More about summer

Today I officially crossed the line.

White wine, not red wine.

Iced coffee, not hot brewed coffee.

Summer is A'Comin' In

Oh, lordy, it's hot today.

I've been driving around all day, getting stuff together for Young Girl's birthday party this weekend. Since it's been a year since last summer, I'd conveniently forgotten how friggin' hot parking lots can be. And no matter how brief your stay in a store, the car completely heats up while you're gone.

Saturday night was cool and breezy, and I sat outside at a lovely party and enjoyed the evening weather. Today it's 90 and muggy. There's nothing gradual about the coming of summer in Texas. And it's only going to get worse.

So I've dropped in to my favorite wine bar for $5 Monday. Here's to cool and dark. And pinot grigio.

Trip Prep, One

I began, today, the ritual Sorting of the Clothes.

First stop? Melange Mountain, the stratified heap of miscellany in my dressing area. I recovered a few missing items, uncovered two forgotten purchases, and discovered many things that Simply Will No Longer Do.

Next stop? The Oregon Pile, where I re-heap the clothes I may need for my trip, including long sleeved items and light jackets that make me sweat on sight, even in my air conditioned rooms.

Final Stop? Laundry Junction, where I de-dirt the delicates and soap the sturdy.

Tomorrow actual packing begins!

Finding the Umm in Summer

Summer is my least favorite time of year. I despise heat.

For five of the last seven years, I’ve escaped to my favorite home away from home, Ashland, Oregon. There I revel in cool mornings and evenings. I also get to hang with my friends in the Lithia Writers Collective.

What’s not to love?

Will I go this year? I don’t know yet, but I’m steeling myself for another Texas summer, just in case.

To psych myself up for that dreadful possibility and to make up for yesterday’s glum trinity, I’m determined to conjure some positive things about summer in my native state.

• Friday mornings around my friend V’s pool. She’s gracious enough to extend a standing invitation to the women of First Amendment Friday (i.e. our wine and conversation group), kids and all.

• Consumption of the year’s summer beverage with friends and family (in moderation, of course). Our standard Pinot Grigio  (from Target! In a box! Go get some! will likely, this summer be supplanted by a vodka concoction. The current contenders are sweet tea vodka, mixed with either water or lemonade; fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and plain vodka, with or without a salted rim; and blood orange Italian soda with vodka. My sister-in-law plans something that involves soaking pineapple chunks in vodka, too. Vote now for your favorite.

• Enjoying (in the morning, early afternoon, or at night) the patio furniture I finally talked The Man into purchasing at the end of last summer thanks to a ridiculous combination of discounts. If you sit without shade, you will not be enjoying anything.

That’s three….do you have any to add?

Summertime

Sure feels like summer here: the first mosquito bites of the season, the first grass burr underfoot, the car's AC breaking on the first 90 degree afternoon. 

Let The Sun Shine In....

Hair Lyrics

Five preteens, four girls and a boy, sit in the small bedroom, playing their favorite summer game. It’s 1969. While “spin-the-bottle” has been part of their repertoire for some time, let me remind you that it is summer. Texas summer. And it’s 1969.

What this means for those of you who are younger or more economically or geographically fortunate than our five friends is that the 3BR 1.5B brick has no central air conditioning. The boy in question is fortunate enough to have a window unit.

The game is “Freezeout.”

They’ve set the Kenmore at its lowest setting, blocked the crack under the door with a JC Penney bath towel, and are just beginning to feel the first goose bumps. Someone drops the needle on an album forbidden in at least one household, in spite of the squeaky-clean family band, because of a single song, the song they all love, the song that brings them to their chilly bare feet….

“Gimme a head with hair…”

Shining. Gleaming. Streaming. Flaxen. Waxen.

I’m pretty sure I was the only one who knew – at least at age ten – that the song was from a play famous for actual naked people (did you guess that I was the one without the Cowsills album?), on stage in a city far far away. Our parents worked desperately to convince us that hippies, Be-ins, yippies, protesters, and other manifestations of malcontent would turn us into “juvenile delinquents.”

We taped our peace sign posters up inside our closets and Bobby Sherman on our bedroom walls.

In one of those great ironies only the universe can create, I now assiduously work to ensure my daughter has the kind of social consciousness my parents did their best to prevent me from developing.

Toward that end, I downloaded the soundtrack from Hair and slipped it on her iPod Monday night.

Never trust anyone over 50.

Counting Down the Days

 That buzzing you hear in the air around you is the collective tension of parents everywhere. Only eleven days left in Small Child's summer vacation, and I'm counting every one. It might not be so bad if we weren't in the August misery.

August misery, you ask?

Day after day of 100+ heat. Every afternoon the sky (east or west, depending on the whims of the universe) looms with the promise of relief, and every night I close my eyes to ominous silence instead of thunder and rain.

It makes me so crazy that, tomorrow, I'm going to "light the oven" (as my late Aunt Belle used to say) and bake a peach cobbler.

Even crazier? The Man will grill the seven pounds of carne asada I just put in to marinate. 

Yes, friends, it's a certifiable "These People Are Crazy Summer Cookout."

Small Child's best friend and her extended family are here to visit her grandparents. The moms have been trading children back and forth and it's my turn to feed the crew.  So, I thought, why not be as miserable as possible?  That's what the heat does to you.

But there's the requisite bucket of pre-made margaritas congealing in the freezer (high fructose corn syrup be damned just this once) and three bottles of sparkling wine chilling so the grownups shouldn't notice the heat or mosquitoes too much. The Gang of Five (as I refer to the children) will be in and out, inspiring the classic Southern anthem, "Close the Door! You're Letting the Air Conditioning Out!" 

And about 11:30, when the kids are collapsed on a big bed somewhere in the house and the adults are sitting out on the patio, having accustomed ourselves to the humidity after all, I'll look around at these faces I've known for so many years and think, "You know, it's not that bad around here in the summer after all."

Welcome Home. Now Sweat.

Nothing shocks you back into reality like a high temperature of 102 degrees. It's 8:30 p.m., and my desktop widget shows a current outdoor temperature of 97 degrees. 

That's just not right. It's just not.

Paralytic Hiatus

Stick with me, pals.

I've been smacked upside the head with the moody blues. Glum, foggy-headed funk.  Hot, humid, lethargic word-cement.

Inspired by Christy of Juvenescence and Lithia Writers' Collective, I'm going to attack the block from a different direction and attempt to put together a room of my own, physically and emotionally. One with a door I can close.  Click here for some excellent examples.

I may post a meme or two in the next few days, just to keep my fingers busy.  If you need things to read, do check out my blog links, as I've added a couple. Her Other Evil Twin is a true mystery woman. While I've never met the author of RedMolly Picayune-Democrat face-to-face, I figure -  in the blogosphere - one degree of separation qualifies. I attended public school with Old Roman Symbol from second through twelfth grade, but haven't seen him since 1977 (same with  What I Saw Today....maybe a reunion would shake things up?).

I think this is probably Texas' version of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I once read an article about summer sufferers, including one woman who went to bed each night with two-liter Pepsi-bottles full of water she'd frozen to keep the night sweats at bay.  Not a bad plan at all.

Seasonal Sweat

I am still alive. Nope, I didn’t mean to take a month-long sabbatical from the blog. And I certainly didn’t mean to be as frazzled as I’ve found myself over the last few weeks. But what is is. And here I am.

When I was a little girl, I would sit each fall in my air conditioner-free Texas classroom and, like Miss Clavel in one of my beloved picture books, think to myself, “Something is not right.”

In my textbooks (we still called them “readers” back then), the little girls headed back to school in sweaters. “Sweaters????,” I thought to myself, “And look! They’re picking apples right off of the trees. What magical world could this be?” And I’d dream of that place, the Land of Autumn, while I waited for dreaded sweaty recess, thankful that at least my desk was in front of a fan so that when we came in after our 20 minutes on the blacktop and the buggy playground I’d have a chance to cool down a little.

It is once again fall in Texas, four weeks into the public school year. The golden light I left behind in Oregon in August has found me. Early in the morning and, if I’m lucky, late at night I can feel a freshening in the air. Sort of. But the heat. The heat.

The schools are air conditioned now. Teachers keep the kids inside if the temperature is above or below certain points (I have mixed feelings about this, but that’s another blog). And, truth be told, recess is the only time a lot of kids spend outside these days. So neither they nor their parents were truly ready for the sauna-pa-looza that was opening day of fall soccer season this past Saturday.

So, if you are fortunate to dwell in the Land of Autumn, pull your sweater a little closer in my honor. Pick an apple. Rake some leaves. Bake a pie. And I’ll have one more sno-cone for you.