In Which I Use a Lot of Capital Letters

Our Season of Becky is just beginning. Summertime kicks off with Jane’s birthday—she turned 15 on Monday, and a splendid day it was, even if something did go amiss with my frosting for the Rocky Road Sheet Cake. (Wasn’t enough to cover the cake. Mom, where’d I go wrong?) Scott took the day off work; Jane and I stole away to go shopping, just the two of us—quite a treat! And then came the fun of a visit from Scott’s brother John, who was in town for a convention. And later still, that delicious if unsightly cake. A good day.

Our various activities are winding down for the summer—just a few biggies left to go, most particularly our Shakespeare Club performance of scenes from the Scottish play. Next week will be full of rehearsals. Our group piano classes keep going year-round, but apart from those, our time will be pretty much uncommitted until Comic-Con.

And it’s funny: no sooner had I breathed my usual deep sigh of relief over the End of the Activities than I noticed a certain, erm, restlessness attacking the occupants of this little house in the afternoons. Suddenly, my mental declaration to Park Myself and Go Nowhere seemed a bit, well, mental—especially around 5pm when there are still two long hours to go before Scott gets home. By last week, the kids were starting to get under each other’s skin something fierce. So I’ve been scooping up the three youngest a few evenings a week and heading to the YMCA, where we have a family membership.

I was actually on the verge of canceling the membership—we got it when Rose was taking gymnastics, but around Easter she decided to take a break, and after we paid for May without going one single time the whole month, I figured it was time to bail. But fortunately (as it turns out), you have to actually go there in person to cancel, and I was too lazy to go. (Which is almost certainly their diabolical plan. The people who are not too lazy to go the Y to cancel a membership are probably the kind of people who go to the Y to use their membership. Either way, the membership doesn’t get canceled.)

So last week when the afternoon crazies hit my children, I suddenly remembered: oh RIGHT, we still have that Y membership, and there’s a really nice playroom there. So I took the littles to the playroom, where they are ecstatically happy playing with the nice college girls who work there, and the big kids got a much needed respite at home without small peoples clamoring for their attention and Wii remotes.

And there I was at the Y, with nothing to do. So I went into the gym and got on the treadmill (because why not), and then I found out there’s a free-for-members personal-exercise-program-planning thing, so I signed up for that (because why not), now I have this whole Official Exercise Plan mapped out, which is, if you know me, hilarious. The young personal trainer guy asked me what my “fitness goals” are, and I was like: Um, uh, well….I would like stronger arms. So I can open jars instead of having to wait for my husband to come home from work. So now I have a Fitness Goal of Getting Arm Muscles.

I am hoping to achieve this goal by August, when we will be going to a Big Family Gathering back East. You never know when you will need to impress the in-laws by opening jars.