The Quiet Month of Summer

Dearest Rachel –

So; it’s June. We’re almost halfway through the year, and it rather feels like it, seeing how much has already happened thus far (some of which didn’t go according to plan, but that’s life on this abandoned planet, isn’t it?). While I haven’t covered the kind of ground that I did last year, it’s not like I haven’t been places and done things. It’s been a busy year thus far, and I’ve made plans for more of the same going forward.

But not this month, for some strange reason. Despite the fact that I don’t have the same level of commitment (such as Awana every Monday, for instance), I haven’t bothered to plan anything for the entirety of the month of June. No flights, no road trips, no nothing. It’s almost weird to start the summer with a month of essentially noting going on.

Now, you could certainly point out that I’m jumping the gun on calling it ‘summer’ already, which is quite true. Not only does the calendar assert that summer doesn’t officially start for another three weeks, it’s barely getting into the seventies, in terms of temperatures at this point (never mind the fact that, two weeks ago, we were dealing for nineties for at least a couple of days). But the fact of the matter is that the season has all but started for the area school kids; the one across the street from church has May 30 listed on its display sign, along with wishes for a ‘happy summer!’ And with the kiddos out for the school year, vacations and travel season begin in earnest, despite what the calendar says.

Besides, as I mentioned before when we were heading out to the island, we’re already getting more sun (and more directly) now than we would in, say, August. By rights, it should feel more like summer now than it does then. But I get it; the earth is still recovering from winter – and even spring only has the occasional anomalous bursts of heat every now and then. It has to be given several months to warm up, just as it has to take a similar amount of time to cool off; September and October ought to be comparable to March and February, temperature-wise, but they aren’t.

But in any event, my point stands; this is when stuff starts happening for the summer season. And for whatever reason, I’ve somehow got a clear schedule in that regard for this month. Oh, I’ve got preparations to make for future plans – yesterday, I had to make my final installment payment for the Honduras trip (which I’m sure I was supposed to fundraise for, but when I can afford to pay my own way more so than anyone I know well enough to ask for money from, that seems like the better course of action. Certainly easier than asking for help from anyone else.), and I still have to put together a few lesson plans for any teaching I might be asked to do about personal finance and various software (although when it comes to Google Sheets, it’s going to be a case of the blind leading the blind; Excel I know my way around, and you’d think that a spreadsheet program would be a spreadsheet program, but there are differences, and they will trip you up) – but that’s not a thing that’s happening until late next month, right after Vacation Bible School. So you can see; put July up against June, and you’ll see that the former have stuff going on for half the time already, but the latter? Zero, zip, zilch, nada.

Although… that’s really something of an overstatement. It’s not that I’m completely indolent; it’s just that I’ve got nothing significant scheduled for the month – and that’s the unusual part about it. I am assigned weekends in the booth, on the usual every-other-weekend, off-again-on-again schedule that you remember well (which is more than I can say for future months, since those schedules aren’t worked out until the last week or two of the prior month, in order to accommodate for things which may come up at the last minute. Even VBS, which I assume I’ll be working on in my usual fashion, hasn’t been confirmed yet, and won’t be for three or four weeks yet). The one event that’s out of the ordinary is a meeting about travel that seems likely to take place in November (and is a trip we’ve already done as father and son since your departure, although I hope there might be a pair or two of extra eyes that might be able to see the place. Anyway, I’ll have more details for you later, although you can probably guess what all I’m talking about already)

Meanwhile, I’ve already told you about July, and while August doesn’t have much going on until the tail end of the month, that’s just a matter of scheduling on the part of the the cruise line (as well as there being a question of how much time we want to spend beforehand in the place where our trip begins). As with the November trip, I’ll have more details for you as they unfold – although I do have to have the ship fare paid by Wednesday already, so that may be a topic of discussion in and of itself – but the point stands; for all the things I’ve lined up for myself while I can, nothing much is going on here in June.

Which is probably just as well, when you come down to it. There’s something to be said for having a lull between events, a calm before the storm, if you will.  If nothing else, there’s the fact that the fiscal year for the church and camp just wrapped up; I could use a little down time to work on finalizing both the books for the past year and the budget for the coming year.  I can remember years when we were on the island, where I spent an inordinate amount of time in the florida room, getting the books together rather than actually relaxing with you and the rest of the family. It’s ironic to think that these days, the traveling I intend to do is more like work (well, it comes from the word “travail,” after all) while getting the books and the budget together have gotten to the point where I’m calling that ‘down time.’

Then again, it is the boring drudgery that I’m running off to this corner of the world or that to avoid, and that I’m complaining about having to deal with in the month of June, So maybe it’s not as relaxing as all that, even now.  So with that in mind, I suppose I should still ask you to keep an eye on me Today and for the rest of the month, as well as wishing me luck, since it’s clear I’m still going to need it.