I hate you August

I am convinced that the days of August are not really dog days so much as they are dog years. Meaning that each one seems to last 7 times as long as it should. Many times in August I will pause for a moment in the afternoon and think to myself, good god, is it *still* only Wednesday? Only to discover it is actually Tuesday and that instead of just standing still, time has managed to move backwards.  This morning was particularly bad. 


Our current schedule dictates that we need to leave the house by 8:20 to get my daughter to camp. My children got up at 7:45 and were dressed and downstairs by 7:50. So far so good. By 7:55 they were in an all-out brawl over legos. We are talking screaming, hitting, kicking. All before breakfast. Over legos. Of which we easily own enough for every man, woman and child in our town to construct their own small city should they all decide to stop by at the same time. But oh no, clearly not enough for my kids to maintain some civility and, god forbid, share. And by the way, what the hell are you two doing playing legos when you have less than half an hour to eat breakfast, brush hair, teeth, apply sunscreen and bug spray, search for inevitable random item you want to bring to camp today, figure out where you left your shoes and still have the 20 minutes you apparently need to put on a pair of socks? So it's not just me, August is also taking a toll on my children. 


My husband gets to blissfully go to work each morning. Every other month of the year he is generally a Monday through Friday schedule kind of guy. Rarely does his job spill over into our weekend. But once it's August he suddenly has critical, urgent work things to take care of on the weekends. In fact, now that I think about it, he only comes home long enough to sleep, shower and change clothes. And even then he makes sure to avoid eye contact and speak in a low, soothing voice to try and keep me calm. But unfortunately this doesn't work most of the time, and instead he gets the wife-whose-head-spins-around-360-degrees-ala-the-exorcist as soon as he dares to walk through the door each evening. And don't bother to ask him if I am exaggerating because he will just get a stricken look on his face and ask you what you've heard. 


By August I have abandoned all pretense of trying to be *fun mommy* or *creative mommy*, or even *sane mommy*. Instead I just do whatever it takes to get through the day. Our motto becomes *just hanging on until fall arrives*. The pool has become boring. We have done enough arts and crafts to open our own gallery. It's hot. It's buggy. Even the television is crying uncle. So I'm just going to go lay down for a long nap and hope that when I wake up it will be Thursday. Or at least Wednesday evening.