JUNE CONTAINS:
- 15 clinical weekdays (including a seven-day call stretch. I couldn’t split them all, unfortunately!)
- 2 clinical weekend days
- 7 creative work days
- 4 “regular” weekend days (ie, neither Josh nor I working)
- 2 “Josh on call” weekend days
- ZERO travel (!!!)
I don’t think I’ve had a month with zero travel in a long time. I am 100% a-okay with that. So is our YNAB vacation fund.
JUNE SPECIAL EVENTS:
- Dance show (and extra rehearsals) – this week/weekend!
- 8th Grade Graduation (this week, during the week)
- Bdays: Josh’s dad, my dad, and G, our nanny (all within a 5 day stretch!)
- Father’s Day
- Ariana Grande (I do not yet have tickets but I am planning on getting them at the 11th hour)
Honestly it’s a pretty clinically heavy month. My two biggest priorities are to work on getting an appt to discuss strategies for my PMDD (which continues to rage — I am just Doing It Anyway with respect to all things even goal-setting, but my head is in a very blah place) and to try doing some strength workouts at an actual gym (thinking an LA fitness that isn’t far).
I think this looks like more than it is (with items like “find some summer TV” and “seek out good ice cream” making the cut).
A few of these:
- TRACK TIME. You all know I am very off and on with this but maybe it’s the effect of Big Time and maybe it was the fact that Kae uses 15 minute increments to track that somehow made it feel more doable. I really want some more accurate and complete time data to understand things about work and #momlife and all the things so . . . I have to collect said data. In the past I’ve used Toggl (app) but this time I’m just using Apple Notes on my phone that I then transfer into a Google Sheet, and it’s working well. (I may or may not feed these sheets to Chat or Claude for analysis; have not yet decided)
- SUMMER FAMILY READING. Pretty much everyone in our house likes reading now (maybe one exception, but this person is still willing to read and I think they will enjoy reading when the right books are selected). I want to go to B&N in addition to packing library holds lists (esp for me + G since she will fly through hers) and get books people are psyched to read. I don’t know that we’d designate a certain time, but my gut feeling is that many kids will actively CHOOSE reading if screens are not an option during certain hours (remember, this is our bad-weather hunkering down season). Will do a post later asking for kid book recs! C is currently into the Dungeon Crawler Carl series but they all need additional ideas.
- “DUKE THING” = med school class reunion. I’ve never gone to any of these but this one is our 20th AND Josh’s dad’s 50th (??) I think so I think we all going together, and then we got asked to email the class and try to drum up other people. So, that’s happening. Honestly though I feel like there is less ‘metaplanning’ for than usual. We have a ton already happening for the rest of 2026 and I am not ready to think too deeply about 2027 (except to ruminate in a fun way more about a summer Italy/Switzerland trip).
Off to work on that whole Inbox Zero thing . . .
18 Comments
How is A feeling about graduation? Will she change schools for high school? We’re also planning a big reading summer. T’s new school has after lunch reading everyday which helps a lot.
Our schools go until the end of June so it’s a really busy month here. I’ve got 5 days on campus, an overnight to London, a workshop to run + all the end of school year stuff. And Elisabeth + co are coming to Scotland soon, we’re very excited to host. My husband, son and MIL go away for 3 nights at the end of the month, so I’ll have a nice solo break before the camp/travel juggle starts. Rather than a month list – knowing it was so fragmented – I made a June – August list. Although I’ve got a secondment application pending, so that might upend all the plans.
Her school is K-12 (she started in 7th) so just another building on the same campus, so that’s nice!! Not a huge transition, but a transition nonetheless. I can’t believe you get to hang with Elisabeth – how much fun is that!?!?!?
15 clinical days is a lot. My condolences.
July has very few so I will just think about that . . .
(I watched the Euphoria finale!!! I COULD NOT watch parts of ep 7 omg. But i thought they did a good job with the ending.)
June is a mixed month for us since the kids are still in school until 6/10. We have Will’s PK graduation on Friday which should be pretty cute. I’m taking the kids to my parents for a long weekend after they finish school since we have a 2-day childcare gap. Then we’ll end the month with a trip to Chicago for our depositions and the boys will be at my parents that week. I’m hoping to do a few fun things while we are in Chicago so the trip isn’t a total drag. And then we’ll come back and have a few kid-free days which will admittedly be nice, as bad that may sound!
I had a great experience giving my time tracking data to Claude! I also gave it my ideal week and it helped me identify some gaps between my ideal and actual and we came up with a few concrete goals for May that worked really well for me. Highly recommend!
I don’t even necessarily want AI ideas – I just want them to format it prettily, give me totals, etc . . .
You can tell AI that’s what you want and it will do it. Saved me a lot of time making and formatting tables for a recent manuscript!
Not sure if you’ve already decided what to review, but Faded Chronical is super unique and would be fun to hear your take on. I don’t think you’ve covered them before. 2027 planners are currently on sale and ship end Jul/early Aug
oh this is a great idea.
I know you said you would be back later to ask for kid book recs, but sharing now! Probably mostly relevant to G! 1) A subscription to This Week Jr is a huge hit for my 8 and 10 year old daughters. My 10 year old reads it cover to cover. AND this week’s edition was a special with a huge summer reading session that she dove deep into last night – she even got in bed early to read it, lol. 2) The Land of Stories series is a big hit with my 8 year old. I had never heard of it before! The books are lengthy so it takes a little longer for her to read which is nice. Her favorite when she was younger were the Dragon Master books so maybe worth trying with any kid who also liked those books. Besides that, they both happily read the Ramona books and the Super Fudge books over and over.
Okay, for seeking good ice cream… highly recommend the ninja creami. We have one and our family loves it. You mix up milk and cream and what ever flavors you would like. We use vanilla and then add things later like cookies, nuts, berries, etc. You put the cups in the freezer and next day, you put them in the machine as needed. Can also use cottage cheese, protein powder, what ever you dream up.
Sarah, I read this in the NYT and thought of you and your musical talents. Keep practicing – you never know when you might be called upon at the Ariana Grande concert! 🙂
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/world/australia/la-la-land-sydney-concert-audience-member.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nVA.hDKD.WC1aqvJWeGVG&smid=url-share
Wasn’t that an incredible memory-making moment
that is wild, and I LOVE the music of La La Land! I would LOVE to go to that performance (as a spectator, haha)
Wow- I really need to do some June planning. Just this morning I was like “Father’s Day is coming up???” YES IT’S JUNE.
I’m glad you have no travel this month- it sounds like it’s going to be a busy enough month with the call week. You need some chill days. Hope you start to feel better soon.
Your plans for reading made me think – have you read Dopamine Kids? Essentially it recommends planning to help get kids away from screens and highly processed food. Michaeleen could be an interesting guest for BOBW or BLP? As an aside, would be super interesting to have a podcast on spending time with kids across the ages. I have 4 kids, ages 8 months, 3 yo, 6 yo, 8 yo and work a busy physician job. I’m debating cutting back to part time and working for longer (disproportionate paycut: 1/3 the pay for 2/3 the work as a self-employed doc) or continuing full time for another 3-6 years to coast FIRE and just doing locums here and there to maintain my skills in case my husband can’t work for xyz reason, that way I can have holidays and summers off with my kids, but maybe it’ll be too late then for my older kids to want to hang out? I am with my kids a lot on paper, my issue is mostly work stress seeping into time “off” (1 in 4 call) and feeling like my time off needs to be tightly packed to get everything done (kids’ activities, workouts, hobbies; I do a lot of fun stuff but I feel a lot of time pressure; I outsource as much housework as possible to our nanny and our house cleaner). I’m curious to hear your thoughts- what’s the best way to spend time with a preteen or teen vs a 6 yo vs a toddler? Not just activities but also the when component!
I think ‘spending time’ just happens naturally as you’re living life! But I know 1/4 call can be REALLY REALLY HARD. I would think of it more about what YOU want your life to look like. I also would caution that older kids can be expensive (depending on what you are doing for school, activities, etc) and I could honestly have imagined myself saying 10 years ago “oh yeah I’ll COASTfire” and then instead we opted for a different lifestyle (and it has been a conscious choice and one that we are okay with).
if you feel like you want more time with the kids at current ages and it’s worth the $ sacrifice (bc with less $ there will be possibly tradeoffs on what you can outsource etc). Is there possibly an option #3 between those 2 extremes – look for another employed job that’s less punishing? (Just throwing that out there!)