The Most Wonderful Tiiiiiime of the Year

This weekend is my annual Girls Group Trip to the Lakes (Lake Tippecanoe--isn't that a great name for a lake?) My group of friends, which has been meeting each Wednesday evening for several years, is given one or two weekends each summer by the parents of one of us to kick back and have some fun

OR, run out of gas and get stuck in lake weeds.

OR, sing Karaoke.

OR, get sunburned.

OR make fun of each others' snoring.

We are "mature" females but not always "grown up" females, if you get my ... drift. I cannot wait.

Other than a yearly vacation with your family, do you have any summer traditions?

Station Wagon Memories

My dash read 102* today. The intense heat reminds me of childhood summers spent in the back section of a turquoise stationwagon without air conditioning. Blistering vinyl, trying to catch a hot breeze through the rolled down windows. Only bright spot was the radio and catching my brother's hand crossing the imaginary mid-line so that i could slap it or his arm or leg. Those were the days. It looked like this car. Just looking at this pic makes me think of Three Dog Night and Ross Grocery on Hoyt Ave and sweating.

Check out the song of the summer I remember the most:

Watermelon

Watermelon. It's a feel-good food, evoking memories of long summer days, juice spilling from your chin onto your shirt, weekends at the lake, picnics, the Fourth of July and seed-spitting contests.

I was slicing a watermelon today, and another kind of memory came to mind.

A couple of years ago, when my friend Diane was gravely ill with cancer and staying in the hospital, she was craving watermelon. At this point, she was only receiving nourishment intravenously or by sipping a little bit of liquid. Her daughter, the same age as my Katie, and her daughter's father worked hard to find watermelon in early spring so that they could freeze the juice and make watermelon popsicles for her. It was quite a feat, and I know her daughter felt so good to be able to do that for her mother.

I remember being so sad when the realization hit me: "She has actually eaten her last meal? She will never chew any food again? No, this is it. She will never enjoy watermelon or any other food again." I was overcome with grief that she was slipping away, having one worldly delight after another taken from her. And now it was food, one of our most basic needs and pleasures. We take food for granted, we grouse about it, critique it, yammer about it, praise it, obsess about it. We focus our social events around food. Some of our dearest family memories revolve around the sharing of food and then the passing of the recipes to our children.

To never taste food again--It seemed such a cruel thing to live through before passing. It was hard to watch her body slowly trickle away when she always generated so much so much life and energy. She was one of the most enthusiastic people I've ever known.

So when I sink my teeth into a triangle of watermelon now, I think of Diane, and for a moment, I re-live the grief of the watermelon moment. But then I remember that the best way I can move on and still cherish her is to live in the moment the way she did, to really appreciate and enjoy things. Don't get me wrong; she made plans like everyone else. But she had a wonderful ability to be in the moment, to be "into" whomever she was conversing with, to be "into" whatever activity we were doing (such as Girls Group day at the lake) or to be "into" whatever we were enjoying, like rich holiday foods or refreshing watermelon.

Since that time, I have never taken a piece of juicy watermelon for granted again. The bigger lessons for me throughout the journey with Diane are too numerous to go into here, but the smaller ones are meaningful, too.

Like how to really appreciate a red, sweet bite of summer. Diane, I love and miss you!

Observations from the Back Yard Deck

Observation from the deck #1: Little bird chasing chipmunk. Chipmunk hops away a little, then bird hops to chipmunk. Scene repeats about 5 times. Very sad. Some relationships are doomed from the beginning.

Observation #2: Summer is officially 6.21, but the surest sign of its arrival here is the sound of the neighbor's 5 children fighting each other and crying over the trampoline/pool.

Observation #3: If you are trying to lose weight, you should probably not build yourself a salad in a bowl that is roughly the size of the flower container pots on your deck.

Observation #4: Elderly man living in the condos behind us rides his bike up the side street each night, stops at the same point, dismounts, gathers sticks, lays them by a tree, rides home. Same routine each summer. Affectionately known as "Stick Man" to us. Always wears pastel matching ensembles, usually featuring the ever popular "papaw blue."

Observation #5: When it is 85* and you are sitting on your deck drinking coffee, they might as well send you your AARP card now. You are old.

Summertime, and the Livin' Ain't Easy--Summer Colds, Hot Flashes & Canine Antics

One reason summertime ain't easy right now is that I have a summer cold, which is completely ridiculous and unacceptable. I think this might be why I couldn't sleep the other night.

BTW, you know how I wrote about Zoe watching me and quoted Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" shower lyrics? Well, within a couple of hours after that, I finished my shower, opened the shower door, and there she sat, staring up at me. It was a case of life imitating the art of my blog, I guess.

Back to the post: another reason it ain't easy is that the hot flashes are back. I had a few last year, and then "poof" they were gone, and now they're back. For those of you who haven't experienced it yet, I can tell you that is the weirdest sensation. I actually start feeling it in my legs first, and then it moves to my trunk and from there radiates enough heat that I could hold a marshmallow in my hand and organically, spontaneously toast it. But how ridiculous. Whoever heard of knees sweating before anything else on a body?

It's also not easy because my running is killing me. It's the heat. I just can't do it. So I try for early morning or late at night, and that's not working so well.

An odd thing happened the other day when I was running which has made running definitely less easy for me. I turned down a street that is not normally on my path, and all of a sudden, not one but two Great Danes started their WOOOFing at me, running until they reached the ends of their chains which jerked them back. Scared me to death. The owner just sat on her front porch, yakking away on her phone while I almost peed my pants.

But that's not the end of it. As soon as my Fight or Flight response settled down, I heard a dog approaching me quickly from the back. He was smaller, because nothing is bigger than a Great Dane, I guess, and he was NOT happy that I was on his turf. His owner was in her yard and watched me stop in my tracks and yell at him, "NO! Go HOME! NO!" while he just ran circles around me barking like a maniac, rabid thing.

So then I would walk a few steps, and he would go bonkers again. Then I'd stop, and he would run circles around me. All the while I'm yelling "No!" which has the same effect as if Jorge yelled "No!" as I reached my hand into a bowl of Peanut M&M's. This spectacle went on for years.

Finally, I turned around to the owner and in a fit of desperate incredulity yelled, "Are you going to come and get your dog??" Like, "Oh, come ON. What is wrong with you? Rescue me, Lady!"

And she replied, "I would if I could!"

???

So I fought this ankle biter all the way to the end of the block. I guess when I turned the corner I left his territory, and I'm sure he felt superior.

I cannot tell you how ANGRY I was at that moment. I wanted to say and do a sundry of mean things.

So I just started praying to calm down, and then I started hypothesizing about what "I would if I could" might mean.

"Perhaps she just had a round of chemo."
"Perhaps she has heart problems."
"Perhaps she is on house arrest."
"Perhaps the dog was initially chained up but he overpowered her, chained her up and ran like the wind."

I was just trying to think of anything to arouse forgiveness.

Also, this last week I have been learning a new software program at work. You can imagine how not fun this is.

Let me finish on one good note, though: My laundry room is almost complete! You will be shocked at what I ended up choosing. It is very "not me." Which can be a good thing.

Cleanin' up the Fish Flakes and First Day of School

Loose ends--who can stand 'em?

Blister yesterday: sorry for the photo. I realize some of you read your blogs early in the a.m., and my blister was a bit too much for you with the delicate early morning stomachs. But it was all I had to post. Seriously. Maybe it's time to consider hiatus when all you have to post is a giant bubbly blister. Anyway, I did a "surgical procedure" on it and ran yesterday afternoon. I'm like a legendary Olympian or something, staying focused, strong, and pushing through the pain. Of a toe blister.

Re-decorating the boss's office: I did not use real paint, although some of you were sweet to worry. I am not crazy. My boss is a man who notices when his paper clips have been moved on his desk, so throwing a Jolly Rancher wrapper on his floor might have pushed him over the edge, let alone painting a wall. By the way--that green? That's the real color of the walls. Our office is wild on color. The wall directly behind me is orange.

Hate Mail: Turns out it wasn't a joke but written as a response from a local person to my newspaper column. I spoke with him personally about it, and he still hates me, but I did try to apologize for being so hate-able, which apparently made me all the more hate-able. Shrug. It's out of my hands now. But you were lovely to surround me like a pack of elephants protecting one from a lion. Some of you elephants had fangs! I felt the love.

What else?

Oh yes, the Sweetness drove herself to school for the first time yesterday; that's why she's holding keys in these pics. She had a pretty good day and didn't starve before lunch like she thought she would, which was her main concern. The apple didn't fall far ....



Despite school starting, I'm dragging out summer as long as I can by enjoying this as often as possible:



And by using Hawaiian Tropic Sunscreen 4 as body lotion. I know it's weird. I know that. But I just want to smell the coconuts, to make the summer linger upon my skin where a tan does not.

How are you making summer last?

Ryan Started the Fire, But So Did I

Last night I told the world on Facebook that I was attempting to start a backyard campfire on my own, since Jorge's flights in Ft. Lauderdale and Atlanta were both delayed.

I've never been one to pretend to be Caroline Ingalls, but I needed a marshmallow. Or two or fifteen.

So I did the Scouty "kindling" tepee thing (Hey, I've been paying attention) with twigs and dry mulch and got a roaring fire going, and by roaring, I mean BONFIRE. I know it has nothing to do with the Tom Wolfe novel, but all I could say over and over in my head was, "BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES! BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES!"

I minded that behemoth like it was a sleeping bear because I knew Jorge would be so mad if he came home and I had burned down the neighborhood. He's so strict.

So I sat there and read chapters 1 and 2 of Jeremiah, and then a book on running after age 35. (Ha! Try "after 45.")

I also threw in my draft notes of my column which I've been writing. It felt kind of good to watch them burn.

Then I just sat there and stared into the fire.

And then THIS kept going through my head:



And that's when I knew it was time to put out the fire.

It took 5.5 buckets of water to put it out, and when I poured the first one on, millions of white ashes swooshed up into the air and came down like snow or dandruff or psoriasis, all over my head and shoulders and clothes. But the fire fought me, so I had to come back out 4.5 more times and create another Pompei with ashes.

So that's how I ended July, which I loved except when I fell down two nights ago.

The end.

Campfires

They have become a nightly ritual. What peace, to sit before glowing, crackling embers while nature does its thing all around you, as in teenagers continuing to set off fire crackers on July 6th, or the elderly man from the condominiums behind us getting off of his bicycle to pick up sticks off the road. (Likes his street pristine.) Yes, nature is all around us. Strange human nature.

Everyone knows that in most couples, men are the designated fire-builders. It's in their DNA. But last night I was feeling "woodsy" and powerful and decided to build my own instead of waiting for Jorge to be "the man." After all, do you think Sarah Palin waits for Todd to build the fires? Unh-uh.

So I marched out there with all the stuff I needed to get a fire going, and I succeeded in building a great big, roaring ... pillar of smoke, kinda like the smoke monster in LOST:



Then Jorge, who finally came outside, was all pretend-mad at me because he claimed the smoke would poison the bird seed in his new feeder and kill all the birds within a 3 mile radius. And he didn't like the way I rolled up the newspaper kindling into a cigar shape instead of a ball. And he didn't like that I used cherry wood instead of oak because everyone knows it smokes more than oak. And he didn't like blah, blah, blah.

I couldn't hear him after a while because I was toasting marshmallows to perfection. It's in my DNA.