When I think of summer, I think of bare feet on hot pavement. Bike rides without shoes (or helmets, let’s be honest), daily drop-offs at the neighborhood pool with zero adult supervision, and the particular kind of sunburn that peeled in satisfying sheets a week later.
My mom’s summer strategy was simple: leave us at the pool with a towel and a bag of snacks, pick us up in time for dinner. It was glorious. Sticky. Chlorinated. Unsophisticated in all the best ways.
We earned personal pan pizzas through the library’s summer reading program—stickers for every book devoured. We fought over popsicles, naturally. But what I really remember is the blender.
Because in a flash of culinary independence, we learned how to use it.
Enter: the Orange Julius.
If you grew up in the golden age of middle school home economics, you know what I’m talking about. That frothy, sweet-tart, creamy citrus drink that tasted like summer and possibility and maybe a mall food court. Somehow, the ingredients were always on hand. Somehow, it never occurred to us to measure the sugar.
Fast forward to now. I’m a mom. I’m working. It’s June.
And I have questions.
Why does summer no longer feel like summer?
Why is every week a different camp with a different drop-off time and an aggressively color-coded spreadsheet to manage it?
Why does the car smell like sun-warmed socks and crushed goldfish?
Where is my personal pan pizza?
These are the questions I ask as I squint toward the horizon of another “summer break,” which, as far as I can tell, is just the same chaos—only sweatier.
But somewhere, underneath the schedule-juggling and snack-packing and the eternal hunt for sunscreen that hasn’t expired, I still want it.
The summer feeling.
The slowness. The simplicity. The slightly-freckled, semi-spontaneous stretch of time where nothing much happens and that’s kind of the point.
So this year, I’m not going to chase a perfect summer. I’m going to blend one.
I’m calling it the Orange Julius Approach™ to summer.
Here’s how it works:
You dig into the freezer. You find the can of frozen orange juice you bought in a fit of 90s nostalgia. You grab the milk. You embrace the sugar (it’s summer—don’t come for me). You blend. You pour. You sip. You remember.
And then—maybe—you make one tiny summer decision in that spirit.