hope for yourself.

There's something about making a list of things to do that just clashes with the very essence of summer - which ought to be full of lazy days, spontaneity, nothingness that's so full it becomes everything. It's sunny outside today, though, and it makes me think back to our two-week stretch of summer that came in March (um...the one that sparked the premature bloom of flowers, leaves, and crops, and was followed by week after week of freezing nighttime temps that have threatened the local fruit production...oopsie). I remember mentioning that we might not get another stretch of weather like that until May. I remember thinking I was exaggerating. Nope!

But it's May on Tuesday. My favorite month. One of my favorite words (for the feelings of serenity and warmth it evokes). And it kicks off my favorite season - summer. Every year, though, I have high hopes for all the summery things I want to do, and they just don't happen. I get bogged down in weddings and yard work and exhaustion from my day job (camp counselor...which I am not this year, much to my dismay. Like, tears in my eyes right now about it).

Since I love lists and I love summer, I'm gonna go ahead and venture that they can coexist. I'm letting myself off the hook before I even write it - proffering the disclaimer that this list may not be accomplished. Its main purpose is to create hope about a summer that will be different in lots of big, scary ways. Hope will be vital this summer: I won't play with kids all day long, I don't get to bask in the sunshine and water every day, I'll be working a high-stress desk job (what have I done?), we'll potentially be trying to get pregnant, and I no longer have weekly therapy support. Hope helps soothe anxiety for me, so the list is a step in that direction.

But the bottom line is that it's summer, so if the list doesn't get completed - or even touched? It'll just be because I'm off doing other awesome, summery things. There's my disclaimer.

Summer 2012 Anti-To-Do List

• Go canoeing at Gallup
• Picnic at the Botanical Gardens
• Read/write by the river
• Re-institute No-Plan Sundays
• [Must...stop...self...from putting house projects on this list]
• Sub in for a couple softball games
• Hit up the Farmers' Market
• Take Fin to Washtenaw Dairy
• Take myself to Washtenaw Dairy (mmm...Milky Way ice cream...)
• Make some of my Pinterest art ideas...just make art
• Go to a local carnival
• Catch fireflies in our back yard
• Make my way up north for Adapted WWF Tubing with Ebeth (adapted for our recently-acquired leg and shoulder injuries, of course)
• Eat dinner outside downtown
• Play my guitar outside
• Stop being a townie snob and go to Art Fair
• Take Violet to the Arb
• Go to Cedar Point WITH CARRIE DAMMIT!
• Breathe, every day
• Go to the neighborhood ice cream social...with or without a prop child
• Take walks at night with J.J.
• Go to Top of the Park as many times as possible
• Plan a vacation for late 2012...just to stretch the hope out

Washtenaw Dairy. I've been there three times in one day.
On more than one occasion.

Saline Fair a couple years ago. I cried on the Fireball.

WWF Tubing...I'm on the right. I won't name the other two
non-awesome tubers who weren't catching mad air.

The Arb

For now, though? It's Sunday morning on the last day of my vacation, and I need to go soak up some immediate hope. It's not coming to me readily right now, but...it will. It will. And hey - what's on your summertime list? What else should I add to mine? I can already taste the Milky Way ice cream...