Happy Fourth of July

In which I panic.

I was born for summer. I grew up in Florida swimming in the Gulf of Mexico year round. I was a happy camper counting the days until school ended and I could go back to the lake. I was a teacher, still counting the days until summer break. Now I am a writer and I work in my little hole and never see any other humans* or the sun, but I still love summer.

I love summer so much that I am always a little sad on the Fourth of July, because, people! June is over already! And I haven't had a good picnic or re-learned to play tennis or eaten a bomb pop! We barrel towards fall and I don't even have good barefoot callouses yet! We haven't played in the sprinkler or made homemade ice cream! The strawberries are gone, people, and I NEVER CANNED ANY JAM. We are stuck eating store bought jam until the raspberries come in and -- Holy cow, look! I see a yellow leaf on the oak tree outside! Soon the leaves will fall and the wind will blow and I will be cold cold COLD and fighting the kids to get into winter clothes and spending time I could be writing looking for a freaking missing pink Dora mitten. And my bike will sit rotting in storage. And my skin will fade to transparent. And I'll spend early mornings scraping and shoveling and swearing and wondering for the 500th time why two people who NEED sunshine like plants need, well, sunshine ever decided to move to Michigan instead of to somewhere like San Diego where I wouldn't ruin all summer panicking about not having summer.

Wait! What am I doing blogging? What are you doing reading this? We are all, all of us, yes that means you, too, Captain Destructo, I don't care if you're not done napping and are already sunburned, we are all going outside RIGHT NOW to play. Summer is almost over, Tinkerbell; put DOWN that book. You can read when fall comes. Go play. PLAY already, I said. Mama is going to sit here and drink this iced coffee and be hot and love it. Aaaaaah.

Happy fifth of July.


* Except the Bearclaw coffee guy.