I haven’t been in school for 32 years. Somehow, however, the first day of school remains a key date in my life. Perhaps its because it’s 17 years of your first 22 years of life (more or less) that the Tuesday after Labor Day is such a big deal. Obviously, we all get socialized to the idea that around this time of the year, we had back to school and life returns to normal.
As a grownup, the school calendar hasn’t really meant that much in my professional or personal life. There was the few years when I taught as an adjunct at a local university and then, of course, I initially married a college professor although he hasn’t been one for four years. Still, the day has an impact. Even this morning, my mind shifted: it’s time to get back to routine.
In many ways, the idea of a return to normal is highly satisfying. Life, in very small, subtle ways, begins to slow down. Summer is amazing and while I love every second, summer is also the “big slide”. Every summer, things get a little bit sideways. Whether its an Ironman, the large garden, the huge yard, a big project, a series of family celebrations, or some other event, summer has no regularity. It’s a not-so-well modulated free-for-all. And that’s fabulous. It’s the one time of the year that you can let the doors fall off and just enjoy event to event to event.
But by the end of the summer? Well, it starts slowly and generally builds from late August into early September: I get the need for routine. Eventually, the desire for routine overcomes the desire for the free-for-all.
This year, that has been especially true. Because I worked so much through June, I had a huge cushion of extra billable hours that allowed me to take the back half of July off. Added to that, work got a little slow in August and I was able to ride that cushion through August and keep my foot off of the gas. But now? Well, my cushion is tiny again and I’m ready to get back to work. It has been an absolutely amazing summer, but life needs to go back to normal.
So, on the heels of the calendar turning into September, we are also finishing one of our latent renovation projects: the upstairs guest bathroom. On the list since our big renovations in 2021, the project stalled out in May of 2022 due to a seemingly unfixable grout issue. This past May, I found the fix but it was high Ironman training time. So, two weekends ago, we restarted the project. If all goes well – and it never does – we will be done with the project this coming Sunday. Regardless, there should be little to do into next week, if we don’t finish.
But that feeds into my back-to-normal. Finishing a project that has lingered somehow aligns with the whole back-to-school vibe. It’s always been like this. I recall one November posting to social media: “Recently heard at our house: The ladders have been put away for Thanksgiving. What’s yours?” And a friend who truly gets me posted that they had made room in the garage for her car to be pulled in for the winter months.
We do have one more biggish project to do this fall before we take a break for the holidays and then after that, we will be finally laying the hardwood floors in our upstairs. Once we are done with those two projects, life should really slow down. Yes, there will always be projects and always be things to fix, do or improve. But the big things? They will be crossed off our list.
But for now, I’m going to quietly welcome the return of routine into my life even as it sadly means the loss of summer. It’s time. And God willing, we will have many more summers to blow the doors off and many more falls to re-establish our comfortable and familiar routines.
The Yuppie Homesteader 