grumble, grumble

I know summer is drawing to a close, and not because I have spent the week making course schedules or because Meijer has pushed aside charcoal for pencils or because the sunset comes earlier and earlier each night. I know this because today I got mad at August.

Me being pissed at months is nothing new--every year I tell February to fuck off--but there's always a moment in late August that I get snippy with summer. I pull on a pair of shorts and think about the novelty of jeans; I see yellow leaves on a cottonwood, which always turn early; I try to make dinner without dripping into the pan on the stove and think, Man, there are times of the year that I love standing in front of the oven. And today's that sort of day: don't want to do work, mad about the too-long lawn, seized with panic about the impending job hunt, nostalgic for a red living room, convinced personal and professional life has been a massively misdirected waste of nine years. You know, the usual!

What I want is to pull on a hooded sweatshirt and sit in my (reconstructed) living room and have a stiff-almost-chilly breeze blow in the window and eat root vegetables. Then I want to wake up to a fall morning and go for a long, long walk.

(leaves room, returns five minutes later)

Oh, August. I'm not really mad at you. I just want a night when it's not ninety degrees. And I'm a little mad at my hair, which I chopped off again and which is now standing up on end in this humidity. August--I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier, said all that mean stuff about too much corn and basil. Of course I don't mean any of it. We're not breaking up, August. We just need to spend a little time apart, say a day. Maybe tomorrow it could rain a real rain, one that lasts for most of the day and even turns the sky gray. Maybe we could dip down into the seventies for a little while.

Or, as Tupac says: Change, shit/I guess change is good for any of us. Yeah! Let's change it up a little bit, August. I'll start by eating ice cream for dinner. You can ... you can do whatever you want. So long as it involves beer and bringing to me.