This Summer Sucked.

The school district whose outdoor learning center I volunteer at starts their year this week.

I’m looking forward to seeing the staff folk I get to interact with again. Everybody was around over the summer, but our schedules didn’t match at all because there were no kids around.

I don’t usually interact much with the kiddos in the fall — I’m a volunteer, the schedule is a bit more manageable as the seasons change, and the fall curriculum doesn’t usually overlap with my area of expertise. But the energy changes quite a bit when kids are around, and that’s been missing for much of the last 18 months. That energy is electric, and it will be nice to be around it again.

I don’t usually say (or think) this, but I can’t wait for summer to end. I love long, warm days. I appreciate quiet, early mornings. But this summer… ugh.

There have definitely been some highlights: we got to see some family and travel a little bit. That was wonderful. I got to do a couple of in-person bookbinding workshops and a printmaking workshop, and it was a joy to work with other people in a creative environment. We got to spend time with some local friends (outside), and it was so nice to see people again.

But:

• It was 90+ degrees F for something like 40 days, and 100+ degrees for four or five more (our highest high: 109°F), starting in late June. We’re used to a hot July/August, but we got an extra month of the heat, and it sucked. Oh, and there was no rain, so in addition to extreme heat, we didn’t get any break from cooling showers, which meant…
• Another awful fire season. We’ve always had fires in the West, but because the atmosphere is so much drier than it used to be (thanks for nothing, climate change), and our poor forest management practices are catching up to us (too much fuel), the fires are bigger and burn hotter and longer. Those intense fires dump a lot of smoke into the air, and it travels.
• I hurt my back in mid-June — it seized in early July — and I’ve been, for all intents and purposes, out of commission when it comes to fun summer activities like gardening and kayaking. I’m thankful I can do most of my day-to-day activities, and because my back has some hypermobility issues, I still have enough range of motion to live my life… it’s just not as much as I’m used to, or as much as I’d like. And the pins-and-needles sensation in my shin is super weird and sometimes painful. Fingers crossed that physical therapy will help… and maybe another round of anti-inflammatory drugs.
• The parking lot at the outdoor learning center was under construction until last week. Parking ranged from inconvenient to unavailable for the duration. If we didn’t have animals to feed every day, it would have been tempting to blow it off. (For the record, I would never intentionally flake on the animals.)

So yeah, not a great summer. Here’s hoping for some improvement in the fall.