Here are some of the things I had planned on doing over the summer:

1. Read a book a week.
2. Organize ten years of recipes clipped from magazines. (click here and here for two particularly good ones.)
3. Exercise every day.
4. Blog on my own website at least three times a week.
5. Submit to all the magazines I ever wanted to be in.
6. Finish Knitting my daughter's sweater.
7. Sew together the sweater I actually did finish knitting for my son.

And that's just a partial list.  I was going to socialize more, walk on the beach a lot, weed the vegetable garden for a better harvest and on and on.

So here we are, August 1st, and have I done these things?  Let's see....that would be NO.

I always have big plans for "what I'm going to do on my summer vacation," and I invariably end up doing none of them.  It used to bug me until I realized:  this isn't my summer vacation.  This is my busy season.

Summer is when my kids need me to watch them on the beach -- and not just chat with my friend while they play on the playground, but really truly watch them, because they like to body surf in the ocean, and I like them not to drown.  This is the season when there's a garden to tend, when there is camp but no carpool, hungry kids but no take-out, leaky faucets but no super to call.

This is summer: busy season for Moms everywhere.

I remember when I was a kid and I couldn't wait for summer vacation to start. Well, now I'm a mom, and I can't wait for it to end and school to begin.

Well, maybe not completely. I like having more time with my kids.  I like watching them ride the waves ecstatically.  I love seeing how excited they are when our vegetable garden yields gargantuan zucchini. I like the family bike rides.  I even like (though I'll deny it ) that I get so much time alone with my kids because my husband only comes out on the weekends. (I miss him.  I do.  I just like having them all to myself for a bit.  Is that so wrong?)

But it isn't vacation.  It's long days, and lonely nights (that's the bad part of hubby in the city) and valiantly trying not to gain weight when ice cream and freshly baked pie loom on every corner.

I'm a mom, and summer is my busy season.  And just like with any job, when the busy season goes on for a long time, you get burned out.

And me?  I'm scorched.

Please, please, tell me I'm not the only one?