This past weekend marked perhaps the most perfect weather ever for a May long weekend in Canada. It was absolutely glorious from the Friday morning right through to the Monday night. And it took my family exactly 3.2 seconds to shift into summer mode. The girls lived in the pool, they picniced on blankets on the lawn, I generally avoided my computer for three straight days, my husband and I sat in the backyard with cold drinks and had long conversations.....it was perfection.
Then Tuesday hit. Wham!
All of us (except my husband who has some superpower for waking up early and is gone before we're up) were frantically running around the house trying to get back into our routine. It involved some shouting, a little crankiness and whole lot of attitude. It was a harsh, cruel reality but it wasn't really our fault.
And herein lies the problem with a beautiful long weekend like that. We clocked off. Our minds, our hearts, our souls, went to that place we're not supposed to go to until the last day of school and we were done until Labour Day.
This is what is making Tuesday so hard. We have 38 more sleeps to go before we can be "officially" back in that mode again. It just seems so cruel.
So, I'm sitting here wondering how I can keep a little bit of that going until we can let routine go for a couple of months. As much as I'd like to stop making lunches, I think my children would protest. As much as my children would like to forget homework, I think their teachers would protest. And as much as I'd like to sit around the pool and drink sangrias all day, I think my bank account would protest. Sigh. What to do?
If I think really hard about it, it wasn't the "what" of the weekend that mattered so much as the "feel" of the weekend. Relaxed. And so for the next 38 more sleeps, I'm going to try and carry that feeling with me. Less time on my computer, more time outside. More time laughing with my kids, instead of barking at them to hurry up. If I can't be on summer holidays quite yet, I'm at least going to try and carry the feeling with me. I just need to recover from this morning first.
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