Ok, so maybe I am not as industrious during the summer as I had hoped. I have about a week and a half before I leave for Paris, and I have yet to do many of the things that I had wanted to do. This isn’t to say that summer has been a waste – far from it. It is merely to admit that the routine-less laidback atmosphere of the past month has not fostered a desire to do anything other than what pleases my fancy in the moment. This means that I have watched lots of America’s Next Top Model and way too many shows about competitive cupcake making. America is the only nation where the two fastest growing types of TV shows are ones about inspirational weight-loss and cut-throat culinary demonstrations.

I recently found this to do list on someone’s blog (because the ineternet lets us creepily know what is happening in the lives of overly domestic housewives all across the world) and I feel that it perfectly captures what I really want to spend my summer doing.  When was the last time I made playdough? Or waffles, or a mural?

But in regards for my own list of goals, I have burned lightly, slept in frequently, spent and many hours laughing with family. The farmer’s market ambitions have come in conflict with the sleeping in, so that hasn’t already happened, but I have started a painting and made it out to ride a couple times.  I finally have an apartment in DC where the crime rating for the neighborhood is only slightly alarming, and I am reveling in the time for enjoyable summer reading. My bedside table currently looks like this:

I used to be devoted to reading one book at the time, but in the past two years I have taken the schizophrenic approach where I wander from essays on the role of art (On Moral Fiction), to poetry (4 Quartets), to classic books that I should have read but put off till now (To Kill a Mockingbird), to crazy memoirs on raising children the Chinese way (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom). Even though I have finished most of the books on here, I have a hard time moving them from the bedside table to the bookshelf. I just get attached and that final cross-room move signifies that a good book is truly over.