10:46 p.m. - 27 May 2003
What summer means
Having spent my entire life in the deep South, the first thing that comes to mind whenever anyone mentions the word "summer" to me is heat. Oppressive, sticky, make you want to lie gasping directly underneath the air conditioner heat. Intellectually, I know there's a lot more to summer than just how hot it gets, but it seems that my very molecules rebel against the temperature.
Summer also means birthdays since my mother, my sister, and I all have birthdays within a six-week span. Father's Day and my parents' anniversary falls in there, too, so it tends to be a frenzy of "Has she told you what she wants?" "Do you have any ideas what I can get him?" conversations in the days leading up to all of us getting together.
I've been out of college for six years now, but I still have difficulty adjusting to the fact that I don't get three months of freedom anymore. I spent most of the summers growing up at the library, since my sisters and I were always involved in whatever the summer reading series was and the library was one of the two places Mom would let me go by myself on my bike (the other was the convenience store, but that was mostly because she could send me with money to buy her cigarettes). I tend to want to do nothing more in the morning than pick out a stack of books and hide in bed all day. Alas, the mortgage won't allow that any more.
Summer also usually means crappy reruns on TV, but luckily, this summer it means The Amazing Race on CBS. I just hope I don't hate them all on sight. I need a couple of weeks to build up to that.
This has been an entry for the Summer Writing List.
