Am I the only one to wonder how it can be August?
In between the grieving and many trips to my sister’s house and writing near cornfields and closer to home, I look up to find it’s August.
All the signs are here. Back-to-school sales gearing up. My Japanese Maple sporting sun-burnt finger tips. Grassy weeds having a field day in my garden and me, Jimmy-crack-corn not caring whether they go to seed.
Summer use to last longer. Summertime once kept the same schedule as the local municipal pool: Opened Memorial Day. Closed Labor Day. In between hot punctuation points breathed three months of slower living; ninety-something summer nights to stay up late knowing one could sleep to noon the next day if they wished.
Somehow that’s all changed. Now summer break last two months. My grands are getting shortchanged and haven’t a clue. Teachers too — though I imagine summer days of spent yester-youth are recalled by some.
Fresh squeezed lemonade once kept August days bearable until summer itself was all squeezed out. Now we squeeze out summer with air conditioners that allow us to bear down on business-as-usual in August. My daughter reports back to school this week to prepare her room for a new crop of not-ready-for-prime-time kindergarteners.
But it’s me not ready for prime-time — me pressing on the brakes to slow down summer. Me saying, “Not so fast Mr. August — let me lap up a dish of summer once more before we crack open the books of everyday business.”
Today Kara and I are going to squeeze one more day out of summer break. We’re going to lunch, then go splurge on a pair of summer sale sandals. And like all the best of lost summertime days, one good explore will surely lead to another. And we’ll get good and hot and inevitably end up with something cool to drink — maybe lemonade from Chick-Fil-A — before coming to our senses and seeking shelter in our separate air-conditioned corners of Oklahoma City.
an everyday life 
Hope you have a great time.
I too find I am stunned at the arrival of August, and because summer is my busiest time for teaching, I usually reach September and realise I have missed enjoying summer because I have been so hard at work.
The new intake of students seem good so maybe there’s an upside to this.
Viv,
We did have a great time… in and out of the summer heat. And with sale sandals tucked under our wings, we rewarded ourselves with limeades, another good summertime drink. 🙂
Janell
Memorial Day to Labor Day. That’s it. Summer. And you don’t wear white except in-between those two holidays.
Down here, I do think summertime living gets displaced from summer itself. I don’t have to tell you. By August the heat’s cranked up, and everyone is on edge, waiting to see if we’ll make it through hurricane season. The gardens are gone, the fish aren’t biting and everyone’s cranky because it’s time to start buying school supplies again.
I want some of those stay-up-because-I-don’t-have-to-get-up nights and mornings, and afternoons with books or cloud watching or whatever. But not now – not until the real season of relaxation rolls around. We call it October. 😉
Linda,
Even though I’m smiling, I feel your humid pain. There is so much about the Gulf Coast I miss, but high summer is not one. I remember my first summer in Lake Jackson. By the first weeks of November, I finally broke down and asked my husband when the break in heat would come. He just laughed — said, maybe a few weeks in winter we’d see some cool weather. I shook my head in disbelief — what had I gotten myself in to, I thought. Hurricanes were the least of my worries then since it took all I had to survive the wet heat.
If the last two months are anything to go by, October will be here before we know it.
Janell