The Eight Square Inches Between Interruptions

I've reached the part of summer where I'm burnt out on summer.

Mostly, this comes in the form of PLEASE JUST GIVE ME SOME TIME AND SPACE TO THINK MY OWN THOUGHTS!

It is always advisable to wear goggles while catching raindrops in your mouth.

Summer is a lot of togetherness for me. Togetherness with my kids, togetherness with friends, late nights, long days. And while I do love the ease of the togetherness, I can't figure out how to have an ease of solitude as well. I feel super-duper cramped.

This is my first summer with a smart phone. I'm on it all the time. Not because I'm trying to fill a void in my life, but because I'm trying to escape the craziness around me and have control over something, even if it is only the 8 square inches between interruptions.

It doesn't really work, by the way.

Last summer, we had two problems: 1) I under-scheduled the children and 2) summer was effectively three weeks longer because we took the kids out of school three weeks early to travel. I'm not beating myself up about last summer, because I did the best I could given the situation we were dealing with. But this summer, I promised myself to do a better job balancing boring days with camp. I think, by in large, it's working. The kids seem satisfied: we've got a relative good balance of do-nothing days and busy days, activities and down time. I even feel that I've reached some sort of sweet spot in finding perfect camps: the type of camps where the kids come home happy and tired, rather than in need of de-programming from children's taunts and bad manners.

Good Job, Ann. (Well, nobody else is going to congratulate me for this, so I find it necessary to talk this way to myself.)

The summer challenge now is really to factor in ME. How do I get a break from the kids (all three of them at the same time)? How do I get time to decompress? How much do I need, anyway? I contemplate numbers: Fritz works/commutes/exercises for about 52 hours a week. That means, on a regular schedule, I spend 52 hours a week alone with the kids in various combinations (1 kid, 2 kids, 3 kids). The last time I regularly had no kids was 2 years ago when I hired a babysitter for a scheduled 2 hours a week. That last for about 8 months. Two hours a week without kids was not much, but it helped.

This fall, Trixie will start preschool and then I will get 9 hours a week without kids. I haven't had 9 hours a week of time away from my kids since Mattias was born in 2010! So, this is huge. Will it be enough? Will I feel more refreshed and relaxed? Hopefully, it will offer some clues and guidance to scheduling for next summer.

Read, Write, Right

I use two different readers to read blogs. One is on my smart phone and one is on my computer.

The RSS reader (The Old Reader) on my computer is great, but not widely used. I thought I should try something else on my phone. I had already been unhappy with Feedly, so I tried Bloglovin' on my phone. 

Now I can tell you I dislike both Feedly and Bloglovin'. Both of these readers are more about marketing and reinforcing content that is already popular than exposure to new ideas. If you want diversity, you are not going to discover it by utilizing either of these readers.  I would say: Same old, same old.  But really it's more like: Same trend, same trend. Feedly and Bloglovin' remind me of living in Portland, Oregon, where everything was hip, but everything was hip in the same way. 

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These days, all my RSS readers are very empty on the weekend. When something is posted on a weekend, I feel a bit of shock: What!? Someone is working on the weekend? 

Based on this, I've concluded the list of blogs I'm reading has become far too commercial. 

I decide it's time to weed. 

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I can't be interested in Facebook at all the last few months. 

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Noah hates to write. There's nothing wrong with his thinking or his imagination. I'm frequently impressed with how verbally coherent he can be. But when it comes to paper and pencil, he runs the opposite direction. I'd like to see him improve his writing and write more. 

Recently we had a conversation in which he asked me why everyone thinks writing is so important. I talked to him about how it allows us to communicate and share ideas at anytime and in any place without actually being present.  I talked about how it allows us to present our ideas very precisely.

But in the back of my head I was thinking about how we watch TED talks instead of reading papers and books. I was thinking about snapchat versus blogs. I was thinking about how Facebook purportedly has an algorithm ranking video higher than photos and higher than text. And I thought about how clicking on an article in an online newspaper can lead you to a video instead of an article. I thought about how Fritz always speaks his texts and emails instead instead of typing them. 

(Heck, Noah, maybe you're right. Writing may not be so important in our – your – future. But I'm not sure that's such a great thing, so, go get your pencil and write.)

Mechanical

Yesterday, I successfully diagnosed and adjusted the timing on my (broken) sewing machine. And today I (quickly!) unjammed a chain on Noah's bicycle, so I'm feeling very mechanically inclined these days.

No, honestly, I owe the sewing machine success to the fact that there are so many sources online to offer advice. I know this has been possible for many decades now, but I still sometimes find it amazing that I can surf around the web and find the information that I need to do this stuff myself. Also, the information has become so good and thorough and tested!

Since I've been using my sewing machine a lot lately, I've become rather panicky about something happening to it. I only have one sewing machine. What if it breaks on the evening before I've promised to ship something to a customer?! My parents gave it to me for my birthday and Christmas some years ago. They don't sell this particular model anymore, but I think at the time it ran in the ballpark of $200-$300. A new, simpler, but sufficient, sewing machine could be purchased for about $80. Repairing the $200-$300 machine was going to be in the ballpark of $90, just to have someone look at it.

These are the type of numbers that really make you wonder: should you just endlessly purchase new cheap sewing machines when one breaks? (Icky disposable consumerism!) Should you pay even more money to repair the existing one and just hope it doesn't (ever) break again? Fixing it myself was definitely the best option but I was pretty nervous about it. I still remember my Dad swearing he would NEVER fix my mother's sewing machine after one bad attempt in my childhood.

I may have done this exact same dance when I fixed the sewing machine.

But, ah, Sweet Internet. You saved me. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Also, there's something to be said for a piece of machinery that is simple enough that you CAN fix it without fancy, expensive tools to assist.