I worked with JJ yesterday. I hadn’t seen her in quite a while, and was looking forward to it, since she is very funny and different from anyone else I know. However, she had just learned that she owes $8000 to the IRS, and that really will knock the antic humor right out of a girl, so we had quite a serious day.

We did an email campaign. You don’t want to hear about that.

It is Memorial Day weekend. That Man and The Empress went to a family reunion-cum-camping trip, but we are staying home in the rain with our living room full of bedroom furniture. The blowers are gone, the plumbing is fixed, but the carpet cleaners won’t come until Tuesday. This puts paid to my thought of having a Second Annual Sewing Marathon. Actually, that plan had flaws, since I worked yesterday and will have church and family lunch with my parents today.

Fortunately, we are having lunch in a restaurant. The great Peg Bracken recommends having people over when you are remodeling or otherwise have your house torn up, because they will think it is gallant of you and have low expectations of your housekeeping, but I would feel inhibited. I feel inhibited in the living room even all by myself. It is like being in the middle of a garage sale or something, and I was very dismayed that we would still be like this for the holiday weekend, but such is life.

Memorial Day weekend is the official start of the summer. One of them, at least.  There is also the last day of school, and I suppose the vernal equinox. I have another week of work and #2 son has another week of school, and then we will have vacation. Directly after my vacation, I will have a change in schedule, so that will be the beginning of the new season.

I will be working with the Youth Choir at church. In between the Youth Choir and handbell practice is a summer women’s Bible study on “Living Beyond Yourself.” I have been invited to join that, and I intend to do so. My Tuesday class is over for the summer, and the Summer Reading Challenge (beginning June 1st, so you still have time to sign up) hardly counts as study, so I will benefit from that opportunity. It is a group of women whom I know a little bit and would like to know more.

I have had “Make grownup friends” on my yearly list of goals for several years now — since the year my daughters grew up and moved away. I’ve been successful with it each year, but I think it is worth repeating. It is easy to lose touch with friends if you are busy and don’t make it a priority. It is easy to let your family be your whole social circle. It is easy to be mere acquaintances with people you like for years on end. And it is not always easy to make friends once you are an adult. You can’t go to bars and pick up women to be friends with.

In addition to these intellectual and musical adventures, I am going to do a 12-week “Fit for Life” program at my gym, since I always have trouble keeping up with healthy habits in the summer. And then Blessing has persuaded me to work with her through a workbook that promises to teach the reader how to be “a wild and succulent woman.” We have not seen this workbook, but the idea appeals to her a lot and I am always up for adventures.

I should therefore end the summer a fit, well-read, wild and succulent woman who lives beyond herself, with improved musical skills.

Usually I end the summer a bit of a wreck. This summer will be worse, since I will have a couple of computer 5 hours every day followed by a drive to an eight-hour dose of back to school and another drive, at rush hour, to my house where I will be met with “What’s for dinner?”

I have already decided to put a lot of meals in the freezer before this begins. There is a book called Once a Month Cooking that lets you put a whole bunch of meals in your freezer in one day, and I have this mega cooking session on my calendar.

All those things are for the future. Today is one of the best kinds of summer days. It is raining softly, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, it is in the 70s, and the outside world is just generally cooperating.

Everything good you’re heard about May is true.