I figured out why, at this point in the summer season, I’m a little on edge.

Why, perhaps, I’m a little less patient than I might be at other times during the year.

Why, maybe, I want to scratch the eyeballs out of anyone who dares take too long doing anything at all.

When my children are home for the summer, we enjoy a sweet spot of a more relaxed schedule for the first month and we all like each other a whole lot because we just spent nine months being on schedules that separated us and well, distance makes the heart grow fonder.

But after July 4, game over.

The bickering has increased.

Moodiness has been a bit more prevalent.

In the words of Taylor Swift, we are never ever going to agree to do the same thing. One wants to go to the park, one the pool, the other wants to stay home.

But the most challenging part for me? I feel like I have three children ages three and under again.

Sure, they’re a bit older (8, 6, and 5 tomorrow!) but here’s the thing: they are with me all day, like when everyone was really little.

During the school year, we have spaces in our togetherness. During the summer, we do not.

Hence why I feel like I am the mother of preschoolers again from June until August.

Yes, I love my children.

Yes, I do indeed enjoy not having to be a drill sergeant in the morning to get everyone out the door and across town by 8 a.m. every morning.

Yes, flip-flops are way better than snow boots.

But yes, I am ready for the routine of school to begin again.

Back in those preschool/toddler/baby years I resided in for so long I don’t remember anything that happened from 2005 until 2010 and I couldn’t even imagine having a blog or even writing in a notebook.

Which is why it’s been crickets over here – I’m in the preschool years again because its summer.

I’ve missed sorting out my thoughts here on this keyboard because writing helps me figure out what I think about everything.

But after the last child has been put to bed and the dishwasher is unloaded and new laundry is placed in the washer, I don’t necessarily have it in me to bleed my thoughts onto the screen–mostly because I’m so exhausted I don’t even have a complete thought to bleed.

Last night, I was reading Real Simple magazine (because, after all, I can still do that), only to find that editor Kristin Van Ogstrop included a quote that is one of my longtime favorites.

“Those were the salad days, the halcyon years! The sleepless nights, the wailing babies; the days the interior of the house looked like it had been hit by a hurricane; the times I had five kids, a chimpanzee, and a wife in bed with fever. Even when the fourth glass of milk got spilled in a single night, or the shrill screeching threatened to split my skull, or when I was bailing out some son or other from a minor predicament at the police station, they were good years, grand years.

But it all zipped by. One minute Marlena and I were in it up to our eyeballs, and next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college. And now, here I am. In my nineties and alone.” – Sara Gruen, Like Water for Elephants

I’m a writer who happens to blog but in the end, it’s the life I live, the exhausting, sometimes exasperating, few-too-rewards life that I must truly live. And so, please forgive me for a bit of sporadic posting this summer. I’ll be back on track in August.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy the salad days that make the halcyon years.

Because they’re zipping by.

How’s your summer going?