summer plans, 90s style

the comfort of a nostalgic bucket-list

The goal of having an unplugged, low screen-time, 90s-style summer is not new, and I won’t pretend you haven’t heard the phrase ad nauseum over the past weeks. We’ve read blogs about it, listened to podcasts, told ourselves we would ruthlessly eliminate hurry, and more. But let’s face it: for those of us lucky enough to grow up in the 90s, our childhood summers feel bountiful and endless. We got bored! And out of boredom grew ingenuity and friendship.

I want to spend the next few months cultivating things like “bountiful” and “endless” and yes, even a little bit of boredom. What I mean by having a “90s summer” might be different from your definitions, which is totally okay. For me, this goal is comprised of several features:

-a lack of screen time (apart from movie nights)

-organic, casual time with friends

-play time (art, board games, outdoor games, sandcastles, whatever!)

-lots of time outside

-swimming

“I feel like my TV is on for like five months out of the year,” a friend mentioned last weekend, “but the minute it warms up and we have daylight again, I never use it.”

This feels true for me, too. When summer cracks open the long evenings like a can of iced tea, inviting me to linger at edges of lakes, or beaches, or park trails a-glint with fireflies at dusk, I don’t even think about my couch. In fact, I don’t know a single person who - if shown a blue lake as an alternative - would rather watch the news.

The more I seek to be a woman awake to her life, the more I realize that actually, I do have time for things I love, I just need to get creative with how I fit them in. This summer I’m eager for long evenings after work, communing with friends, soaking up time in nature, and leisurely ticking off a list of soul-supporting “to-do’s.”

First, I’d like to plant some cherry tomatoes. I dialed back my goal of planting any sort of massive garden because, well, I just didn’t get around to it. After circling everything I wanted, the seed catalogs piled up, then gathered dust. Of course, because I wanted to plant everything, I ended up ordering nothing, and then the mood passed me. I do have a little bit of wilty-arugula, some stunted lettuces, and a couple drunkenly-staggering rows of white radishes. The other day I pulled one up to see how it was coming along, and mostly it wasn’t. Oh - and a crop of watery-tasting strawberries much perturbed by snails. The snapdragons, however, are astounding! This week’s forecast is a rainy loss, but my “seedling dealer” has the little tomato plants ready for this coming weekend and a couple flowers, so I’ll pick those up. Maybe a randy cucumber vine or two from the shop, if I really feel adventurous. It’s more the spirit of the thing anyway - I still buy bags and bags and bags of gem-colored tomatoes from Cullipher’s all summer long, no matter how many plants I’ve got.

Next up, I’m planning to take a day trip to Tangier Island. Every since reading Chesapeake Requiem, I’ve wanted to visit this odd, sinking little island in the Chesapeake Bay where everybody crabs for a living and the high-school graduating class is (on average) one student large and nobody is allowed to drive a car. We are going to be taking a quick spin over there soon. I can’t take any credit for this plan - it’s all my younger sister, Abby, and her friends from swing-dancing who have also read the book and found it intriguing and mysterious and worth taking a potentially-dodgy ride in the mailboat to see what it’s all about. I don’t know exactly when it’s happening because we were due for tomorrow, but bad weather set in. Whenever we go, I’ll report back with our findings.

I’d like to have an outdoor dinner and serve tiramisu. One thing about me, I love a cold dessert. Ice cream, pudding, mousse, pavlova, berries and fresh cream? My style. Each summer it seems like everyone and their brother travels to Italy, and since I’m stuck in Virginia this summer to do fertility treatments (grateful, nervous), I really want to bring that “dolce far niente” feeling to a table near me. Over the winter my sister, Sarah, made a perfect tiramisu using a recipe given her by someone who knows. I’ve thought about it far more often than I probably should be thinking about tiramisu, and it seems like the perfect after-dinner bite for a long, warm evening with my girlfriends. I didn’t even know tiramisu was trending when I decided on this, but I’m not upset that a lot of folks seem to be interested in perfecting their silky-creamy-soft-cookie game. (Is banana pudding nothing but a rendition of tiramisu, drummed up by bored housewives some humid, southern, July? Maybe?)

One of my favorite things we do once per summer is make it up to Richmond for a day spent along the James River, usually somewhere adjacent to the Buttermilk Trail along the South shore. The Buttermilk Trail is a great hike for low-commitment hikers because it is shaded and only “moderately strenuous,” but adventurous enough that you need some good, grippy shoes and a stout walking stick if you want your knees to speak to you later. After walking as much of it as we prefer (it’s an in-and-out trail, not a loop, and is about 5 miles long), we peel off toward the Reedy Creek trail to spend time basking on the river rocks and in the water. I would love to bring a critter-catching bucket this summer and see if we can find any little fish, crawdads, or water-creatures to look at! I just love the fact that a hike this “hike-y” is within a two-hour drive from our area, where nearly all the hikes are flat terrain within earshot of traffic. It’s wild and a little lonesome (but also well-traveled) and definitely a summer staple. Plus, if you time it correctly, you can wedge yourself between a couple of boulders in the river and pretend you’re a sort of urban mermaid, and try not to get swept away.

Speaking of summer staples - this is a little less fun and a little more sensible, but I went through my wardrobe and got rid of the clothes that don’t fit, don’t thrill, or don’t work for my life. I do this about once a year and always know it’s time for an overhaul when I stare at my full closet and the basket(s) of our laundry waiting to be folded and think, “I feel ugly.” Over the years I’ve learned that the issue is not that I’m ugly, but that I am confused by the odds and ends in my closet, wearing things that don’t work for my right-now body, holding onto items I do not enjoy wearing, or generally accruing too many items in general. A perfect example? I really really really dislike wearing t-shirts, with rare exceptions. No matter how oversize, they do not look on my body the way I want them to look. Why, then, did I have an entire dresser drawer dedicated to my least-favorite clothing on the planet? You tell me. I also had, like, three to four polos, an over-shirt, and a hoodie branded with a department I no longer work for. (I did keep the hoodie, though. It’s comfy.) To fill in the gaps, I’m reverting to thrifting, both in person and online. Once I organized my closet, I realized the majority of what I own has turned out to be a cream or oatmeal color, and I don’t even particularly like cream and oatmeal colors. Who let this happen? I’ve decided to hit a thrift shop once a week on a lunch break until I have found what I need, as there are 3-4 within a small enough radius I could probably make it there and back with time to do a quick sweep of the plus size racks within an hour. Thrifting as a plus size woman is not always successful, but in a shocking turn of events I found two pairs of jeans at the same shop this week. (Maybe the Ozempic craze will play to my favor and everyone will give their cute clothes to the Goodwill as soon as they drop a size.)

I plan to hang around for lots of sunsets and fireflies. The weird thing about where I used to live versus where I currently live, is that I actually don’t see most sunsets. I don’t notice this fact until I’m out and about at sunset time, which is a treat, and I go wild for it. Then I’m like, '“Oh my gosh I need to see sunsets! I’ve become too domesticated!” Our townhouse is situated in such a way that we can’t see any sunsets from front or back windows, not even on the second floor. Our evening rhythms have become such that we aren’t often out at sunset time, particularly in summer when it doesn’t get dark till 8:30-9:00. However, that’s changing. I’m craving a shakeup to our “typical” evening and have been working hard to not hole away after work, as if couch-sitting will restore me. I recently discovered that a park I frequent has incredible fireflies and sunsets - in the past, I’ve just always there before dark! You can count on evening walks at this park becoming a part of my summer rhythms, because the fireflies in particular brought me so much joy. I hadn’t seen them in such quantities in literal decades! Nothing could be more 1995 than walking through the forest and being surrounding by blinking fairy-lights. We’ve also done some fun things like scooping ice cream into our color-changing cups and having an ice cream walk after dinner.

Another thing I intend to do this summer - the thing that will take a lot of work but that I am deeply excited for - is repainting our bedroom. Even as a kid I had a dedicated pair of jeans shorts and at least one t-shirt that were my designated paint clothes - I also wore them berry-picking, or during art projects - anything messy! But it’s been decades since I’ve owned a set of paint-clothes. So why am I repainting our bedroom? The thing is, when we bought the house in December of 2020, I was left to my own devices about choosing paint colors. Andrew was sick with Covid for a month, I was stressed and excited, and I tried something: I tried a jungle-y, peacock blue, intending to end up with a vibe like this:

Unfortunately, several things happened: the color I picked was too bright, the room itself too sunny, the bedroom set we found for a steal was too warm-toned and Mission-style, and I failed to decorate whatsoever because (four years down the road) I’m still using a plastic storage crate as an end-table. The result is that we’ve been sleeping in a sort of Cookie-Monster-colored bedroom for the past four year, and every time I notice the color (daily) I’m mildly stressed in the part of my mind that cares deeply about the right color. Now that I’m familiar with the bedroom furniture we have, the size of the room, the way light comes through the windows, and the general home décor style into which I’ve settled, my plan is to do a 180 and paint it over in a warm, dusty rose color that leans toward the “sun on terracotta” feel, drawing in earthy green elements. I’m planning not to rush the process so that I get the color correct, painting samples on the walls to live with and see how they look outside the computer screen, in our actual house. After all, dusty rose is two wrong steps away from Pepto-Bismal. What is causing my sudden decision to paint a small bedroom while living in it? Housing prices. Since it doesn’t look like we’ll be moving anytime soon, I’m not going to push off making this present home as comfortable and beautiful as it can be. I’m really excited for this project, but if I have any local friends who want to come help me paint, and keep morale high when the time comes, I’ll feed you!

(Also, never take it for granted if your spouse is chill with letting you man the helm of home décor. Andrew has signed off that responsibility to me, which is how a clay-pink bedroom is happening. With approval!)

The final “official” plan for my summer is to hang out with friends for small reasons without spending money. Something I feel we’ve lost touch with is the art of inviting people over to play board-games, or meeting up for a walk, or to “play outside” (this could be a walk to find seashells, or maybe pickleball at a tennis court). It seems like everything requires money spent, and it doesn’t need to! I’m after the genuine, casual, nostalgic connections. Let’s run errands together. Let’s do our silly little arts and crafts together. Let’s play Scrabble, and Clue, and Uno. Let’s have a movie night. Let’s meet up at free concert together. Let’s paint our nails, or do homemade face masks, or wash our cars together! Let’s work in the garden, or maybe I can help you clean out your fridge? There are so many parts of our lives that could involve community but don’t (often), and one of my goals this summer is to push into that opportunity. A new(er) friend and I are meeting up Wednesday mornings to walk her dogs before work. This feels very retro, and inspires me with its quiet consistency. You know what we do on Wednesdays? Walk the dogs around the lake. I’m also taking a chance on a 3-minute conversation in a coffee shop and meeting up with someone after book-club next weekend for a chance to get to know her. Organic connections are so rare these days they feel strange, but I’m leaning heavily into it. Let’s make our social go-tos feel a little weird, in a good way!

There’s more I have planned - I’d like to make a lobster out of strawberries and put in on a cake. I’d like to paint my nails red at least once, even though I suddenly prefer to wear zero nail-polish. I’d like to get someone else to bake my birthday cake, and possibly gather friends together at a restaurant I love, or maybe at a park. I’d like to kayak, and spend time on a pontoon boat, and have Andrew teach me to be a better swimmer in my friends’ saltwater pool, and make an apple pie even though I hate making pie crust. And somewhere in all of this I’m going to be taking medication and shots and making a merry-go-round of appointments and trying (with assistance) for a baby. I knew that going into this #IUIsummer, I need things to enrich my life outside of wondering if it worked or not. As for precisely when those treatments begin, we are somewhat annoyingly “circling the airport” till the various teams coordinate with my new work insurance to discuss coverage. We know that my insurance doesn’t cover anything, but each team at the clinic has to check, and that takes time (why can’t they check all in one go?). I could be starting up treatments as early as the next week or so, or have to wait a full additional cycle. It’s anybody’s guess at this point. We are trusting God and knowing that where He leads us will be good, even if it’s a little frustrating to know if we miss this cycle, we’re stuck for another month solid.

But you know what helps uncertainty? Nostalgia. I couldn’t be happier that “90s summer” is colliding with our summer of fertility treatments. It is comforting to know that not everything is up in the air. Some things, like the best of our childhood memories, are there to revisit, as often as we call them to mind. Do you hear the cicadas? Have the tree-frogs started up? Does the kid up the street want to show you his Pokemon-card collection? Listen! Isn’t that the ice cream truck? We’re back, baby. Carrying cash, chewing bubble-gum, looking for free fun to get into. Let’s roll. Every little thing is gonna be all right.

Love,

Rachel