Overbooked ... By Design?

Also, who wants ice cream?

Earlier this month, if you asked what I had planned for the summer, I would have shrugged and said: “Oh, nothing much.” I intentionally left things wide open because two momentous life events are on the horizon.

My debut memoir, Sober Mom, will be published on July 21, smack in the middle of the summer. And in August, two of the three young adults living in my house will depart for higher education institutions.

These two milestones felt like enough, and I didn’t feel the need to plan anything else. No European vacations like our 2024 Germany trip, no mother-daughter excursions to visit cousins in San Francisco like last year. No big backyard shindigs like the one we had for my 50th birthday four years ago.

At my 50th, a marching band showed up in our backyard! Photo credit: Lara Robby Photography

So color me surprised to discover my summer calendar is suddenly FULL, maybe even overbooked.

I mean, the Summer Solstice was just yesterday, and I’ve already attended a wedding, a First Communion, a high school graduation, and a joint Father’s Day / Birthday celebration dinner. (My b-day is tomorrow!) This Friday is another wedding, and Sunday, I’m jetting off to Ottawa—yes, the capital of Canada—tagging along on my husband Chris’s business trip. And after that, a weekend in Vermont.

Then, I’m heading to NYC for three days to record my audiobook, followed by a swiftly planned trip to Fire Island with my father. And then the college move-ins, and I’ll be ending the summer with a trip to Portland, OR for Sober Mom’s inaugural book club event at my friend Cathi’s. (Hi, Cathi!)

What I can’t decide is … am I happy about the suddenly full calendar? Like a kid who thought he missed the ice cream truck only to discover it’s circled the block. OR am I disappointed to no longer have wide swatches of free time? Like a kid whose top ice cream scoop fell off his cone onto the pavement.

Sorry, it’s summer, so there’s ice cream on the mind. Also, maybe because of my friend Emma’s Substack, ode to Ice Cream in June.

I know what my sponsor would say about my suddenly full calendar. She’d say, “Hmmm, this all seems to be by design.” She’s not talking about my design; she’s talking about my Higher Power’s.

She’d suggest my Higher Power peppered my calendar with a bunch of lesser events so that I wouldn’t focus on the two very big, slightly terrifying events: my book launch and my empty nest.

Maybe. Does my Higher Power schedule business trips to Ottawa? It doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m happy about it. The point is I do have a full calendar now, and hopefully, that will mean I won’t stress about how my memoir is received or worry about everyone settling into their new college homes. I’ll be too busy living to do much worrying at all.

Yeah, it’s probably by design.

What about you? Got any plans for the summer?

I hope my dad and I get some ice cream while we're on Fire Island, like we did on a previous trip.

Disclaimer: To err is human. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. It’s proof there’s an actual human being behind the Substack.