Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Hello, Summer!

I've always been a lover of summer. Long days, fireflies, sun tans, bare feet, bare shoulders, skin touched by warm breezes, cool lakes for swimming. Yes, insects like mosquitoes, ticks and deer flies are a serious nuisance (especially the ticks), but the butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and hundreds of other interesting insects available for observation make up for it.  And let's talk about the heat. I know many people hate it and I can sympathize. I feel that way about being cold, which I am for most of the winter. Today it's 98 and humid. Sweat trickles down my skin under my dress as I sit here typing, barely moving. And I like it, dammit. For someone who spends most of the fall and winter covered in goosebumps even while cocooned under triple and quadruple layers, this heat is a relief. I know that sounds crazy.

No, I don't want the heat to linger forever and I wouldn't love it if I worked an 8-10 hour day in the fields and greenhouses or on a road crew somewhere. But for the first day of summer I wouldn't want it any other way.  I pulled my beat-the-heat Driving Dress (a tropical looking sundress I bought at Reny's in Ellsworth, ME back in the summer of 1998 when my car had no AC and my boyfriend lived a four hour commute away in Cambridge, MA) out of the closet today and slipped it on, always shocked that it continues to fit after all these years. That long-ago boyfriend of mine, he lives with me now, and is bringing home dinner and cold drinks tonight. I can't think of a better way to celebrate the summer solstice.  




















self-timed jumping photos crack me up