We’re all in, summerwise. July denotes the beginning of 5 months’ worth of celebrations - we started with Cody’s 17th birthday on 2 July and will observe our wedding anniversary, Jim’s birthday, my birthday, and Lilly’s birthday, in August, September, October, and November, respectively - and we’re sure to have other random neighborhoody get-togethers, not the least of which will be the Third, Fourth, or Fifth Annual B-K Dessert Potluck in early August.

We looked forward, all winter and spring, to the weather’s eventual improvement precisely so we could have people over. I didn’t grow up in a family that had people over with any regularity - nay, even visits from relatives were rare, especially after we moved to what surely appeared to be the frozen tundra to all of our Florida-based relations - and having friends over was also a rare occurrence. I’m a deeply social person and love nothing more than a good mashup of all our friends in their different permutations, and have been gratified to discover that the guy I married is also down for these endeavors. While he he’s never been antisocial, it’s only in the last several years that we’ve had largeish impromptu gatherings in addition to one or two planned blowouts each summer.

I’ll admit that the planned blowouts were much easier to handle when I wasn’t working full-time, especially since I now work on Saturdays from 4:30 AM - about 1:30 PM, and have to carve out time to make food when really, I should be taking a nap. Jim has taken on most of the other work, especially for the impromptu gatherings, but at the same time I feel some guilt (?) and definitely some resentment about work sucking up all my energy (because, frankly, it does). I think I’m moving into a different phase of my life - I know I’ve alluded to it - and it’s all tangled up in the kids getting older (17 and almost-11? HOW DARE THEY?) and me trying to realign the constellation.

I got my first non-babysitting job when I was 14 years old. I was a turkey leg wench at the Renaissance Festival for at least one and possibly two seasons; the job started out hot and humid in mid-August and ended frosty-like the last weekend September, and was the only way a kid my age could earn good money on the weekends. After making a few hundred bucks over 6 weekends, I was pretty sold on working. Let’s just say I was never much of a babysitter, anyway. Other summer or other non-career, non-parenting jobs I have held:

- house painter - convenience store operator - movie theater schlep - community education art intern - games operator at Valleyfair - pastry seller - barista - diner waitress - schmancy waitress - cocktail waitress - record store clerk - candy maker - temp (oh, the temping positions I have held! Very weird!)

What kind of non-career, summer-type jobs have you held?

In terms of “career” jobs, I’ve either worked in the music business as a sales rep, a buyer, a publicist/A&R type for a record label, or as a journalist (that last was freelance, unpaid, and my flakiness at the time definitely worked against me), or I’ve worked in the food business in non-profit, a cooperative setting, or in a municipality running a large farmers’ market. My career, such as it is, has been short thus far due to doing my rather rudderless thing after graduating -> having kids and staying home with them -> and it’s all been frosted with a commitment to working for small businesses/nonprofits/government. Basically, I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that I’ll likely be working (or looking for work) outside the home for the rest of my life, and I’m of mixed mind about it. I like earning money and I like having health insurance, but I miss my freedom, or what amounted to freedom back when I was home with the kids. I remind myself that while my time was mine (well, mine and theirs), there wasn’t very much money and there was a whole lot of stress, and neither were particularly freeing. But I must work, and in these times, I’m especially grateful for my job. I just don’t want to BECOME my job.

Back when I was 21 and just out of college, I couldn’t identify -at all - with the concept of a midlife crisis. I still think it’s a luxury, a navel-gazey Hallmark creation wrought out of Western ennui. But I can now see how one’s forties, while liberating in so many ways, can also be perplexing. And I’m perplexed. Benevolently, but perplexed nevertheless.