Kicking Around The End of Summer and the Beginning of Fall

"School days,
School days,
These are Golden Rule days,..."

I'm not sure this is true or ever was true, at least not in my lifetime. But nonetheless the summer has again passed by and school is upon us. As usual there were more plans for things to accomplish during the summer than were were actually accomplished. Somehow the fates, the weather, and an incredibly annoying case of stubbornness conspired against us. Which isn't to say that the summer wasn't busy. Indeed for Sam and Abby this summer may be the greatest summer they ever experience.

Sam again played T-Ball this year and, unlike last year, showed remarkable improvement. His throwing motion was much improved and he was very enthusiastic about moving to the ball in the field--sometimes overly so. If and when he decides to swing the bat with some authority, he'll be a really good hitter. In the back yard and off to the side, he would swing pretty hard, but when he was actually at the plate not so much. Still he managed quite a few hits on balls pitched to him. (I should explain that in this league the kids were given so many pitches from their coach and if still unsuccessful the tee was brought out for them to hit off of.)

Abby wasn't involved in sports this summer--indeed I think her sporting career may be over. Yet she had an incredibly busy summer. Abby went to 3 camps this summer, one for horseback riding (thanks to mama and papaw), a girl-scout day camp (which Sam also attended), and an overnight camp that as it turned out wasn't as advertised. In between she was mostly at friend's houses or they were at ours. So she was busy. What we didn't get accomplished was getting her comfortable on her bike. In the Spring she had an accident on her bicycle and since then has refused to even think about riding. The odd part is that it's the easy part of riding a bike, steering, that's causing her the most problems.

Cindy's summer was filled with Girl Scout activities, library programs, and babysitting. She's taking over the role as leader of Abby's Girl Scout troop and thus was busy preparing for the upcoming year. She also applied to be a substitute teacher at Sammy's school, that is after the school district lost her initial application to be a library aide, and after she was told that all the lunch lady positions had been filled, pun intended. I suppose in a way this worked out for the best since I think she'll be happier as a Kindergarten and first-grade sub and the money is likely better.

As for me, I finally got a huge monkey off my back by passing my general exam. Of course that brings on a HUGER (I don't care that huger is not a word) monkey with the dissertation. Of course I think I would have been happier had I been allowed to skip the classes and the general exam and gone straight to the dissertation. At the end of the day, when I'm applying for jobs my worth will be judged by it and not by the fact that I got an A in Cost-Benefit Analysis. However, as of now I don't have a topic in mind, and that's kind of a big omission. To otherwise occupy my time I'm coaching Sammy's soccer team this fall. So far so good, but we haven't had any games yet.