Life around here simplifies itself in the summer. Each girl goes one place that she stays until 4:30. Either that or she is away from home for two or more weeks. There are very few extra activities. Kat or Day-Hay may have a babysitting job or two but there is no dance, no stage crew, no girl scouts, no Battle of the Books teams. Day-Hay has basketball once a week but, unless it is pouring, she can walk or bike there and back. Kat gets enough physical activity without a mother nagging here. Life is simple.

I tend to spend more hours at work in the summer. My boss tends to lots of days off and long vacations. I tend to make those possible. Yet once I am out from under the pressure of being a chauffeur, I don�t seem to care. Sometimes I leave work on time but I feel less pressured because there are extra hours I could work if I had to.

Then there are the other advantages of summer, at least summer in the 70s as we have it now. There�s no scraping of cars, no pulling on boots, no looking for jackets. Leaving is a simple matter. Pick up your keys (okay, sometimes that�s not so simple because I can�t find them) and leave. Yes, the grass grows but that�s Mr. Philately�s problem (which is more than I can say for the bushes.)

Sometimes, though, I miss the summers of the girls� youth. When they were toddlers, I worked a few less hours. More than that, I worked fewer days. Unlike most parents, I had a daycare that only made me pay for the days I worked. On the days I didn�t work, I�d pull the chair and kiddie pool under the tree in the front. Our days would be filled with water, bubbles, and chalk. We�d adventure to a local pond. We could make a big activity out of getting an ice cream cone.

Now, I still don�t work most Fridays but the girls rarely agree to give up their activities just to pal around lazily. They want bigger adventures in exchange for giving up the excitement of Tae Kwan Do camp or theater classes. They want to laze when and where they want to laze and with whom�and the whom only occasionally involves Mom.

On the other hand, summer offers an hour or two with Day-Hay before Kat comes home. We cook together (to the extent that I cook). We chat. Occasionally, like today, she rides off to the grocery store to get the cheese or crucial items I thought I had but have discovered someone ate all up. This time for us is our lazing.

I love the simplification that summer brings.

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