The heat of the season
I sit here, mildly intoxicated off jokes and happy exchanges with friends and neighbors, sewn together by the frozen margaritas necessary to get through an 88 degree Monday in mid April, thankful for my little patch of grass, azaleas and backyard bliss in the middle of this crazy, anxious metro DC area we’ve decided to call home.
Today marks the beginning of my least favorite season- mosquito season. It also marks the beginning of the “it’s official, I hate the humid, hot summers [and springs] and I refuse to live here the rest of my life” bitch-fest that I call my belief system. Kept awake by a choppy six hours of sleep in solely my underwear beneath the ever spinning swirl of the ceiling fan, atop the thin white sheet and soft, over washed quilt on the bed, I woke to Monday morning’s songbirds with little more than angst, complaints and sweat from a night in the heat. At least the bed was still made from the day before.
Yet, I have much to be thankful for on this horrible, humid, I can’t believe it’s only April and it’s too God-awful hot day. I am thankful for our home, despite it’s inability to cool a second story, it is a good home filled with good things and good cats and I love it. I am thankful for my husband, who knows how to turn any day into a positive day, even when his Monday made my Monday look like a cake walk (and trust me, today was not a cake walk). I am thankful for neighbors who provide more than a cup of flour when I run out mid- cookie recipe. Our neighbors are rich with smiles and limitless in company. I am thankful for my best friends, whom I see rarely, but I can pick up with as if no time has passed and who can carry a text message conversation as if it we were side by side.
While I dread the still, thick months to come, I can’t forget that even today, weeks without any sign of rain, there was a breeze rushing through the windows, violently pushing the curtains horizontal, over the furniture and through the house. Misha and Baci sit in the guest bedroom windows, crying out to us in the back yard as we play ladderball. It’s getting dark and the heat is beginning to break, just barely. Conversation has turned into that impossible to follow, sporadic, worthless talk that skips from one discussion to the next, filled with more excitement than ever thought possible. I might hate the the heat, but I’ve learned how to handle it, and I’ve taken from it what truly burns in its’ presence- friendship.
*Filed under Social Life*