It’s easy to romanticize summer vacation. Gone are the early mornings and strict schedules. In their places shimmer long, free, languid days, all inviting endless opportunities for fun: water activities, warm-weather sports, cookouts, family visits, road trips, festivals, camps. Early in the season, when obligations are suddenly few, it’s all one giant, sun-soaked promise. June-August is your oyster.
But by early July, after everyone’s rested, it can start to feel like there are too many hours in the day. The novelty of swimming wears off. There’s not as much going on as you’d imagined (I guess we all believe the fun stuff just materializes?). Your wallet feels empty. Lazy mornings become sluggish, irritable afternoons when getting out of pjs and into the car feels like a monumental effort. Whining happens on the daily–“There’s nothing to do!” Or, in my nonspeaking daughter’s case, the day’s incomplete without tears and stomps. If you’ve got kids at home, I’d wager you understand all of this well.
That was definitely our experience in previous years. Summers 2023 and 2024 were pretty awful, thanks to our kiddo’s hormonal moodiness plus her difficulties communicating and entertaining herself. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it through all those long days without losing my damn mind. I’d really begun to despise the summer months.
Last year, however, my uber-organized project manager husband came up with a way to combat all this peevish boredom. The solution lay in just a bit more planning, he concluded, so he created the inaugural Daphne’s Summer Adventure Checklist. On it were outings and activities of all kinds, many of them inexpensive and brand-new.
The result was a definite cure for those summertime blues. Those adventures filled our weeks while always giving us something else to look forward to. We did pretty well completing most of the activities, but we didn’t keep a sharp eye on the calendar and ran out of time to enjoy everything.
That wasn’t going to happen this year. This summer, hubby planned even further ahead, scheduling something from Daph’s list for every vacation week even before the break started. Thus, we had a clear schedule ahead of time to go with her list.
I’ll spare you the calendar, but here is that 2026 list:
I’m proud to say we’re basically done with everything. We’re traveling to Mystic soon, Daph will have one more riding lesson, and we have the materials for the fairy house ready to go.
The only thing we haven’t scheduled is going up Mt. Washington. The tickets are exorbitant; it will cost $300 for all of us to ride the train up and down. Is it really that beautiful at the top, lol? We’ll probably wait and budget for that one next summer.
All in all, though, it’s been a happy, enriching season, made even better by the ideal weather.
What’s been the highlight for me? Probably our campout at Lake Maidstone. It is a beautifully serene, secluded state park here in the NEK that boasts Vermont’s purest water.
The facilities are also top-notch and include a new million dollar bathroom, as the park employee at check-in was thrilled to share. Daphne was a camping pro–she helped us set everything up, then swam that evening before she fell right to sleep, remaining on her own cot the entire night. She popped up the next morning, accident-free, to eat eggs scrambled on our camp stove before swimming another three hours. Then, exhausted but elated, we packed up and headed home.
I used to be a frou-frou indoor girly girl; I wouldn’t have dreamed I’d enjoy camping. Now, I love lying in my sleeping bag listening to the haunting calls of lake loons and other animal life. Nighttime in the pitch-dark forest, when you’re warm, fed, and safe, is a wonderful, other-worldly experience. (Not so much when you’re lost, as reading Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is underscoring right now.)
On a writerly note, another checklist that’s worked well for me, even though I haven’t had a lot of free time this summer, is my Bookish Bingo. I got the idea back in January from The Alchemist’s Cabin on Substack, where the creators suggested setting specific, gentle goals for a Writer’s New Year in a way that was fun, like on a bingo card. I took their idea and made my own sheet listing all the lovely literary things I wanted to do this year. Here it is:
I’m close to being done with two columns, and I’ll treat myself once one is complete. But, I feel zero pressure, and that’s the best thing about this. I’ve checked things off as they’ve naturally happened, and it’s showcasing a pleasant, sustainable productivity that might not be so evident otherwise. It’s also helped me think of my writing as inextricable from my reading, and that’s a beneficial perspective. You can’t write well without enjoying lots of good books in the process.
It’s funny sharing all of this because I’m not a Type A super planner. I don’t ordinarily make lists–I’m doing well if I type the groceries I need into my Notes app and then make it out of the store without forgetting anything (rare).
I will concede, though, that these lists have been great (Mom, are you reading this?!). Daphne’s first day of fifth grade was Wednesday, August 26, signaling the official end of our summer, and thanks to these lists I could sit down that morning and type, in all honesty, Awesome summer–check!
It really has been our oyster.
Now, as the days shorten, the sunflowers and goldenrod gleam, the birds grow quiet (their warbles replaced by the low monotones of crickets), and leaves loosen from the trees, I’m looking forward to the new season.
The autumn months will allow a fuller writing schedule, and here on WordPress I plan to share some fun things, including an October-November TBR full of gothic titles, a blurb and teaser for my story in What Hides in the Shadows (releasing Sept 23 and now available for preorder), a post about the underwhelming quality of publication day, some inside looks at my long-form WIP (I’m at 32.9K words), and maybe even a summer-to-fall short story shared exclusively here (and maybe on Substack too, but I still find posting fiction there scary AF). I hope you’ll enjoy it all.
Thank you for reading!
I hope you’ve had a good season too. I’d love to hear about your own summer adventures or your fall plans.
XOXO,
Jenn
Jennifer Shaw 