School started last week, and I don’t know about you, but I remember that the first writing assignment was to write what we did over the summer. I never liked that because my summer vacations paled in comparison to what others did, or said they did, anyway. While others claimed they went to the beach or some other cool place for vacation, we pretty much stayed at home, played baseball, or rode our bikes around the neighborhood.

In May, we took the “every few years trip” to Michigan and Ohio to visit relatives. My mom and brothers all live outside of Detroit, and Ginger’s cousins are around Mt. Vernon, Ohio. We also stop on the way back to visit a college friend of hers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Last week, I pretty much stayed at home, doing the housecleaning that doesn’t get done on a regular basis. You know, dusting the high places, corners and other stuff like that. We were having dinner guests one night that served as the impetus. Happily, everything was done in time, which meant the rest of the week was mine, all mine! Bwa ha ha!

Unless you spend your days at home, you have no idea the dearth of things to watch on TV. Old cop shows, old westerns, soap operas and the like. I did manage a few minutes of a Bluebloods rerun that had my cousin in it, but continued channel surfing and came upon the Hallmark channels. One is Hallmark Movies and Mysteries that have some made for TV mysteries starring folks like Brooke Shields, Candace Cameron Bure, and Allison Sweeney. The other Hallmark channel has old shows like Columbo and Murder She Wrote, and in the afternoon they have movies with love as the theme. They’re very formulaic. Man and woman meet, crush on each other (that’s how they say it these days), deny it then admit it, then one of them offends the other but they get back together by the end of the movie with some goofy love song playing over the closing credits.

It wasn’t bad though. My birthday was last week so there was cake and ice cream, too. It’s the little things, right?

That’s how I spent my summer vacation. How did you spend yours?

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