summer.......

i can barely recall the days when i was excited about summer......and all of the implications for lazy days doing whatever.........likely an illusion.......as i grew up in an age of chores and assigned tasks......today is the first technical day of summer for those in our household who are out of school for the summer and that reality has numerous realities.......for starts, and most personally....it means the beginning of the i have to go to work and these children of mine have nothing better to do than to sleep in .....i trust that i am not the only mother to harbor such resentment.......i have obviously failed to dole out enough regular chores to keep either occupied.....or have given up the notion that one's offspring are capable of helping without having to spell out each and every family need each and every day........to some.....the need to replace the cereal boxes in the cupboards after breakfast seems too much to ask........and i have also failed to teach any offspring the concept of fixing dinner while mom is at work.......i can hardly believe that i was so advanced a learner at age 12 that i could have dinner ready for my family and my 12 year old cannot conceive of where to start should the idea of helping out in such a way pop into her brain.........i actually heard a dietitian speak once at a convention about how this generation of working mothers found it so much easier to do such task themselves and are less and less likely to have the patience required to teach their children how to do chores.........at least i am not alone in this conundrum......i read on-line about a boy in ohio that killed his family and friends before killing himself over the weekend.......the newsstory mentioned something about the family trying to keep a dairy farm going and much pressure had been placed upon this 18-year old boy to keep the business together despite serious financial problems......and he simply cracked....i have no interest in burdening my children with chores to the point that they feel they have no life......surely there is a happy medium between guest and slave...gentle readers.......do not be alarmed in any fashion...this feeling-sorry-for-myself tome has no hidden meanings other than the feeling that i have brought myself to this very point in my life...for better or for worse......the biblical explanation would be wailings of how i am reaping precisely what i have sewn......