Monday

OK. It’s day one of Design Your Summer Week Three – Seize Every Day. I had planned to take the boys on an early morning trip to the gym each day before starting work as a way to keep them from slipping into screens first thing. I did not think about the fact that while I pop awake at 5:55 am every morning, these boys are teens! I went in to rouse them for gym-time at 6:50 and they were both snoring so deeply, it seemed cruel and legit unhealthy to wake them . . . so we shall re-jigger this daily schedule. Misery is not my goal, for them or for me. Maybe we do lunchtime gym time instead . . .

So I meditated, walked the dog, watered my plants, drank some coffee and water and now I’ll sit down and start working. I put sticky notes on their screens that say “NO SCREENS!!! Come see me!” so we’ll see when they come down.

I’ve told them that we are spending some time this summer learning life skills. They each have two dinners they will be responsible for in the next week or two, and I took them to Costco with me yesterday to see what an absolute drag grocery shopping is. We are going to have a Quicken/budget session, practice balancing a checkbook, I’ve got them pretty well trained on dishes and laundry and trash. I mentioned the Launch List here previously, and yesterday I told them we are going to work through it all together. They were only a teeny bit eye-rolly, but they’re game.

We are watching Arcane right now – an animated steampunk action adventure series, as Wikipedia puts it. I told them we needed to have a show to watch every night, and this is what they picked. We already have a running joke that moms never survive in these types of shows – “oh, there’s another mom. And ope – she’s dead! Another one bites the dust.” I told them that if I died they would just melt into the ground in abject misery, and they both agreed. Glad we have that settled.

Off to work now. I hear the pitter patter of teen feet upstairs. Pray for me, as I fend off screens for these boys . . .