a double-kick drum by the river in the summer

(In the manner of Cindy, big bonus points for anyone who's been paying attention to trendy alterna-pop well enough to get that song reference...)

Remember how I said a little while ago that it's hot here? Well, it's still hot here. Shocker, right, since it's July and all. But even though the Turkey Hill mint cookies and cream was on sale for $1.99 at the new Giant -- an amazaing, beautiful monstrosity of a suburban grocery store that magically materialized about a mile from my house, thank you to all the gods in heaven! -- I don't like the weather any better.

I feel the way about summer that I think other people feel about winter, like reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder or whatever. It's 95 degrees with 80 percent humidity? I don't want to go outside. I want to stay in the airconditioning, hang out with my fan and sulk. But it's socially acceptable to feel that way when it's cold out; in the summer, people are like, "it's so beautiful out! let's go have a picnic! let's go walk the whole way across town! let's go hiking!" So there's this sort of lingering guilt about hating summer. I am here to say: no more. It's gross out. I have to get on the bus in an hour and I'm not excited.

I just read something in some random blog about fall, and I thought, "fall? fall doesn't even exist." I can't even imagine the weather being different and leaving hellish evil summer, even though I've obviously seen 26 summers turn to fall in my life. It always feels like this huge relief when it's time to dig out the sweaters, because I didn't really believe that time would ever come again.

It made me see the larger pattern, too: I take things too permanently. If my hip hurts from hyperextending it in yoga a few days ago, I think it's never going to get better. If the link to my favorite ambient music radio station isn't working, I worry it's broken forever. If someone I'm expecting to hear from hasn't written, I assume s/he never will. If someone is annoyed at me, I think we'll never get along again. I waste all this energy trying to adjust my reality to these really temporary situations that won't be around in a few months, or a few days or hours. My hip stopped hurting yesterday. The radio station played an hour later. The non-writer wrote back. The annoyed person, who may or may not have actually been annoyed in the first place, returned to acting normal in half an hour. And summer will end, right? Just not before I have to get on the bus. Damn.