The Summer of My "Discontent"

While technically summer isn't over for another 3 or so weeks, in my life it ended last week. Nathan, who headed back to school August 8th, started his sophomore year at Liberty University on Monday. Jeremy, now a Junior at Athens High School, started his classes on Tuesday. Our new neighbors in the college rentals one both sides of our house are now in residence which is an indication that fall has arrived.

As I look back on this past June-August I realize that while many things were accomplished, it was not the restful and idyllic summer that I felt we should have when we don't spend it moving to a new military assignment.
--Some of this comes from the new dynamic in our family. We have a college student who doesn't feel that this house is his home. I understand why he feels this way, we moved here 6 weeks before he left for college. He has no connections to this town and was not thrilled to be "stuck here" for 10 weeks. (Fortunately, he got a job working at a boy scout summer camp and was only around for about a month--of course this was in May while his brother and father still were in/teaching school)
--There were no family vacations or day trips together. Our time together after school got out was limited to the short time on Saturdays that Nathan was home between camp sessions, and only when everyone was here. In fact this was a summer of separate travel. Jeremy went to three boy scout camps. Two of them were"once in a lifetime" camps: Sea Base in the Bahamas and the National Jamboree at Fort A P Hill in Virginia which was celebrating 100 years of scouting. In total he was gone for a little over 4 weeks. Alex was gone almost 6 weeks (he just returned last night) TDY to Maxwell AFB to work at Air Force ROTC field training camp Max 6.
--Two weeks were spent with painters here at the house to repaint the exterior (so worth paying to have professionals do it, due to the previous owner's neglect with upkeep on the house) but we didn't get the landscaping for the front done as we had hoped.
--I was too busy; or too tired; or too depressed; to work on any special projects and spent way too much time on Facebook as an escape.

One thing that did come out of this "summer of discontent" was a persistent feeling of guilt that I should be doing something more. Specifically, that I shouldn't be wasting the opportunity of the "free tuition"(I still have to pay general fees and books) that is available at Ohio University because of Alex having the status of "visiting professor". So I did a lot of praying....and some contemplating. Alex brought me a contact number for Academic Advising before he left for Alabama, and I made an appointment to just talk about my options. I saw the academic advisor and took some assessment tests for careers and majors this past week. Today I applied for non-degree seeking admission for this fall....and if all goes well I will once again be a university student next Tuesday.