Goodbye Forever Brat Summer

Revisiting my Totally Normal 2024 Summer Bucket List 💚💚💚

Jamie McCormick

Sep 08, 2024

I am writing today’s post from my childhood home.

I am wearing a sweater.

The date - September 8th - is somewhat gourd-shaped.

I have not seen anything puke green since leaving Toronto on Friday.

Charli has declared brat summer dead, and I am in shambles.

To mourn, I thought we could press rewind and grade my summer bucket list from May.

Because why do anything unless it gets evaluated? Can my fellow perfectionists give me an ‘“Amen”?

My 2024 Summer Bucket List (grading notes in italics)

Jump into Lake Ontario without saying “ew” ✅
1. There’s a first time for everything
Get under :30s in the New York Times Mini ✅
1. Read it and weep:
  From June 18th
Make at-home iced coffee (that’s that me espresso) ✅
1. Day-old coffee that I stored in the fridge counts
Make more frozen treats in general ❌
Dance in the rain like I’m in Step Up 2: The Streets ❌
1. Did you see the level of rain??? Our basement flooded twice! If I tried this I would have floated out to sea (and by sea, I mean the underwater DVP)
Bake scones ❌
1. It was brat summer, not trad wife summer
Dessimate my asshole neighbour with the perfectly timed passive-aggressive comment ❌
1. The saddest incomplete on my list and forever my white whale
Find the perfect little black skort ✅
1. All praise the Value Village gods!
Do yoga outside ❌
Fight the urge to go for a “quick jog” in the middle of July when I know I hate running. It’s always discouraging. I don’t know why I do it every year. You will not wake up and suddenly become a runner. Stop pretending. ✅
1. I hate to admit that this was the hardest one on this list
Say “no” to an invitation without feeling guilty about it ❌
1. One day….
Host an outdoor movie night ❌
Don’t get a single sunburn that peels ✅
1. This is genuinely shocking
Watch Olympic breakdancing and commit to understanding the scoring ✅
1. Yes! Well…kind of! I understood the scoring insofar as I agreed with what should and shouldn’t win every round. That’s enough, right?
Check-in on the eel pit (that’s that eel espresso) ✅
1. Can you believe this has been around for two years!?! The eels are bigger. There is more wildlife. They are eating shrimp for some reason???
  @cowturtle Eel pit! The longear sunfish and channel cats are still going strong!
  Tiktok failed to load.
  
  Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Ignore the Instagram ads about that face-sculpting laser thing. You know it’s a scam. It’s always a scam ✅
1. Currently, Instagram is pushing me to submit to a Canada-wide Disney casting call? Is anyone else getting that??? I almost miss the face-sculpting laser.
Take myself on a writing retreat ❌
1. This sounds great until it requires me to drive a car by myself. Yuck.
Try pickleball and don’t cry if/when I’m bad at it ❌
1. Considering my #8 skort, there’s really no excuse
Go bird-watching just to see what all the fuss is about ❌
1. How many birds do I have to watch in one outing to say I went bird-watching?
Avoid the resurgence of boat shoes ✅
1. Get fucked, Sperry
Log all my outfits for 3 weeks (inspired by Downtime, inspired by The Wardrobe Edit) ❌ ✅
1. I lacked this consistency, but I did log some! Please ignore the messy backgrounds. I will not apologize for who I am (a garbage rat)
  Based on these, can anyone tell me my 3 style words?
Go to a tarot card reading and try not to be a total cynic about it ❌ ✅
1. Mark and I tried to book this for our anniversary (risky), but the woman we found ghosted our texts.
  We also passed multiple and seemingly different “fortune teller” signs in a pocket of Toronto that all had the same phone number? Does anyone know how many psychics operate in each neighbourhood?? Is it territorial??? Are they all the same person???! I need answers!
Always have enough change in my wallet in case I see an ice cream truck (if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready, ya feel?) ✅
1. I am living my rich life
Plan a road trip ✅
1. Stay tuned for my Forks, Washington girl’s trip in 2025. Twilight Festival, here we come!
Dust the baseboards ❌
1. One day….
Wear shorts without being self-conscious about my legs (just once!) ✅
1. This happened a grand total of two times! Both are pictured above.
Have a digital detox weekend: No phone. No laptop. No tv ❌
1. Lol who do I think I am?
Go to the drop-in still-life drawing class down the street ❌
1. This one is a bummer. I spent last night going through old boxes of stuff, and drawing was a pillar of my young life. I really thought I would be an artist (and no, a quirky Substack was not what I meant)
Wake up early to see a sunrise ✅
Stay up late to see a sunrise (this is a stretch goal) ❌
1. This would have been so brat of me, but alas my 11pm bedtime is firm
Make a s’more on our teeny tiny little propane fire bowl ❌ ✅
1. Not to be elitist, but we found a real campfire to do this one
Re-read The Hunger Games (tween girl summer round two) ❌
1. A huge missed opportunity that has now immediately become a fall goal
Run through a sprinkler ❌
1. There is no causal way to make this happen as a childless woman in a city
Take mushrooms and roll around in our backyard (to be combined with #27) ❌
1. A shocking loss, if we’re being honest. Maybe I’ve lost my edge.
Avoid learning how to use the lawnmower so Mark always has to cut the grass ✅
1. Biggest win on the list
Go to the zoo ❌ ✅
1. Replaced with bringing a zoo to us for Mark’s birthday:
Throw out all the socks and underwear that I don’t wear. Why is this so hard? They are uncomfortable. I should do this right now ✅
1. Turns out this is a task that is never actually finished. There is always a “worst” pair of underwear. From the ashes of the latest purge, a new least favourite will rise
Successfully grow 2-3 vegetables in our garden ❌ ✅
1. LOOK AT MY TINY CARROT
Successfully keep raccoons away from said garden ✅
1. Turns out they didn’t care about the calibre of carrots in our yard
Have a picnic ❌
Sit on the grass in shorts and don’t get stressed that ants might be trying to crawl in my underwear. That doesn’t happen. You are just crazy ❌
1. Good reminder to bring this up in therapy
Make a plan to use all my health benefits before the end of the year ✅
1. Bleak reminder that I’ve now hit reimbursement limits on therapy, massage, and acupuncture… Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a benefits card
Plan a date night at a Toronto speakeasy ❌ ✅
1. Not quiiittteee a speakeasy, but I went to at least four spots in the city that I didn’t know existed, and I think that counts…
Don’t chicken out from getting a photo at said speakeasy ❌
1. What can I say? I’m consistent
Have fun nails all summer ✅
1. This was my summer colour and I have never been happier with my hands
Go to a museum ✅
1. A super-rad Nike-curated WNBA mini-seum that popped up in Phoenix. Swoosh:
Submit an article for our very local, very wholesome, neighbourhood newspaper ❌
1. Topic ideas, anyone? Maybe an expose on the Toronto fortune teller industry because SOMETHING is happening there??? Will anyone go undercover with me???
Buy cute pyjamas so I can sit on the porch with my coffee like the lead of a made-for-tv movie about a coastal mystery ❌
1. I will take recommendations because I currently sleep in granny panties and satin bonnets like the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood and it’s grating on my confidence
Make Koolaid (when was the last time you had Koolaid?!) ✅
1. Did not make it, but drank a very watered-down version at Family Camp (which is exactly what it sounds like - summer camp with my family)
Stop being a little bitch and actually try to promote this blog instead of brushing it off and being weird about it ❌
1. One day….
Hit 50,000 words of my novel draft so I can edit this fall (gah!) ✅ ❌
1. 30,000 is not too shabby if I do say so myself! Right now I’m using this draft to iron out any plot holes before I go back to adding word count. Who knew that writing a book would be so hard?!? No one ever warns you!