How We Spent Our Summer Vacation, an essay

Summer flew by here in Chicago. The weeks made a condescending "wooshing" sound as they wizzed by and reminded me I had yet to update this blog.

Around the end of May, the lingering coolness of Spring finally started to move out of Chicago, and the sun showed up sporadically. This meant the beach was finally an enjoyable place to spend time. Cary Anne and I would go to the shore with our friends and lay around, waiting for the sun to peek out from behind the clouds so we could feel warmth on our skin. "Ahh, there it is!" we would shout, only to have it disappear back behind clouds several minutes later.

In June, around the middle of the month, tragedy struck when I lost my job. I had been working for the restaurant chain Cosi since Cary Anne and I moved to Chicago back at the end of 2011. For about a year, I was a barista in the restaurant. Then, I was lucky enough to land a full time job at their corporate office. Sadly, the company has been on shaky financial ground for a long time, so they downsized about a quarter of the office around the middle of summer. Though they offered to let me go back to work in the restaurant, after some thought and prayer, I decided to just cut ties all together. And so began the task of finding a new job.

Towards the end of June, we added a fourth member to Hallnathan Manor- a tabby named Toby. For a few weeks leading up to his arrival, our housemate Kelly had been talking about wanting a pet, and it didn't take much effort for her to get Cary Anne on board with the idea. I would come home at night and find them on their computers at the dining room table oh-ing and aw-ing at pictures of animals from local shelters. Kelly started really pushing for a cat, and when we found out that our building doesn't allow dogs, that sealed the deal. Our friend Jon knew a family with a litter of kittens that they were trying to find good homes for, so one night we drove down to the south side to pick one up. Toby has the mood swings of a pregnant bipolar woman; he can go from sleeping on the couch to jumping on the dining room table at the drop of a hat. We have started to use a water bottle to spray at him when he tries to eat our food or chew up our stuff. We keep hoping one day he'll become well-behaved (or just less hyper-active), but there's a long road ahead of us on that one.

At the end of June there was also a picnic at the lake for all 3 Chicago campuses of Community Christian. The main event of the day was a volleyball tournament, which I'm happy to announce that Team Edgewater dominated. It was much more competitve than the volleyball "tournament"s from the church I grew up in, where middle-aged men would stand around with a soda in one hand and swipe at the ball as long as they didn't have to step more than a foot. After the tournament, there was just enough time for everyone to grab some food before a storm started to move in. The lifeguards forced everyone out of the water, and wind started to blow our tents over. After several picnicers were nearly struck by the airborne canopies, Cary Anne and I decided it was time to make our escape on the Vespa.

For the 4th of July, Cary Anne and I made a trip down to Kentucky. By this time my grandmother had lost her battle with lung cancer, so there was a bit of a mini family reunion happening. Cary Anne got introduced to members of my family she had never met as we spent the holiday eating and laughing and remincing about my grandmother. Since we had not been back to Lexington since December of 2012, CA and I filled our days there with visits to most of our nearby friends. Admittedly, CA and I are both pretty bad at staying in touch with people via phone and email, but we have been blessed with friendships that seem to pick up right where they left off whenever we do get a chance to actually see people.

One of the upsides of being unemployed during the summer was that it gave me the opportunity to volunteer with StuCo, the youth program at our church. Since our church meets at a school that runs K-8th grade, we would gather once a week at the school playground and organize games for the kids. Gretchen and Tori, our church's summer interns, spent lots of time coming up with fun and interesting games for the kids, so I always felt a little bad when the kids just seemed content with playing kickball or dodgeball for hours on end. The program was just as fun and insane as you would expect, and hopefully it will continue to be as we move into the new school year.

Overall, it was a fast-paced summer full of changes. Based on my current track record with maintaining this blog, you'll be reading all about our Fall in the Summer of 2014.