And it begins
Every summer, we try to come up with some fun things to do – things we can’t do during the school year because there just aren’t enough days on weekends. I have things like “work on quilts,” “reorganize cabinets” and “de-clutter.” Thomas has things like “go to the arcade,” “see movies” and “miniature golf.” We have a week before summer school, and then Mondays for those five weeks, and then a few weeks before school starts again … so we’ll have to work to fit everything in.
This year, the list was on the refrigerator at the end of April. He regularly added to it, up until the last day of school, when he abruptly added three more things and declared the list complete. (I can hope.) Here is a sampling of our Summer Adventure Goals.
Movies. Specifically, Megamind, Captain Underpants, Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3. Megamind he found on TV and has watched approximately 32 times in a week and a half, so I consider that one checked off. Matt suggested that he was interested in seeing Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3, so we’ll plan to see those together as a family, but he generously is letting me go solo with the boy to see the book-made-into-a-movie about a principal who gets hypnotized into becoming a superhero in his underpants. (Yay! I am so lucky.) Oh, and by the way — Thomas has been wearing a “hypno-ring” that came with one of the books nonstop, so you’ve been warned, Ms. Heidi.
Arcade. He’s been memorizing the map to Sports City, pointing out the Starbucks and the approximate location of all money changing machines.
Miniature golf. This encompasses the arcade and go-carts, as well, if we haven’t been banned from the last driving episode. (Teenagers can put a lot of shade into body language when they have to unstick your kids’ cart for the fourth time.)
Take our cat, Posey, to the vet. Thomas isn’t so much concerned with her health (she’s fine) as he is interested in seeing her climb to the highest point in the examination room – the cabinet over the sink – and try to render herself invisible.
Work on story. He’s writing a sort of fanfiction story based on Scooby Doo – well, Daphne from Scooby Doo – that involves a lot of bathing suits and surfing. It’s handwritten on 47 pages, and now he is typing it up on a document so we can print it out. He was asking lots of pointed questions about how to get books published, so I am anticipating a push to send it off to editors when it’s finished. (We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)
Restaurants. Specifically, he wants to go to IHOP with his grandmother, and Burger King. (We had to specify a restaurant with silverware and real plates to go to with Nona, or she’d be plunked down in a booth staring at a Whopper before she knew it.) He wants to get chicken strips and fries, and water with ice cubes and a straw, and if the plate comes with so much as a strand of parsley he will be deeply offended … ditto any fancy lemon wedge in the water. He recently added Round Table to the list – after he went to a union meeting with me – and I suspect it’s a fairly even toss-up between pizza and the arcade games.
Bowling. I’m not sure when he went last, but I do know he remembers they have an arcade. And probably French fries, as well.
The zoo. It wasn’t on his list, but it was a promise we made: If he learned to swallow his pill, we would go. It took two years, but he can finally do it – so we’re going to the zoo!
We sat down and wrote out a week-at-a-glance for the first week of break and I told him we were going to see Captain Underpants on Monday and going out to lunch with Nona on Tuesday, thinking he’d be thrilled we were hitting two of his goals. Not so much … he was concerned we weren’t going to the arcade, vet, and bowling, as well, all in the first week.
Sigh.
