The 43

I am sitting on my porch on a Tuesday night, with everyone else already asleep. The heat has been all but unbearable the last two days, but I can feel a slight breeze at my back, coming from the west. I took the dog around the block and saw lightning -- far away, but close enough to give the night sky a little flash -- to the west. And right now, I can smell the lake. Whenever something is blowing in, you can smell the distinctly salty, somewhat putrid lake from miles away. The heat may be breaking, even just for a night (the forecast still calls for high 90s the rest of the week, which is an improvement over the low 100s of the past few days). I'm looking forward to the break. Tonight the boys had a swim meet at Lifetime Fitness in South Jordan. I think the heat played a factor, because neither boy swam the meet of their lives, but both did OK. Ben forgot how to do a backstroke flip turn in his best event, and Michael wore out on some of his races. They swam their last events --...

So hot this past week, and it somewhat has coincided with my overall attitude. The week was busy. Michael had a basketball tournament (alas, his team went 0-4) and practice every day. Swim team just about every day, including a meet on Tuesday. I pushed my way through work each day, not getting too much free time for myself. The weekend has been an improvement -- I got a lot of yardwork done yesterday -- and the upcoming week won't be so hectic. I did manage to write my usual solstice post , albeit a few days late. What I read after I completed the post got me in this restless attitude. So I'm on the hillside, having hit the "publish" button on the annual reflection, when I started reading past years' posts. I discovered a common theme: I'm close to writing the things I want to write; I'm on the verge of something big; I'm really optimistic for the next year. This stretches back years. I walked back to my car thinking "What the f--- is wrong w...

My annual tradition of reflecting on the previous 12 months on the summer solstice took a little delay this year. It's three days later, but here I am, back on the hillside of Donner Park, just as I was last year , writing my annual solstice post. A really nice breeze just kicked in off the mountains -- a welcome relief to the 97 degrees it was just two hours ago. I'm writing on a new laptop, listening to my iPod on new headphones. These updates are a sign of the update in my life over the past six months: I'm back to being a full-time employee. Twenty-four weeks have already passed since I started the new job, which I'm lucky offers a somewhat flexible schedule and the ability to work from home or wherever (the new Mac helps). The full-time paycheck has been great. The job has had its ups and downs -- it was much more stressful four months ago -- but the benefits of stable work and a consistent check have been worth it. What is giving me serious pause is that I...

Father's Day. Lori had asked me what I wanted to do this day, and as last year, go on a hike with my family. We started in the morning, around 9 a.m. -- a little later than we intended to but still early enough that we avoided the heat. Our destination was Jack's Mountain Mailboxes -- a small peak near our house that features two mailboxes full of journals that people have been writing in for two decades in memory of Jack, a 5-year-old who died of leukemia in 1995. The hike was a bit of a steep climb: 1,200 feet over 1.6 miles, but we made it. I left a note in one of the journals and gave the boys a big hug. It was the perfect place to be on Father's Day. The walk down was a little treacherous, but we made it and went to Blue Plate Diner for breakfast. Of four diners, we ordered three sides of bacon to accompany our pancakes (at least the boys and I got pancakes, I added chocolate chips). The rest of the day was mellow. I stopped at the comic book store to pick up the...

My sleep schedule has me waking up before 7 a.m., which is a sort of departure from pre-2015. I didn't have to wake up this morning for anything, but there I was, not readily falling back asleep, and it seemed counterproductive to just lay in bed and play Candy Crush Saga. So, I woke up, put my Sauconys on, and took the enthusiastic dog to Liberty Park for a run. I generally love morning workouts, but just hate waking up for them. After they are complete, I feel I have a whole day of possibilities ahead. We didn't exactly set the world on fire the rest of the day -- I took the boys to Pokemon league, we all went to Costco, I mowed the front lawn, and got the dog out for a short walk in the evening -- but I already felt productive before 9 a.m. I've been feeling the same way working for an hour during the boys' early swim practices. After two weeks of this summer schedule, I'm feeling generally good. I do miss the flexibility I had when I was freelancing, but I...

The long, busy, hot week finally concluded today. And it concluded well. I got a lot of work done this morning, at swim practice and while Michael was at basketball camp (Ben and I went to a Starbucks), that eased the load enough later that I took the boys to the waterpark for the first time this summer. In between, we met Lori for lunch at Noodles. The waterpark was fun. We stayed almost three hours, with mostly the boys going on the tube rides on their own (the slides at Seven Peaks have not been kind to me over the years). The best part of our time was watching the boys swim together, having fun like they are supposed to as brothers. In one of the pools, there's a spout that shoots cold, cold water into the pool through a 4-inch pipe, and Michael was dragging Ben over to it to be chilled. Ben half-resisted, half went with the flow. It was just a happy moment to watch. They get on each other's nerves a lot, but they still are brothers, and hopefully, each other's best...

Today was a scorcher. Salt Lake rarely gets humid, but just very bright, and the sun was hot today. Thankfully, the AC on the car works, as does the AC in the house (though I really need to change the filter tomorrow). The boys are handling the heat fine, though, despite all the sports. At least one gym today was air conditioned. The day culminated with "Buddy Night" for the boys' swim team -- a kind of party in which an older swimmer was paired with a younger ones for games and such. Afterward, all the kids got to swim, which is fun for them to goof around in the pool with their teammates after so many laps. We got to the pool early for Ben's swim practice, and Michael swam while I worked. I did manage to jump in, then got out to jump off the diving board and experienced a bit of a chill -- the board was in the shave, and the two kids in front of me were taking their time right as a breeze pushed through. The chill was so sever that even though it was 97 degrees ou...