So, I'll let you poke back through the archives yourself if you're interested. There's lots there. After all, I've spent the past few years writing here nearly every day. And it's probably because of that I'm finding that I need to take a break away from the screen. I'll be back, renewed and refreshed, in September when the kids are back in school.

Hope you all are having a great summer. I know I am.

I was cleaning up outside earlier today, an activity I'm finding much more soothing than cleaning up inside the house, because it turns out that Nature is less destructive than my family, so I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor a little longer before entropy takes over and sends everything back into visually displeasing chaos.  At some point, my pesky back pain kicking in, I sat down, and thought, "Wow, this is wonderful! I'm sitting here and it's so peaceful," which was followed immediately by, "But if I'm going to sit here, I should be writing something or reading something or doing something."

But it struck me that the guilt was misplaced. The stillness was a necessary part of writing and a form of reading and an aid in doing. So, I stayed there for a while and did a little of the work of letting go, just by the slightest amount, of the to do list, which seems to be harder for me than doing the things on it. And then I wrote it down, here, to help myself remember it.

It's summer: the season of kids around 24/7 and of subsequent blog neglect.  It's also the season of summer visitors, passing through in cars bulging with luggage, fast food wrappers and warm, disheveled smiles.  While some people like to do spring cleaning to prepare for those visitors, I (a hopeless procrastinator) prefer to do summer cleaning.  And with the kids out of school, not only do I tend to need to do it anyway, but really, what better way to keep two bored kids occupied than by sorting old toys and rearranging furniture?  So, we have been slowly working our way through the house and ridding ourselves of clothes, furniture and toys that are outgrown or just unused.

Most things go to charity and a few hopeless odds and ends find their way to the trash, but those things that are too nice to throw away but a little too worn or, um, scribbled upon in permanent marker end up being freecycled.  Now, as a good sex addict codie, I know I really ought to do my freecycling through some other source than the website so bound up in addiction that it cannot be named, but I've found that nowhere else can I post any kind of crazy old junk -- from broken electronics to a nest for spiders that was once a stroller to a table with a dinosaur drawn on it in Sharpie -- and have ten people lined up to cart it all away in as many minutes.  I've tried alternatives, believe me, but they just don't work. Left to choose between feeling unscrupulous for actually using The Site That Shall Not Be Named and distressed for having to take perfectly usable items to the dump (and guilty for not having maintained every part of every item in my home in pristine condition, with its original packaging and instruction manual), I've chosen unscrupulous.

And it honestly does make me feel unscrupulous.  Seven years of hanging out with people who have used The Site That Shall Not Be Named for the worst of purposes and those who have been harmed by it have given me a nagging underlying feeling that everyone on the site is at best a liar and at worst a serial killer.  And when I use the site, I feel like I'm trying to get away with something too, although it doesn't start out that way.

I start by posting a perfectly accurate description and picture like: "Small bookshelf. Unfinished wood. 36"x 36" x18". Decorated in blue Sharpie with a 3-year-old's depiction of PacMan eating dots, several smiley faces and the words 'i lik dinasors.'" Five minutes later, I have ten messages in my inbox each begging me to please, please bestow upon her (or him) the honor of carting away my bookcase.  Some of the messages just say something like, "I want this if still available." And I find those only mildly suspicious. After all, maybe some of those are from some crazy person who just likes to screw with people who post things for free on The Site That Shall Not Be Named. They say they are going to come pick it up but -- psych! -- they never do.  Instead, they sit giggling at home at the thought of that item sitting on the curb one extra day before someone else gets it.

But other messages try to convince me that they are more worthy of my esteemed stuff than the other people who might want it. These messages usually read something like, "My granddaughter would love this for her birthday next week!" or "I've always wanted one of these, but can't afford it!" These messages leave me wondering things like "Do you really have a granddaughter at all?" or "Maybe you are actually the CEO of AT&T but have some weird mental disease that makes you pretend you are poor while you go around collecting other people's old stuff."

So, with nothing else to go on, I always offer the item to the first person in my inbox and tell them so, but I always feel vaguely as if I'm lying, because I suspect that the liars I'm writing to will think I am.

Last week, I offered an old tricycle to a man who called himself Joe and said he wanted it for his kids. (Read: he doesn't have kids and was going to trade it to his dealer for crack.) When the trike hadn't been picked up a day after he said he was on his way right over, I called the number he sent.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Joe?"

"Um..." His bewilderment pulsed through the telephone line.

Just great, I think. Joe is one of his aliases. Ignoring his confusion, I plunge on, "My name is Mary. You responded to an ad about a trike on The Site That Shall Not Be Named."

I can hear "Joe" struggling to recall this. "Oh, yeah!" he said at last, "Is that still available?"

"Yes, I was calling to see what happened and if you were still interested."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry.  My girlfriend just had a kidney transplant last week and she's not doing so well."

A kidney transplant? Seriously? "So, you've obviously had other things on your mind. Totally understandable," I lied.

"Yeah. But I still do want it. I'm heading over right now!" said Joe.

"Ok."

That was one week ago. I never saw Joe, who (I assume) after finishing the bottle of whiskey he was drinking, got distracted by a prostitute, lost his car in a poker game and (once again) forgot all about the fact that he promised his drug dealer a trike. Or who went to visit his girlfriend in the hospital instead and happened to find another trike that would be just perfect for his kids.  Either way, the trike went to "Anna," who wanted it for her "grandson."  Or at least that's the story I'm telling.  Since I post things on The Site That Shall Not Be Named, you really shouldn't believe a word I say.  After all, how likely is it that I actually have kids or am doing any summer cleaning if I've actually managed to write this blog post?

I sort of want to write a post today, but I sort of want to curl up under a blanket and watch the leaves fall more. Of course, I say that, all romantic, with this great image of myself curled up with a cup of tea and a cat on my lap, but have you seen my house today? No. Thank goodness, none of you have. Nor have you smelled it.

Do you have kids? Do you know what a house looks like when they've been home for the weekend, generating dirty lunch dishes and taking stuff out of the Goodwill box to play with and leaving army men on the floor for people to step on? (Note to self: e-mail son's teacher to ask if he's limping.) A better mother and woman than I would put the kids and the husband to work cleaning up their own messes, but let's not get into that. Really, let's not. Well, ok, let's, but only if I don't have to hear about how you'd do it better.

In this house, your mother does live here and she's way more worried about contracting salmonella and falling to her death tripping over Legos than you are. So, yes, I could employ "natural consequences," leaving the dishes for someone else to do, until they reach up — in a stinking, fetid pile — to the ceiling, but then I have to live with a mountain of putrid dishes (and with the years of therapy it will take to bring me out of a state of catatonia when I find them covered with roaches) while my family cleverly fills the kitchen with discarded paper plates instead. (And yes, my husband has actually gone out to the store and purchased paper plates. You think I haven't tried?)

I could employ those old mothering standbys of nagging and punishing, rounding up family members and standing over them, poking them with the underwire of the bra that's currently on the kitchen floor until the dishes are done. (How did a bra get on the kitchen floor? Excellent question. It is mine and believe me I wasn't doing anything sexy in the kitchen with it. Somehow the dirty laundry migrated there this weekend. Yes, it really did. I don't know.)

I could ask for help, appeal to my family's better nature, institute a sticker chart or any number of other things (and don't think I haven't from time to time), but you want to know the truth? All of those things — the consequences, the nagging, the poking with bra underwire, the yelling, the endless sticker charts — take way too much energy. There are three people in the house who are happy to live in squalor and one who can't rest easy looking past the ping pong paddles on the sofa and the carrots and ranch dressing still on the table from last night's snack, who can't bring herself to kick the sleeping cat off the quilt that's currently on the floor and who can't quite enjoy drinking tea from a paper cup while looking at the leaves.

So that one person either needs to learn to look past the mess (and buy a noseclip to block out the smell of, whatever that smell is...) or she needs to get up and do the damn dishes. If I'm lucky, I can finish it all 5 minutes before my daughter comes home from school. And I did manage to get a blog post out of it. Thank goodness the glow of this computer screen blocks out that... Um, ew... Did someone actually leave a snotty tissue in the middle of the living room floor? I have to go clean that up.

Whew! I sat down today, with both kids finally healthy and off at school, with my husband healthy and off at work, with a house covered in a summer of chaos (which I am steadfastly ignoring) and thought, "I'll write about my daughter's huge tantrum. No wait, my son scaring off evangelicals. No wait..." I opened a fresh page for a new post, figuring I'd just dive in and see what came.

As I paused to reflect, I looked out the window and said, "Why is one of my good hand towels on the ground outside?" Then before I could figure it out (although the answer is probably "my husband grabbed the first thing he saw to wipe something up"), the cat jumped on me and started walking on the laptop keyboard, purring. I shoved it off. It came back. I took my laptop and turned my back to it. The cat jumped on my shoulder. I told the cat, "I know you want attention, but Mama needs to go where no one is demanding my attention." Now I'm safely shut in my bedroom, out of reach of the cat and out of sight of the hand towel, which remains outside on the ground.

And now that I'm here, I'm thinking that I told the cat exactly what I want to do and say. If I close the laptop right now, if I turn off the phone, if I keep the door shut, I can breathe for a minute and no one will interrupt me. Delicious. I'll pet the cat and pick up the towel and write something fabulous tomorrow.

Summers are hard. Enjoyable, yes, but also draining. My kids like routine and predictability, and frankly, so do I. In the summer, there can be routines, but they're different from the rest of the year, and they change more frequently. The whole world seems a little topsy-turvy.

I feel like it's been a while since I've made my plain old voice heard here. Just me. I don't think that's all summer, although some of it is. I think some of it is not bringing my beginner's mind (as they say in Zen) to my blogging. I've learned what to expect from blogging, what's safe to share and what's not.  I've learned that A Room of Mama's Own is not entirely my own, and I've narrowed the window in accordingly, to protect myself and especially to protect others.  I have a blog voice now that's feeling distinct from my everyday voice.  I won't say that's a bad thing (or a good one); it just is.

Anyway, I just stopped by to say to myself (as if you all aren't listening in) that I miss talking to me and that I am here.

I'm not one to keep busy during the summer, at least not in the sense of running the kids from place to place, activity to activity.  Yet, not being busy — whether inside inside the house playing board games or (more often) just keeping the kids from driving each other crazy, or outside swimming or at the park or at a library or museum — isn't always relaxing.  Well, it is for the kids: just not entirely for the mama who has to make sure that those kids stay fed and safe and moderately hygienic, the mama who (since those kids are entirely school free) gets not a moment alone.  (If you're a mom to young kids, you can know this can quite literally be true; not even bathroom time is sacred!)  And since those moments alone are the way this particular mama recharges her batteries, summer can be draining.  It's a good thing I don't have anything planned, as I could hardly be productive at it...

So evenings — when I slate some time to take part in everything from 12 Step to yoga — become a delicate self-care balancing act.  This week as I got ready for my 12 Step meeting, I felt drained by the mere thought of it.  Sit in a room with people?  Who are talking?  Ugh!  All I wanted, what I would have paid dearly for, was a quiet room where I could sit down by myself for a few minutes.  So when the time came to leave, I didn't go.  I went upstairs, shut and locked the door, turned on some white noise to drown out all human sound and took a deep, refreshing breath of solitude.

It's funny, for four years I didn't go to 12 Step meetings, and now I feel a little twinge of guilt whenever I miss one, even when I know that what I'm missing it for is important too.  So I did feel a little twinge, but only a very little.  It was gone by the time I exhaled.

He grabs his swim suit
and for the first time ever
puts it on himself.

He rushes outside,
swim trunks proudly on... Backwards.
Off we go, smiling.

It's summer, and my kids have been begging to spend every free moment of their time (and there are more free moments at this time of year than any other) in the nearest body of water that will hold them. Ok, that's not quite true. The nearest body of water that will hold them is the bathtub, and they have no desire to spend any time at all in that, as evidenced their howls of protest when I tell them they will need to relinquish their sticky hair at the end of each day. ("What, Mama?! We spent all day in the water and we can't even swim in that tiny little tub!")

I'm not entirely comfortable with their swimming skills, so I spend each day in the water with them. (Although I'm more than happy for a shower at the end of the day. This is probably the cleanest I've been since I had kids.) I see other moms (moms who have greater confidence in their little ones' swim skills), sitting by the water, enjoying the sun as they tap away at on portable electronic devices (to steal a term from the airline industry).

Those moms look so industrious and engaged, that I have found myself thinking, "Oh, if only I had one of those things, I could be posting to my blog right now rather than letting it languish in the summer heat! I could be scheduling swim lessons (which I haven't scheduled because we're too busy being in the water, leading to a vicious cycle of continuing to not be able to swim well). I could be setting up OT for the fall. I could be answering e-mail, and I could be tweeting about how we're sitting here in the water and... Hey wait! I'm sitting here in the water. On a sunny day. With nothing else to do. Ha ha! Suckers with their iPhones and Blackberries!" Then I wiggle my toes in the water and watch my kids not quite swim.

Mary Ann did this little exercise on her blog a while back, and it looked like fun. You are supposed to list what you are about without stopping to think about it. Since the kids are on break, and I don't have time to think about much of anything, a post I don't have to stop and think about sounds perfect. So, I'm about...

• My God (although that still feels weird to say) and my spiritual life
• Becoming healthier: mentally, emotionally and spiritually (one day maybe physically will get in there too)
• My kids and being the best mama for them I can be
• My marriage and doing my part to make it work
• My family and friends (including my "imaginary" online friends)
• Animals: my pets, helpless strays, injured wildlife...
• Writing and this dang beloved blog of mine
• Leaving my part of the planet a better place than I found it
• (Striving for) compassion and mercy
• Horrible, merciless mockery of things I find absurd
• And in light of the two above... Progress, not perfection
• Letting go (but also not perfectly)
• Good books and beautiful words
• Laughter
• Sharing (sometimes, ahem, oversharing)
• Occasionally hiding in the bathroom to write a blog post (hm, maybe that should go under oversharing)
• The ocean
• Opening night at the movies
• Practically anything with sugar in it

What are all of you about?