It’s time for me to leave Wisconsin. Last night I dreamt about snowfences. When you are dreaming about snowfencing in August it is time to leave Wisconsin.

All around me people are gathered in excited groups over autumn and winter. They can’t wait to put on sweaters and boots. What fun it will be when the leaves change colors. Some even are anxious for that dirty word–snow.

I am not part of these groups. The dream about the snowfence was a nightmare that I had forgotten to put one up before the ground froze, leaving me doomed to a season of fighting drifts in sub-zero temps. Such panic it caused me. The thought that, no matter how many nice things like warm cookies and chats around the fireplace, the mean season had found me not prepared was too much.

When I woke up it was August. Wonderful August when the days are warm and long still. A once-a-week mow is all that is needed to maintain the property this time of year. The pool is still open. School has not begun yet. Wonderful, wonderful August!

But it still lingers in me. When I start dreaming, with dread, about snowfences in August it is time to leave Wisconsin. Time to flee to warmer temps somewhere far from Monona. But that isn’t the life I live yet. All I can do is possibly make reservations for somewhere nice and warm in December or January–or sit back and enjoy all the great things Monona has to offer right now, while it is still August.

A trip through the Taco Bell drive thru to get a tostada…

Immediately followed by a trip through the Taco John’s drive thru to get potato oles.

Yeah, I did that for lunch one day last week (cough, cough).

By the way, the Taco John’s facebook fan page is here. They regularly update it with their monthly specials, which is how I found myself going there last week.

While I was on the way back to Monona from vacation, to the life that I live– waiting for a flight at Boston’s Logan Airport– I caught sight of the life I should be living. The one I always imagined that I would be living.

Late this month Jonathan Franzen’s much anticipated novel, FREEDOM, is being published. TIME Magazine had his photo on the cover. Inside was an article reminding me of what a great Author Franzen is. Since our flight was delayed because of yet another summer storm over Wisconsin I had plenty of time to consider the life I wanted to live when I was younger, Jonathan Franzen’s, and the one I live now.

I think Jonathan Franzen was born outside Chicago. I was born in Chicago. We both write. TIME stated he goes to an empty office to work where there are no distractions. He has even removed the internet, any possiblity of it, from his computer. I write in my office each day. Okay, sometimes my ‘office’ is the laundry room or the kitchen. But I do not ever check email when I write. Our subjects are the same. He writes about families. My WHOLE life is about family.

I wondered how good Jonathan Franzen’s new novel could be. When I read blurbs and excerpts from it I knew. It seems like it’s pretty darned good. Nothing that I ever write reads like that. That’s why he is in the company of a few good men–the likes of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I have read Hemingway and Fitzgerald. AAAAHHH, the differences between myself and Jonathan Franzen began.

In the end I found myself back in Monona, after a flight in which I watched a summer storm rage beyond the plane window with my fellow passengers. It felt pretty nice to be home.

At home, in this life I live rather than the one I imagined in college–the one that included my own photo on TIME Magazine with an article claiming I was a great author perhaps–I was consoled by certain things as I mowed through the jungle our lawn had become while we were away. A wave HELLO from a neighbor or a phone call with a loud welcome back. Our family fell into a familiar routine that felt right.

For years I have been protected from the imagined life I might have lived by friends at the Monona Library. When novels classmates of mine had published came out, while I was lucky to get through the day  changing diapers and pushing a stroller filled with young children a few blocks from the house to the park or the pool–even the library, a friendly librarian would whisper to me that the novel in question I was checking out was not very popular–only a few people had checked it out. That helped a great deal.

The last time Jonathan Franzen had a great novel come out, THE CORRECTIONS released right before September 11th nine years ago, I was able to tell myself that I, of course, had not produced such a work. Our five kids had drained me of every sane thought I had ever had. Now I have no such excuse. In hindsight, our kids have given me more than I ever put out.

So, with a bit of healthy envy but a great deal of awe, I tip my hat to Jonathan Franzen and his new work. In the meanwhile I continue to write what I write, where I write it, in a place called Monona–surrounded by the company of very many good men and women.

Like many families, this month finds us traveling in an attempt to stall the end of summer. For us August is always a sort of time travel. Each year we return to the scene of the crime, Cape Cod, where my wife and I were married twenty years ago this October. The place we lived while the roads seemed lined with possibilites.

As we bored our five children with tales and sites of where we married, lived and dreamed of the life we would have in Hyannis Port (or Hyannisport) it all seemed like only yesterday. To our teens it also seemed like only yesterday, as they moaned and groaned that they had heard all of these stories and seen these sites before. But this year was different. This year they took note of where we were.

For the first time our tribe seemed to realize that the homes perched upon Nantucket Sound were mansion-like. They were in awe of the exculsive Beach Club and envious of teens their age driving very nice jeeps with little care– several nearly falling out of those jeeps as they parked however they wanted– as if intoxicated.

“How could you ever leave Hyannis Port?” our daughter asked us.

I asked myself the same thing suddenly.

It was not easy. At the time it was a heavy loss.

“I wish I grew up here!” our oldest daughter complained. “Then I would be rich and spoiled, if you didn’t move from Hyannis Port.”

It was true, I thought as I recognized the teens in the jeep from a family I waved to and greeted as neighbors when our children were all still in strollers. Hyannis Port was a long way from Monona, Wisconsin.  Far from Monona, Wisconsin I wondered where our plan had gone wrong. We had failed to give our children the lives we hoped to give them.

“You are spoiled,” I told my daughter.

That did not go over well.

“You are richer than you know because you are growing up in Monona.”

That did not go over well.

In Truro we treated ourselves to a meal out because too many cooked meals on vacation make it feel almost like not being on vacation.

The server was a teenage girl who said she enjoyed working at the seaside spot, located near a string of salt houses grown out of sand and sea grass so that the yards are the Atlantic Ocean. When I asked the teen server if she enjoyed working the dinner shift, rather than the early morning breakfast one she did last year, she said she did, I asked if it was because she could go to the beach during the day.  Her answer surprised us.  She does not go to the beach during the day, she told us, but cleans houses and watches children because there are no jobs in Truro during the off-season. She has to work hard when she can she said. This stayed with us.

As we left our daughter who wanted to have grown up in Hyannis Port said she felt rich and spoiled because she lives in Monona.

We continue to travel Cape Cod this month, reminded of where we began our life together and how we thought it would turn out.

None of it is as it should be according to the plans we made. Monona, Wisconsin was not even on the map for us twenty years ago. The plan did not belong to us but, somehow, it could not have turned out any better. Of that we all are sure.

This week we’ve reached a point in the summer where I’ve made two trips to Copps mostly for amusement, just to get the youngest kids out of the house and to stop them from pestering me for things to do.

I’ve even been reduced to watching some episodes of Wipeout online with them,  even though it’s the most interminable 44 minutes of television ever. Wipeout is no Mad Men, which is the most awesome TV show ever, but they insist I watch it with them.

In short, they are tired of the usual amusements and I’m just tired.

So the other morning when they inexplicably woke up before 7 a.m., much to my dismay, I remembered that there were lawn clippings on the front yard because I had mowed the evening before. Aha!

I know some people diligently keep lawn clippings off their yard by attaching a bag to their mower to collect the clippings.

Raking is an option too.

Or they use a mulching lawn mower that leaves behind finely shredded clippings.

The lawn clippings on my yard weren’t exactly finely shredded. Ahem.

Yet I like to leave clippings on the yard as fertilizer. So when the girls were awake before 7 a.m. and full of energy, I discovered that spreading around the lawn clippings was a most excellent activity to suggest to them when they asked the “What should we do?” question.

They picked up the clippings and threw them in the air and kicked them around to spread them. We actually had fun.

The grass still doesn’t look like a carpet  - you can see some dried bits of grass clippings on it.  But it is, after all, a yard.

And since that morning they’ve been sleeping in. Aaahhh.

While reading the Monona Rag recently I came across this Madison.com article that talks about how businesses in Monona Drive are losing business during the construction.

In addition to supporting your local businesses with your dollars, here’s one quick way to help out local businesses… write a review on Google or Yelp.

How does this help them?

Let’s take restaurants as an example.

About 1200 people per month type “Monona WI restaurants” or something similar into Google. At the top of the search results is a map of Monona and a list of restaurants.

Part of what determines a high ranking in that list is the number of reviews a business has. It’s super easy to add your own review.

Yelp is another popular review site and it’s also an iPhone app.  When people travel they often check Yelp or Google Maps to see what local restaurants, etc. to visit and the reviews play a role in their decisions.

Obviously reviews have a downside because by nature people are quick to complain but often don’t take the time to write a positive review.

Yet businesses shouldn’t fear or dismiss negative feedback. Sometimes it can be turned into something positive. For example, here’s how a pizza place in San Francisco made something positive out of their 1 star Yelp reviews. They put the one star comments on their staff T-shirts.

It only takes a minute to write a favorable review about your favorite Monona businesses and I’m sure they’d appreciate the effort.

This is a bit overdue, but I want to thank Channel 3000 for including us on their new Monona Grove news site.

They list the local blogs and sites on their sidebar and post news stories regularly. There’s also a RSS feed, which makes it easy to stay on top of their stories, and it’s nice to see posts from all the Monona blogs in one place.

The Herald-Independent is a great source of news, of course, and a sentimental favorite, as I wrote freelance columns there way back in the day.

I’m glad that even with the demise of the paper newspaper, there isn’t a shortage of local news.

There’s less than a month left until the start of school (yikes), so if you’re looking for some things to do with the kids that don’t require driving a long distance from Monona, here are a few things we’ve discovered this summer.

Last weekend we noticed Bernie’s Beach in Madison’s Bay Creek Neighborhood was open for swimming. So I took some of my kids there on Sunday afternoon.

They’ve taken measures to remove algae and swimming ropes were up. There’s a lifeguard on duty every afternoon.

This was a nostalgia visit for us because we lived in the Bay Creek Neighorhood for most of the 1990s. I like the view of the Capitol and the beach wasn’t crowded. It’s also free. It was nice to give my kids a taste of what old-fashioned lake swimming is like.

Bouncy Town USA in Windsor is a fun way for kids up to the age of 12 to burn off some energy on a rainy (or overly hot) summer day.

There are several bouncy castle type things and parents can sit in a lounge that has free WiFi. Admission is free for parents and $6.95 per child.

Mandt Park Swimming Pond (the “Mud Hole”) in Stoughton is another way to have that old-fashioned swimming experience, but with chlorinated water.

Ironically, I had never been to the Mud Hole before even though I grew up in Stoughton. I went there twice with my kids and other relatives in July and enjoyed sitting in the large shady area while the kids played on the beach and enjoyed the two water slides.

The rate is $2.95 for non-residents and there’s no charge for those of us who don’t swim but just sit in the shade. The rates are lower for kids, if I recall correctly.

We also went to Noah’s Ark in Wisconsin Dells while entertaining relatives from out of town. The Noah’s Ark passes at Monona Community Center are $9 cheaper ($28 instead of $37), so I recommend getting Dells passes there.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!