summer days

Greetings, all.

We are in the midst of a very warm spell. Our heat index reached 116 today. JOY!!! So, some of what I've written is a bit of an exaggeration in the first paragraph. Alas. The idea is still the same.

LLM

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The hotter the better, I say. Heat, humidity, sun. Bring it on. I never realized I was such a summer junkie until I moved to Minnesota. Minnesota summers taunt and tease. They pretend. They flirt with heat and humidity. They do not, in any way, resemble the real thing. Instead, they are a brief respite between one winter and the next, a respite of warmer, mild days that do not make up for the negative temperatures, brutal winds, and frozen lakes.

In Minnesota I have to defend my appreciation of summer, my obsession with sweltering temperatures, sweat, and stuffy days. I long for them; I crave them. And everyone around me wonders if I should be in a padded cell.

Summer days are, however, more than heat and humidity. They are hours at the swimming pool—swimming laps, learning how to dive, avoiding squirt guns, and whining about adult swims. They are sleeping with the windows open before we had air conditioning, listening to the rain on the awnings, the soft breeze ruffling the Laura Ashley curtains. They are mom in the garden, digging up plants and moving them, watering flowers to encourage them to grow, me reading to her as she moved from place to place in the garden to work. They are evenings on the deck, grilling out, fetching beer for family, barking dogs, and fighting over the hammock. They are catching lightning bugs with the neighborhood kids and looking for locust shells with dad. They are reading, reading, reading.

Summer days are the purest form of happiness.

Good News/Bad News

Hello, readership.

I have news. You, the readers, are allowed to decide whether it is good, bad, indifferent or any combination thereof.

Lauren and I have agreed to start blogging again.

The past few months have been a nightmare of deadlines, job-searching, looking for apartments, and you know, finishing my dual Masters degrees. However, now I am embarking on a new career, moving to a new city, and LLM and I agreed that it's time to start writing together again.

I'm glad to be back.

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This week's theme: Summer.

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Summer 

You are not the oak tree outside my window,

sturdy and beautiful, stretching to the morning light.

Or the lightning of a midsummer storm, brilliant and terrifying.

For my part, I am not the fresh cut hay,

soft and fragrant, warmed by the afternoon sun.

Or the first rose of summer, beautiful and understated.

And we most certainly are not the loons on the lake,

mated with one another for the rest of our lives.

Instead, you are the one walking down

the country road winding next to the lake.

And I am the one who is walking down

the winding country road with you.

And we are the ones walking beneath the oaks,

seeing distant lightning, smelling roses,

and freshly cut hay, listening to the loons on the lake,

who, as it turns out, don't actually mate for life.