what are you doing this summer?

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We are not going anywhere this summer. This is not okay.

I am messing up the snoburbia social order.

When I run into someone and she asks the obligatory, "What are you doing this summer?" and I say, "We're staying here," she blinks for a minute, not sure what to say. I've messed up the repartee. I need to mention my summer plans so she then can tell me about that great family camp in Maine, her son's trip to help rebuild Haiti, or her family's trip to British Columbia.

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Comments

[sohini]

Could you say "we're staycationing!" and somehow avoid this terrible breach of social norms?

[Queen of the Weezils]

One particularly nice thing about not having children is that we can take our vacations off-season, since we don't have to worry about kids' school schedules. It's both cheaper and less crowded, a win-win as far as I'm concerned. So when people ask me what we are doing this summer, we always say the same thing: Nothing big, just a few day trips on the bikes. But in spring we did this and in fall we're going to do that, so nyah. Sometimes I get the same blinks like we are being so gauche by going to the beach in WINTER! Oh, the horrors.

[kathy]

So glad to read this as I was pissing and moaning the other day because my snoburban friend was SO exhausted from going to the beach, then to Lake Placid, then on to Virginia, North Carolina, and finally to Florida for a week. She just wishes she could go somewhere that SHE wants for TWO DAYS all by herself. My heart bled for her. And yes, her 11th grade daughter did her church service project in Scotland (after a trip to Italy with relatives). Tough fucking life, I say.

[Doris]

This summer would have been my long-dreamed-of trip to Italy with husband and oldest daughter's family. Then youngest daughter & her husband surprised & delighted me with the news that they were going to have their first child this summer. Well, there's always next year, but there's only one first baby. Oldest daughter & her family still went, however, leaving a week after the birth, so they could see new niece.

[MattF]

Nice to know that no one's... um... working.

[Dana]

This made me laugh because WE go to that "great family camp in Maine." But it's our only vacation of the year and the rest of the summer we hang out too. It freaks everyone out when they hear the kids aren't in summer camps or enrichment classes or doing something other than playing. As if "playing" isn't more than enough.

[Kelly]

I am holding out hope that colleges will start to recognize that working at a summer job, visiting grandparents and vacationing with family are more authentic summer activities for a teenager than a "service" trip to Costa Rica, any young scholars program or 7 weeks at sleep away camp.

[Karl]

Who cares what colleges like? What's best for the kid's path as he or she blossoms into an adult? It's not college admissions offices that determine such values, despite Suburbia's belief to the contrary. In fact, I'd barely let a college admissions officer tell me how to wipe my butt after my constitutional.

Suburbian angst is so artificial. It's like the angst is fabricated out of nowhere, proverbially cliche'd alpine structures created out of a grain of sand or two.

That's what leisure + Stepford Wives + bot-like kids will do to a person, I guess. Once again I am righteously grateful to have escaped Monkey County and the rest of the DC landscape in favor of a place where angst has to do with real problems, not imagined ones.

Failing to get into Harvard and having to settle for Swarthmore, that's not a problem. That's a sick joke.

[Cavan]

+1 Karl

Even the made-up angst is a form of competitive consumption. So much affluence and so much misery and quiet desperation.

Pathetic.

[Lost in MoCo]

It's funny how snoburbic the comments are - boo hoo. Wow!
Vacationing in winter - to beaches - you are so authentic.

Being ball and chained by a new grandchild.

The reason kids are not "just playing" is because somebody has to make sure Whole Food is operational.

I work with poor people - not am one - but that makes me relavant right?

Holy Montgomery County!

[Doris]

Lost in MoCo, I am not "ball and chained" by my sweet little granddaughter. Husband & I just put our trip on hold for a year. Italy isn't going anywhere. Sure, it would have been nice to go with daughter and her family. Holding my little angel is nicer. And her other grandparents are up from Fl, so we get to enjoy seeing them, which is a real plus. They're great people.

[Lost in MoCo]

Sorry for my negative response I was up late with a sick kid. I was in a really bad mood and not a normal post by me. I would delete it if I could.

I would love to be ball and chained to an angel. :-)