Enough with the summer and the cats already

There are a number of things that make me feel old. Some are pretty obvious, not particularly subtle, like when one of my students said to another (not about me directly, but still) "No, he's pretty old. I think he's like thirty." There's the grey in my beard, the lagging performance of my liver, the perplexed looks I find myself casting towards teenagers talking in public.

(And, you know what sucks? Most of my friends are older than me. My five oldest friends are between 53 and 62. Many more are in their 40s. And none of them has a lick of sympathy for me feeling old as I approach my 35th birthday.)

Here's the newest thing to make me feel old: summer. I realized this morning, as I rushed about getting Liv ready for another summer camp, that I'm already ready for summer to be over, to return to the steadier schedule of Liv in preschool.

Part of it is the new job, which will work well around the preschool schedule but has me scrambling for childcare options right now. But it is more than that. I'm tired of having to schedule so much of Livvie's time (because if she doesn't get playtime with other kids, she becomes quickly intolerable). I'm tired of the heat, and how much more difficult it makes the chores during the day in our sweltering apartment, and how much less energy I have in the evening while Liv is still hard-charging.

I'm tired of summer. Who'da thunk it?

On a completely unrelated note, have you ever noticed that living with cats is a lot like living with slacker teenagers (which, if you asked my step-father, is redundant, though my step-father probably didn't know what that word means)? I mean, seriously, you're busting your ass all morning and suddenly around noon they appear, blinking, squinting and smacking their lips, looking for food. And if you ask them to do anything? I'd almost prefer the teenager eyeroll to the feline long, slow blink while turning the head away, keeping the eyes shut in the calm cat way that says "behind these eyes you no longer exist, and they won't open until you're gone."

I only really dislike teenage boys. But I'm starting to hate all cats.