Ticking Down...

Summer will officially be over in less than a month!  I feel like I've accomplished very little and that makes me a little sad.  My son goes back to school in less than two weeks!

I feel bad that we didn't get to take a vacation this year.  Last year either, but we were pretty busy with family stuff.  This summer, finances and the inability to coordinate my daughter's work schedule, trying to get my business going and my son's time with his Dad made it nearly impossible.  So rather than labor over it, I decided to just postpone until the fall.  If all goes well, we'll be taking a trip to Texas for Thanksgiving.

Since my daughter took a two week vacation to Guatemala before she started this job, she's good to go.  My teenage son however, has had a mix of visiting relatives in the city, meeting up with his friends to play basketball, going to movies, parties and learning to drive.  I think the driving thing has pretty much kept him happy.  They're both pretty easygoing and I'm far harder on myself than they would ever be.  We haven't had a real vacation since three years ago when we took two.  It's been tapering off since then to a couple of weekends away each summer, to a short stay in the city, to a "staycation".  The latter doesn't work out so well when you have a 16-year old who doesn't get up until the afternoon.  He informed me today that he's going to start going to bed earlier (than 2 a.m.) to start getting back into his school routine.  Smart kid.

So I'm making this chicken and pasta salad for a housewarming tomorrow.  I'm putting together all the components tonight, including the chicken breasts which are cooking right now, at midnight.  A couple of summers ago, I got in the habit of cooking up big meals at midnight or later.  It was fun "together" time for us, with everyone chipping in to make the meal. It was a bad thing to do, I know, but it was so much fun and after all, bedtime was still hours away. It was during that summer that we discovered the deliciousness of shrimp and grits.  We ended up making this dish about twice a week.  If I only had some shrimp in the fridge...

We are definitely night owls.  Since I work from home, I can afford to be a little drowsy during the day, and I don't have to worry about the inability to look "fresh" with little to no sleep.  It's easy to do when you're younger, but looking fresh at my age requires a lot of tools, time and a decent amount of sleep.  I think that freshness is overrated.

And with that, I hear the food sizzling and my son saying "Mmmmm"...which means he's raiding the kitchen.  I gotta go rescue my chicken.