bit like summer is over.  Some students are moving back into the dorms, a week or two ahead of their classmates -- those who are in football or band camp or who have to attend leadership training.  There's more traffic on the roads.  Folks with bags full of just-purchased books are popping up on the campus sidewalks.

And the kickoff meetings for the semester will begin on Monday and continue for the next three weeks or so.  When the faculty is all assembled again, that's when it will be clear that our summer of scattered autonomy is over and it's time to pull together to deliver a curriculum again.

I always get excited about the new semester when the freshmen arrive.  They are starting their college adventure, and I love to be there at the start of it -- inserting myself into memories they'll carry with them forever, setting the pace and expectations for the next four years.

But right now, that's all yet to come, and what we're experiencing is far more like an end than a beginning. An end to days with big chunks of time that can be devoted to long-term projects; an end to vacations with the family; an end to sleepy summer days in a college town that loses a fifth of its population when the students go home.  I'm attending summer commencement tonight, the official end of summer classes; nine working days later, fall classes begin.  It's not that I'm not ready, it's not that I won't be thrilled when it arrives.  But let me mourn summer as its last motes of daylight fade.

Productivity

I entered this summer determined to set aside time for personal goals.  There was a new class I was excited about preparing for, a new research project I wanted to kick start, and a lot of crafting in my queue -- including learning a new skill.

As summer draws to a close, I'm impressed by how much I've accomplished, but also aware of how far I have to go to accomplish those goals.  The research project is well underway, and I have a better idea of what kind of products might result, but it's also clear to me how large it is and how many facets there are, including a related and larger effort that might end up being something that occupies me for years.  The class has taken shape, but I can see that it's only a pilot.  A course of this complexity and about a topic rarely explored in academia will take a few years to get right.

What I've most enjoyed is spending dedicated time on these efforts.  And it's great to see some concrete products, like the knitting and crochet I've been cranking out, as well as the course syllabus, the stack of research notes, and the books read.  I wish I could keep on spending several hours a week on my research, but maybe it's possible to carve out a couple, while treating the time I spend on my course as development efforts for its future.  I know I'm lucky to have the chance to devote work time to projects I'm passionate about, and as my schedule becomes orders of magnitude more crowded with the start of the semester, I'll try to remember that -- and not completely lose the momentum.

Waning

The second half of July has set in, and that means the end of summer is rushing upon us. Only four more weeks of my much-beloved summer schedule, with its dedicated time for research and course construction. I'd like very much to continue setting aside a few hours a week for research, but my administrative duties make that difficult -- meetings are called at all hours, and the pressure to be available whenever someone might request you is strong.

Summer's waning days also mean it's time to plan the kids' shared birthday party. My dream? A party in an arcade with several pinball machines, allowing Archer to indulge his love of the clanging tables, clacking bumpers, plunging silver ball, and sharp crack signaling a few game. If anyone knows of a place like that within a reasonable drive, let me know. Otherwise we'll be going to the local giant-maze emporium and party center, which is greatly adored by our children for its arcade games, but isn't the pinball heaven of my ideal.

And I've been scanning the schedule of the local minor-league baseball team to see when we can squeeze in a couple more games. We may not make it to any roller coasters or water slides this summer, but I'm willing to bet that the kids will be just as thrilled and have as many good memories of ballpark hotdogs and keeping score.

Home alone

Because of the kids' summer camp in Little Rock, I have had no reason to get home as early as I usually do. There's no chance for quality time with the kids or husband, and there's no dinner waiting on the table.

So for a few hours in the late afternoon, I'm a singleton again. Nobody's expecting me anywhere.

I've stayed somewhat later than usual at work for the last two days. And when I got to the gym an hour after my normal time, some staff folks convinced me to go to a Zumba exercise class with them. Ordinarily that would not work for me, since the class lasts until 5:45 -- past our family dinnertime. But with no family dinnertime for the next couple of weeks, why not? It was a nice break in my routine yesterday -- so nice that I went back today on my own.

When I get home, I revert to my college and grad school days. There's no point in making elaborate food. I slice some bread, make a sandwich, or drizzle honey and butter on it; I chop up an apple, I peel a banana. It's bachelorette food. And there's something satisfyingly spontaneous about it, even though I'm aware that it would get old really fast.

I like the meals Noel makes for us. I like spending an hour with my children before we eat together. But I don't mind something different -- for a couple of weeks, at least.

Experimental

Earlier this year, Archer's GT teacher sent home information about a two-week summer program administered by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for talented youngsters. When I looked into it, I saw that Cady Gray could also apply. They were thrilled that they were accepted, as were we.

The monkey wrench in our planning is that the program is in Little Rock, a 40-minute drive from our house, and at an odd time -- 12:30-5:30 pm. One of us (Noel most days, though I'm hoping to relieve him a few times) has to drive them down at midday, and then find a library or bookstore or coffeeshop in which to while away the hours until it's time to pick them up.

It also means that our family mealtimes are disrupted. Noel is the cook, and most days he'll be on his way to pick them up at the time when he's normally serving us dinner. We might switch the big meal to lunch a few days; I'll pack lunchboxes so the kids can eat on the drive home. And there might be fast food sometimes.

Right now I'm waiting for my family to come home, and I'm hearing that there might be a few kinks for the program staff to iron out in the pickup procedure. Noel tweeted at 6:10 pm, 40 minutes after pickup time, that he had been stuck in a line of cars for 45 minutes and still hadn't gotten to the point where the kids could be retrieved. That makes me anxious for Archer. Things going over schedule, having to wait, minutes and hours dragging on without knowing when the next thing will happen -- these are recipes for weeping and meltdowns. I hope that the process gets fixed so he (as well as the rest of us) doesn't have to endure that day after day.

And I hope the program itself is worth the trouble it takes for us to commute with the kids and disrupt the routines that give comfort and structure to our days. Everything up to this point has made us confident that it is. I'm looking forward to the kids being home and hearing about it. It would be a shame if their enthusiasm about the classes and the experience was dampened by a traffic jam on the first day.