Two Months To Go

As of Tuesday the 24th, I have two months of summer left until I start my second year of college. It's both weird and exciting to realize that I've been home for almost 2 months as well. It hasn't felt like I've been home for that long, but lo and behold, I've been living back at home since May 9th. I feel like my summer so far has been going all right. I've been working, making the effort of a lifetime to see my family, and using spare time to split between reading, writing, binge-watching Mad Men and friends (not in any specific order, of course).

When I came home for breaks, it was easy to make plans because everybody else was on break too! Now that I'm home and am working while all of my other friends are working too or taking summer classes, it's hard to find those moments of free time when you can actually hang out and do something. Some days I come home from work and literally want to do nothing but lay in bed and read a book. I'm exhausted, and I feel bad using it as an excuse, but it's totally legitimate! Learning this new balance of work/family/friends/free time is a lot more difficult than school/friends/free time. I feel like I have less hours in the day while I'm home.

There are weird things that I miss about school. I actually miss doing my own laundry. I could very well do it at home, but laundry time doesn't fit into any of my categories. I don't want to clean clothes during my free time. That time is sacred, reserved only for the trashiest of magazines or novels that I randomly select from the library shelves. I also miss the general organization of my clothes at school. I have too many drawers at home and my closet is set up totally different. When you live a certain way for a good portion of the year, you forget how everything was before that. I lived with this organizational set-up for my teenage years and now I'm irritated with it? Totally irrational, but that's how my mind works these days.

I feel like there are a million and one things that I still have to do before moving back at the end of August. I need to get textbooks, supplies, dorm items. I need new bedding and I am struggling to find the perfect set. I need a bedside table and I'm currently waiting out one at Target to go on sale because I'm cheap. I wanted to repaint my bedroom at home so my parents could get more use out of it. As pretty as a turquoise room is, something tells me it's not the most practical. I've got to get my iPhone fixed (again) because it won't connect to wifi, but I don't ever feel like making the 30+ minute drive to the mall with the Apple store. I also have to plan my trip to New York for the Smart Girls Summit, but I'm too shy to try to coordinate plans with my family who lives in the city. So many little things add up into one big tsunami wave that's going to hit me within the next couple of weeks.

On the bright side, I've had so much cuddling time with my puppy that it makes up for any sort of stress that I feel during the day. I've read some great books (see: Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close and I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai) and finally finished my copy of Porter magazine from Christmas time. I've gone hiking with friends and experienced the amazingness that is food trucks. I've seen my younger brother's baseball games and have had dinner with my grandparents every Monday night. While the little things can add up into one tsunami, these other things slowly break down the way and settle it into a gentle tide that swipes across the sand before retreating peacefully. 

I'm going to try my best to let this next two months be as peaceful as possible. If all goes well, I'll have a trip to New York and a summer vacation on the beach with my family (and my brother's entire baseball team AKA my second family) in Delaware. Who knows what will happen, but I'm sure it will be filled with good times with friends and family, and maybe a new Kate Spade purse. But you didn't hear that from me. ;)