Things begin to get back to normal around here today. My wife took last week off and with her birthday falling towards the end of last week, we ended up with a 10-day ‘vacation’ span. This is the first time in ages that the family has had extended time off and hasn’t made traveling to parks a major focus. The biggest change in life during something like that is the lack of online time. Normally I spend a decent portion of time online doing all kinds of things ranging from managing life to wasting time. Getting away from that is nice and, as I posted a little while back, makes the online world seem so alien and silly. It always takes a couple of days to acclimate and everything online to feel ‘right’ again.

We had the kind of vacation where it feels like you got shit done, but did nothing at the same time. I like that feeling. We spent 4 days back home visiting family, enjoying my niece’s 1st birthday party and stopping by Kennywood. Back at home we did more stuff around the house (still haven’t got back to my brick wall yet though, but absolutely HAVE to soon), took care of various little errands (paying this year’s car insurance, starting on school clothes, and stuff like that, stopped by Kings Island for a day, etc.

Even more damning for the unofficial end of summer looming just around the corner is that tonight is the first night of football practice for my son. We picked up his equipment this weekend and stopped by Dick’s to buy cleats, Under Armor and a cup and stuff. Little guy’s ready to go again this year. Last year he didn’t miss a single game, practice or activity the entire season (I believe living up to commitments you make and it felt good to not have to crap out on anything), but already this year we’ll be missing 3 practices and the first official game in August for a wedding. Also have a milestone birthday bash for my wife’s uncle that’s kind of a “better not miss” thing in September that we’re still trying to figure out how to handle to not miss a game and there’s both CoasterBuzz events in late September that I’d rather not miss again, but can’t keep missing football games either. I’ll wait until I see this year’s schedule and make some hard decisions.

If the idea of football isn’t enough to make you start thinking past summer, then knowing school starts less than a month from now and we still need to score supplies, clothes and stuff certainly makes you think this way. My daughter starts middle school this year and is going to miss orientation and stuff due to aforementioned wedding as well, so we need to find a time to get her over to the school to grab her schedule and take a look around before school starts. We’ll be returning from the wedding the day before school starts (which is the elementary school’s meet & greet, so my little guy lucked out).

Now that the kids are getting older and taking on responsibilities of their own we keep finding it harder and harder to make time for things like weddings and birthday parties and people coming from out of town to visit and whatever else you get asked to do in life. So much so that I’ve proclaimed to the rest of the family that after we get through this fall, it’s time to just start being more selfish for lack of a better term. At some point we just have to start saying, “Sorry, we can’t make it we have shit to do.” It always feels like we go out of our way to do that when others involved don’t and our lives are just getting to the point where we can’t always do it anymore either. I feel bad that my daughter is going to miss thwe orientation and seeing all her friends a few days before school start and comparing schedules and finding her classes and stuff. Sure, it’s no big deal, she’s not a moron and we’ll get the important info in time, but there’s something about being there for the experience. Same with my son and his football games. You want him to be there to be a part of the team experience all the wins and losses and the ride of the whole season. It kills me that we’re agreeing to commit to some degree and have to crap out once or twice.

At any rate, I enjoyed being off the grid for a week or so, but now at the end of July I find myself feeling like fall is looming and I need to get shit in line.