I dunno. I guess I was about at the midsummer doldrums last year at this time. But last year, my summer vacation busman’s holiday was still a couple weeks away from starting. This year, my vacation busman’s holiday is over. I will get up to the moominbeach again this summer but I may not be able to get there for more than a long weekend or two. So, in a weird kind of way, it feels like summer is over. Even as I am standing here sweating in the Landfill Chitchen in the last week of July, I am thinking about September and closing the moomincabin for the long hardland of the winter. Life sucks sometimes but I’m making some trade-offs for the career I love even when it just about kills me to do so. Live in the moment. Live in the moment. Live in the moment. And, yeah, *still*, after three years, I have trouble typing the word “career”. I can’t get myself quite over that concept. I am just meeeeee and, in the beginning, this kind of job was anything but what I thought I was looking for. Who knew? [snort]

Anyway, what’s kind of better about this summer is that my time off has been a bit more my own. Last summer, I spent way too much time at hospitals and/or trying to be a care-giver, not my strong suit even on a good day. There was the Commander’s cataract surgery. That was easy enough in the grand scheme of things. Half a day or so at the hospital and eye-drops several times a day before and after and keeping the old gal from “skating” (driving). (Yes, the Commander reads this.) Then there was Radical Betty. She was in hospice last summer, having refused cancer treatment that would have greatly decreased the quality of life that she had always lived. Bush-whack skiing at minus 25 Farenheit? Clearing the Voyageur Trail? Paddling the north shore of Gitchee Gumee? Not any more.

Now, when I say hospice, some people are thinking of a shrunken old lady lying in a bed waiting to die. Roight? Not exactly. I am remembering people chasing after Radical Betty with the walker that she never really totally accepted. “Oh that thing,” she would say as she strode down the hall at the Freighter View assisted living facility, leaving all of us in her wake. And those bottles of “smart gas”. She could actually breathe without smart gas but she wasn’t always getting enough oxygen at that point and so she would kind of spiral downward if she didn’t get a shot of it here and there. One hot Sunday afternoon, we were sitting with R.B. up on the bank above the beach and she was having a bit of oxygen and the GG said something particularly ridiculous and I asked the Grinch if the GG could have some o’ that smart gas too!

Okay, where was I? I didn’t plan on writing about Radical Betty but I got lost somewhere in there. I dunno. I will get back to the moominbeach a few times this summer. I think I could arrange to work remotely from there for a week or so but I am afraid that I might not exactly follow through on the whole “working full time” part and might have to end up accounting some of those hours into my hard-earned vacation hours. Sigh.

How is your summer going?

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