There was some summer in that summer

But not much. This was a working summer which I guess I should learn to expect of summer now that the house is permanent, the kids are permanent, the job is almost permanent. With permanence comes maintenance and I maintained but did not do quite the Nestea plunge that signals a perfect summer. I'll need more California in my summer for that to happen. However, there was work. And it was productive if not necessarily successful or successfully over in some cases. Summer is over. I just uploaded syllabi to BB Learn. Time for a review of goals that were made early on and once you make goals you have to do some work to reach those goals even if those goals were indeed to give a moose a muffin or a pig a party rather than a deck a remodel.
In review, then, a work-like list.

1. Write a YA novel. Half a check. Wrote 20,000 words, then August happened.
2. Write enough of the Micro Project to send out (also part of grant for summer so required, in a way of speaking). Check! Sending out next week.
3. Clean the laundry room. No check. Not even a little pencil mark. In fact, laundry room may be dirtier now.
4. Stain the deck. Checkish. It rained a lot. Deck still not done. I'm not thrilled much with the deck project. 
5. Website for MFA program. Check but just as of today which means it hovered over my head like an annoying deerfly for most of the summer. But now, webpage for MFA comes with attractive visuals which is more than I can say for most other areas in my department (although I did clean up the other area's pages a bit. Shh. Don't tell them. They will find something wrong and want me to fix it.) Second parenthetical (Why is making websites so fun? I used to do it for a living. It's so tedious. So arbitrary. Frustrating. But I love it. A kind of tedium that I can usually fix, unlike deck projects or student-based concerns. Again. Shh.)
6. Swimming lessons. Checkity check check check. This constitutes the primary fun times of the summer. Swimming places included Bear Paw, Flagstaff Athletic Club, NAU Aquaplex, Mom's pool, hotel pool in Phoenix and some ocean wading in Oregon. If water is summer, then this summer was wet. 
7. Wet summer. It was a goal. I hate droughts. I like rain. It rained every day since July 16th. It rained like Arizona is a rain forest rain. It rained like an ocean. It rained like Oregon. However, this did indeed affect the deck project and would that the deck project had been finished more "fun" in the form of hanging out on the deck would have happened. In fact, I do believe I define summer fun more by deck-hanging out than water and thus the feeling of no summer, more an Oregon that happened to me. 
8. Rain barrels. I still have not yet bought. Fail. Demerit. Take a check mark away. Who is keeping all this rain for the dry October season. Not me said the ant to the grasshopper. 
9. Zoe's room remodel. Similar to the deck, not as much fun as it sounds. Still halfway. I bought flooring today. Erik has painted the closet, the ceiling, one wall. (He also denuded the ceiling of it's popcorn. Only two rooms left to go.) Still, there is much furniture from Zoe's room in every other room in the house. How does one small room hold a whole house full of stuff? Progress toward spatial understanding? Minimal. 
10. Seeing my Salt Lake people for more than ten minutes each. Best Salt Lake trip ever but not 100% check. I missed some people I very much wanted to see. However, I did spend almost 24 hours a day with one or the other member of my family who I never see enough so I'm giving myself a check even if it's not with a Sharpie. 
11. Taught a new class. It was good. Check. 
12. Clean the garage. Two checks. And yet, still a mess. I blame Cleo. And Erik. But Erik blames our mattress situation. A wealth of mattresses does not make for a wealth of garage space for proper tool-organization, is the theory. Still.
13. Yard revamp. We have a big front yard of useless space. It used to grow useless weeds. Now, those weeds have been replaced by useless rocks. Still, very attractive, those 7 tons of rocks. Thanks Mom, Rick, and, obviously, Erik to moving those rocks from the driveway to the yard. But I wheeled a ton, literally of rocks myself so check that.
14. Speaking of tons, I ran every day. I did not lose a ton of weight but maybe 1 pound. Still, running is good. Also, almost 40 push-ups. Almost. Check-like.
15. Editing of Quench and Bending Genre. Double check thanks to the people who edited and read them. Covers for each on their way. Almost to press. Spring 2013! Book release season. 
16. Scanning and uploading of documents for tenure file. We have moved, if I haven't complained yet enough, to an electronic annual and tenure review system. I have carpal tunnel. Check. 
17. Learning to poach the perfect poached egg. Check. Come over and see. 
18. Speaking of cooking. Iron chef Ocean. If it's not catalogued here, it will be forever forgotten. Clam dip, clams casino, salmon roe and taramasalata, shrimp bisque, roasted shrimp, cauliflower panna cotta with grilled trout, whole red snapper, mussels and frites, paella, hamachi with ponzu, and crab sandwiches. Too many checks. My sisters and I may have learned our lesson. Don't kill the people with too much food. Especially seafood. At least we omitted the octopus. He was hard to cook after we made a puppet-friend of him. 
19. Submitted. nothing, published nothing. No checks. Check removal. Bad checker. Rather work on websites than submit. Ew.
20. Speaking of submit, pushed submit on tenure application button today. Hopeful? Dawn of a new era? Better hamachi? Better than rain? Better than a remodeled deck? Probably not, but a good thing to have finished, nonetheless.