29 Things to Do for Entertainment This Summer
- Invite friends over for a bar-b-que. Not a lot of money? B.Y.O.M.! (Bring your own meat.)
- Try all of the flavors at your local ice cream shop. (Too many? Enlist your family!)
- Take a walk. Admire the gardens/flowers of those in your neighborhood. Ask for seeds or clippings to plant in your yard.
- Go to an outdoor concert. (Check the paper or on-line.)
- Watch the kids playing in your neighborhood. Listen, too.
- Run through the sprinkler!
- Paint a fun design/color scheme on your mailbox.
- Go camping. (Need to go really cheap? Go in your backyard!)
- Paint a fun design/scene somewhere in your house.
- Grow some tomatoes on your porch (balcony/fire escape/veranda/back stoop).
- Go yard sale-ing.
- Buy lemonade at every lemonade stand you see (or start your own)!
- Eat lots of fresh fruit.
- Invent a recipe for fruit salad.
- Find a recipe for a fun frozen treat.
- Use a blender to make your own smoothies or frozen coffee drinks.
- Look for outdoor art in your town/city/botanical garden.
- Go to the farmers’ market.
- Go to a flea market.
- Find a nice body of water, and go swimming–or wading!
- Go to the park and play basketball or tennis (or play on the playground!)
- Go on a picnic.
- Go for a walk in the evening, and see what you see in your neighbors’ lighted windows.
- Eat a fresh tomato whole.
- Sit in the sun.
- Go on a walk at night, and go stargazing.
- Build a sand castle.
- Eat a sno-cone.
- Go to a fair. (Or a carnival).
Buying Furniture is Like Test Driving a Car in a Fish Bowl!
I have just crossed one of the last thresholds of young-adulthood. I bought a car, I bought a house, and now I have also bought furniture. Real furniture, I mean–the kind you don’t even have to put together! Although it is not quite as expensive or stressful as either house or car buying, buying furniture has its own set of unique challenges.
When you buy a car you get to take it for a test drive, out on the road on your own. If you want to, at this point, you are able to examine anything you need to in closer detail. When you buy a house it is difficult to “test” it, but at least the owners aren’t staring at you, or listening as you pick apart the flaws in their structure and comment on the ugly green linoleum. When you buy furniture you have none of these luxuries.
You walk into the furniture store and walk into a series of attractively furnished “rooms” (if it is an upscale furniture store), or the first of several rows of the same kind of furniture (if things aren’t quite so fancy). You wander around until you see something you like, and then you are stuck. Because then, if you are seeking some kind of furniture where comfort is important, you have to test it out. Although it is important to have an attractive couch that will match your decor, you don’t want visitors (or more importantly, yourself) to go “oof” you sit down with a thud on a sofa that is built like a park bench. You also don’t want to sink in so far that reinforcements have to be called when you are ready to disembark from the couch.
This is all well in good, except that every furniture store I’ve been in has approximately 3.5 salespeople per customer. And they all stare at you. Not a one of them seems to know how to mind their own business. So if you are shopping for couches (as I was) you are required to walk around from sofa to sofa, stopping to sit on any that look promising. Unfortunately, since this is a test (and only a test) you immediately hop back up to make a beeline for the next sofa. This too is fine, except that it left me feeling like I was a wandering whack-a-mole. And those salespeople just kept staring the entire time.
As if this is not undignified enough, you have to see if you can come up with ways to secretly test the furniture to see if it will be up to its real roles once you buy it. I don’t know about you, but when I am at home watching t.v., I don’t sit primly on the cushion of the couch with both feet on the floor. It is more of a sprawl. So I find myself sitting on these couches in the store, and then trying to covertly turn my body and tuck my legs in such a way that I can tell if the couch will be comfortable to lay on, while still appearing to be “casually shopping” so I don’t have to get the if-you-are-interested-in-this-one speech from the hovering salesperson. (I also don’t think they would be amused if I took off my shoes and burrowed into napping position to really give the old sofa a run for its money). And what about sitting at the opposite end from my person and trying to figure out if, in a reclining down position, we will be able to snuggle and read on the couch without killing each other, or knocking someone to the floor? (This is not to even mention the precarious and delicate task of discreetly testing mattresses for any other uses than slumber that might be required).
It wasn’t easy, but I did it. (And you can, too!) In the process of couch buying I was not openly laughed at, no salespeople were injured fighting each other for my sale, and I managed to find something that would resist (ha!) pet hair. I also managed to test for and meet all three of my couch requirements: 1. Not too hard for me, 2. Not too soft for my person, 3. Big enough for both of us, and 4. Cushions that don’t appear to eat the remote. We even managed to find all of this in a “room set” for a bargain price. All we had to do was get a color neither of us had considered in the first place that is probably too light for us not to mess up. Ah, adulthood. Who says there are no coming of age rituals in the U.S.A.? With all of the big three (car, house, furniture) I am probably an exemplary member–and next week I’ll be ready to run for office–I get a washer and dryer!
Gray Day
Today is a gray day, and I feel gray. The sun is not out. But it is not raining. I am not happy, but I am not sad. I don’t feel strongly enough about anything that has happened in the course of this day to comment on it. I feel like I am waiting for something, but there is nothing that I am waiting for. I have no feelings or thoughts that are black or white that will rise to the surface. All of them are gray today, and none have gone either way.
To navigate my gray day I have not done much. I got gas, and bought deli-meat. Both staples of living. I sent an email and packed some boxes. I made coffee and ate cheese. I took a phone message and fed the pets.
For dinner I will have something from a box or a can, and a piece of fruit from the fridge. With that I will drink water from the faucet, no ice. I may finish watching a movie I started yesterday, or pay the bills, or tidy the house.
Yesterday I was full of feelings. I was angry and passionate and sad and relieved. I drove fast and yelled and screamed and cried. I stomped around and listened to loud music. I questioned things and took sides. Things roared, and burned.
But today I tiptoed into the day with a life hangover from yeterday. And softly padded through. I sat and stood and checked the mail. I quietly went through things alone. And just tried to feel back to normal.
Hamburger Buns in 4 Packs
Why do all hamburger buns come in 8 packs? Why do hot dog buns sometimes come in packs of even more? Do no single people eat hamburgers? And how many families are really able to use all of these buns at once?
I never ate hamburgers when I lived on my own. I would have had to eat them for over a week straight, if I didn’t want the buns to go bad. For single people, there is a hamburger bun for each night of Hanukkah. Perhaps you think I should freeze them. Modern appliances allow this convenience. Unfortunately, I do not really enjoy the taste of frozen hamburger buns. Once they’ve been frozen they are never quite the same, and I have to eat them toasted to be able to really enjoy them.
And while I am not suggesting individually wrapped hamburger buns for single people, (because what the United States needs is really more packaging) I do wonder why it is that buns cannot be packaged in groups of 4. Or more to the point, why they aren’t.
As part of a couple, when I make hamburgers for dinner, even if both of use eat two, a four pack would be plenty. If I were living alone I could probably eat all four buns before they went bad. A family of four, eating one burger apiece would be doing just fine. And aren’t there more of us living in groups of one and two and four? Yes, some families have eight, but how many have three? Why all of this senseless waste of good white bread?
Is it easier to buy an extra pack or waste all of those buns? Why should I feel such a sense of futility at my wastefulness every time I want to grill out a burger? And perhaps I am wrong, but I think the bun companies should be all for this as well. Maybe they couldn’t charge as much for one pack of buns, but they could charge more for 2 packs– thereby getting more money from anyone who wanted 8. And all of those holdouts, who cannot bring themselves to eat a hamburger because of the guilt of the buns would rush back, with open arms, to reclaim the hamburger as a meal ripe for the eating.
Who stands to lose from selling hamburger buns in four packs? How can this go wrong? Perhaps sparrows in backyards across the nation will feel the hurt from this initiative, but the rest of us will sleep easier at night. If for the sake of the sparrows, you refuse to go for four-packs, couldn’t you at least sell me six? Four for me, and two for them? After all, the last thing we need is a country where the birds are obese, too!
Practice
Practice has never been something I’ve been good at, or something I felt particularly compelled to do. At least, I’ve never felt compelled enough to do it. When I first began playing a musical instrument at the age of 7, practice never seemed that important.
I liked playing music, and I wanted to play my instrument well, but the repeated painful practice over and over of something I didn’t know (or something i did) never grabbed me. I didn’t enjoy it, and I do not think I really grasped, at that point, a reason to do it. My parents, also, though they may have nagged me a bit to practice, never really forced the issue or held me to it. I do not think, that at the age of 7, they felt it was something they needed to put the pressure on me for.
This is all well and good, but never receiving the pressure, or feeling the importance at that young age, I don’t think it is something I ever caught on to. This is not to say that now, as an adult, I cannot detail the importance of practice. I just do not think that I can put it into practice. I am not practiced at practice.
I have gone on, after that first musical instrument, to dabble in two more–but with lack of steady practice I have never been very good at any of them. Also, I have a messy house (and had a messy room as a child) because I did not practice at cleaning. I did not practice sports, because they did not interest me, and was only a school athelete for one term in high school. I did not practice my multiplication tables in third grade, and though I was always a good math student, I was never a fast one. It probably took me well into my twenties to master 8×7 for certain. Practice has never become a habit or a routine for me, and I suffer some because of it. I always thought I would like to be a writer, but this to, would take more practice than I currently put into it.
When it comes right down to it, the only thing I have ever done a really great job of practicing at, is being a teacher. First of all, in college, they made me practice in numerous education courses teaching lessons to my classmates and tutoring students at local elementary schools. (Not, of course, that this is anything like actual teaching, but I guess you could call it practice anyway.) Then, as I was nearing the end of my college career, there came the fateful semester when I was required to “practice” as a student teacher. While this is in an actual classroom, in an actual school, with actual students, it too bears little resemblance in many ways to “real teaching” that is done as a teacher, but it sure is a crash course with lots of actual practice doing the deed. I practiced more,later, as a substitute teacher when I could not find a job in the saturated local job market when I graduated. And I practiced, as it turned out, even more my first year teaching. And my second. And my third.
In fact, as it turned out, teacing is something that I get to continue practicing every year. It is something I am continually practicing with each new batch of students, and every year I get a little better. In teaching, my practice and my craft are one and the same (often), and I am living my practice every day. The practice is not removed from the “performance,” such as it is.
This is something that I could’ve stood to learn earlier, and it is something that I could put to use in writing, or cleaning, or any number of other things I wish I did, or wish I did better. If I practiced cleaning, I might not immediately become a good cleaner, but I would have a cleaner house. I think the parents of the Suzuki violin students I saw the other day at the farmers’ market had the right idea.
As I rounded the corner of a vegetable stand bearing tomatoes, and peaches, and everything else in season, by the fresh bread I saw two children somewhere between the ages of 5 and 9. In front of them there was a container where they were collecting money from kind passers-by as the played. And what were they playing? Their violin practice, I am pretty sure. Mom was paging through their song books, helping them find a song in this one, and another in that one. But what wafted out was the strands of Suzuki method music I recognized from my own childhood. Practice? Sure! But it wasn’t a chore. It was a nice Saturday outside in the fresh air at the farmers’ market–and a way to earn a little money!
Old Friends
There have only been a few people who really really knew me. Or who I felt did. There are many people I have been close to, but there were a few who went even further. These are the people that it felt like, soon after I’d met them, were family. Or something closer. Soulmates. Someone I was already connected too. And it has been awhile since I’ve had anyone like that in my life.
Perhaps that is funny, since they are people whom I immediately felt close to, and felt I’d always know. Because they drifted out of my life as easily as anyone else. Most of them are not out of my life completely, you understand, but we are seperated now by time, and distance, and space, and situations of life and adulthood.
This past weekend, I went with the new “person” in my life to visit two of these old friends, and was sorely disappointed. It wasn’t the same, and that closeness wasn’t there. I don’t think this was because it isn’t there, indeed, at times I can see these friends and begin talking like it was yesterday. (It is that kind of connection.) In fact, it was the “person”–a later friend of the same two,but not an original part of my friendship–who seemed to cause the disconnect. The person was not there when we shared all that youthful closeness, and not one who has ever understood in quite the same way (perhaps it is the getting there too late). But this time it just didn’t “click”. I sat and listend as Friend 1, and Friend 2, and the “person” talked, and conversed. All glad to see each other after so long, it was hard for me to get a word in. And no one seemed to notice. Not Friend 1, or Friend 2, with whom I once shared such closeness. Not my “person”, with whom I supposedly share that closeness now. I felt like an extra wheel.
Friend 1, especially, was always my friend: was close, and did some important growing up with me. We grew up together. In more ways than one, at more times than one. This person is someone I miss like a part of me, and think of fairly often, though we never talk. Since the weekend we’ve started in brief emails. A sentence here, two or three there. I had hoped that slowly we might reconnect in the day to day, at least a little.
But it turns out my person had the same idea. Wanted the same things as me, and is much blunter, so started into deeper conversations much sooner. 2 email friendships rejuvenated, but mine seems like the lesser half. The sloppy seconds. And this stabs deeply, from someone I was so close with once, and my person was not.
Then tonight, as I finished my dinner, the phone rang. I didn’t leap up, since I was eating, and it is rarely for me. It was assumed to be my person’s family member, but it wasn’t. It was Friend 1. I could tell as soon as my person answered and started talking. I hoped that Friend 1, after a time, would ask for me. Alas, Friend 1 did not. 2 hours later (or more, most likely) here I sit. My person wandered back and forth several times, talking. Pacing. Then went out on the porch and closed the door.
There they sit, and here I am. Friend 1 and I, no longer connect I guess. At least not on Friend 1′s part. Or maybe I was never that important. It hurts. Outside the friendship, and depth goes on without me. And not that it wouldn’t have happened other places, other times, other ways, but it seems harder for it to be on my porch. And I am lonely. I feel I have lost something so important to me. One person I counted on to be “mine” and understand in a way like no other. One person I counted on to be there to listen to me. But now my best friend (of once-upon-a-time), and my person (of now and forever) are there without me. And I am here. And I feel alone, adrift, and unconnected. Because, really, now, I’ve lost a part of myself.
