Whenever my summer comes to an end, I always look back at my glorious time off and try to decide if I made the most of it.
I think this summer can best be compared to my garden. Oh, my garden. It has sucked this year. I'm not trying to say my summer sucked... just hear me out.
This is the third year for my garden. The first year, it flourished effortlessly. Seriously, it just grew and grew and I had tons of tomatoes and peppers.
The second year, it didn't go so well, but I blamed it on being away on vacation for 12 days. Even though our cat sitter watered it, there was no one "tending" to it, which I think makes a big difference.
This year, I thought things would go better since I wasn't going to be on vacation very long and I could tend to it.
Nope.
It looks like something has been eating all of my plants!
I have gotten a few nice tomatoes, some peppers, one butternut squash and one zuke. Everything else is ROTTEN!
So how does my crappy garden compare to my summer?
Well, I have had some really great days this summer (the shiny red tomatoes!). But the other days were just BLAH (the rotten tomatoes!).
I'm not complaining. I CHERISH my BLAH days.
Here are just some of the things I did on my BLAH days:
- Laid on the couch.
- Wrote on message boards for Big Brother and The View.
- Researched true crime.
- Watched Jodi Arias interviews.
- Systematically read through solvingjonbenet.blogspot.com
- Overdosed on CNN.
- Read books.
- Did puzzles.
- Colored.
- Slept in really late and stayed up really late.
- Watched bad TV.
- Pet my cats.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the activities I did that represent the shiny red tomatoes in my garden! So here are my shiny red activities:
- Colorado for 6 days with Paul.
- The beach for 3 days with Paul.
- Swimming at the pool.
- Lots and lots of family time!
- Running with my brother.
- Meeting famous bloggers.
I was definitely lazy this summer! But all in all, I had a great summer! I am so thankful for my time off so I can go back to school RECHARGED.
How is you garden doing?
What do you like to do on your BLAH days?
Teachers, when do you go back to school?
I feel like my summer was kind of blah too. I don't know what I would do with myself with 10 weeks off. I think I would be really productive for the first week and then get really lazy and bored. The teachers in our district go back tomorrow, and kids come back next week. I cant believe its already that time of year again!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe it's that time of year too. It seems like our back to school dates keep getting earlier and earlier. However, we got out of school on June 6th this past year which was VERY early for us. Normally we have lots of snow makeup days. So that was nice getting out within the first week of June!
DeleteI had been thinking about this topic for the past several week aand planned to do a post on it as well. I think as teachers we assume we need to be accomplishing so much over the summer because these months off are such a gift, we don't want to be wasteful of it!
ReplyDeleteYou did get in some good family time and some good Megan and Paul vacation time!
These weeks are a gift and I cherish them so much! Eating lunch now and missing all my boys at home...
DeleteAll my teacher friends and family go back the first week in September and go until the end of June. I'm glad you had such a good summer and got some fun and down time in there!!! I hope your first day back goes okay!
ReplyDeleteThanks Suzy!
DeleteI feel like you spent your summer doing the things you LOVE. And that is the most important thing, really. While Rick and I love to be out and adventurous on our weekends we only do things we love. And during the week we enjoy quiet evenings and early bedtimes. We have a super full Friday/Saturday coming up so we both know Sunday is going to be a home day which for me will mean: cooking, baking, working on some art projects and watching a documentary. In the winter when I know we are going to have a home day watching football, I will go to the library and check out a stack of magazines that I can read while we laze around! It's all about balance. Good luck today. Hope it goes well.
ReplyDeleteThanks Susan! You and Rick totally have it all figured out. :)
DeleteThis summer was blah. I didn't have any trips planned, which is why I made sure to meet up with fun family when I was in DC. It was for work, but I could have fun around the work. Now I'm back to blah.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry your summer is blah. Hopefully your fall will be better!
DeleteYou did have some great times this summer! And, not being a teacher, I wish I had some blah days to just lay around my house :) My garden is in overdrive right now. We have about a million tomatoes of all sizes. So many that we decided to make some salsa yesterday. Luckily it turned out really good, and we'll make some more to use up more of the overload of tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteNice! I am glad your cup runneth over with tomatoes! I remember my first garden... the same thing happened and we made salsa! Tomatoes are pretty cheap at Aldi but there's NOTHING like a homegrown tomato!
DeleteI am so thankful to not have kids! I actually got a lot of my room decorated! I think I am done decorating. :)
ReplyDeleteWhich Housewives franchise do you like? I loved NY.
Mmmm, homegrown tomatoes are my FAVORITE. I was super lazy this summer. I never feel like I get everything in that I want because I spend so much time just re-energizing after a long year. By the time I have any energy to do something fun, school is back in session!
ReplyDeleteGoing back to school FORCES me to be productive. I could wallow in unproductive-ness for the rest of my life. Dream big!!
DeleteThat shriveled up tomato is making me hungry. It looks like a sun dried tomato, and I absolutely loooooove sun dried tomatoes!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe school is really about to go back in session already! I wish your summer lasted a little bit longer ... for my own selfish reasons ;).
I like traffic during the summer when school is out and everyone leaves the state to go on vacation! During the summer months I can get to work 10-15 minutes faster than the rest of the year! That's the difference between a 45 minute and a 60 minute drive. It doesn't sound like a big difference but it FEELS like it!
Oh no that would make a HUGE difference especially over the course of a week! I don't blame you! I get such road rage (I don't act on it), I don't know how you deal with all that crazy traffic!
DeleteThis is so funny because I was just planning on writing a post about how I feel like our (attempt at a) garden is a big metaphor for my summer. Not that my summer sucked and everything died, but because like the garden I just sort of gave up and let it descend into blah-ness.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you still had a great summer. I remember watching this episode of King of Queens years ago, and the wife got laid off from her job and was all excited about using her time off to check off bucket list items and stuff, and when it's time to go back to work she's complaining to the husband that she got none of it done and just laid around watching TV instead. And he says to her, "maybe what you needed was to just lay around and watch TV." Don't discount those blah days - it's easy to feel like you were lazy and unproductive but those types of days can serve a purpose. Sometimes we need to recharge for a while; it's not easy to be so go-go-go all the time. Maybe you needed those blah days more than you realized going into this summer.
I am so thankful for my BLAH days. :) And once I am blah for awhile, I just DESCEND into blah-ness and there's not coming out!
Delete10 very well deserved weeks! Like everything in life, a mix of sad dried tomatoes and red ripe fresh ones!
ReplyDeleteI was very intrigued by the Jodi Arias stories back when the trial happened, I think she is crazy and she creeps me out with her "I'm so innocent" face.
Oh she is bat shit crazy. You know the entire trial is on youtube if you would like to watch it. :)
DeleteI loved Bethenny on NY but now I HATE HER.
ReplyDelete