Yes, it's that time of year again ... flowers blooming, trees ablaze with bright green leaves offering shade from the heat of the sun, children out of school for the summer and just aching to get to the beach or the lake to swim and play in the warm sun. Glorious summer has arrived and stretches out before us like a welcome carpet unrolling forever in front of our eyes.
Maybe for some! But here in southern climes, it's a time to start thinking about hurricanes, stocking up on water and non-perishable foods (whatever that means ... my food is always non-perishable), and closing up the house and throwing on the A/C lever.
And that means it's time for me to watch out!!! All through the winter I just walk in and out of the house. The sliders are open and I can actually make a circle from the living room onto the patio and back in the bedroom. It's fantastic. But now, come June, all the doors are closed up and it's pretty darned hot out there on the patio. And if I don't look out where I'm going I smash crash right into the closed sliding door. I know because I've done it! And it hurts!
It's hot on our walks some days. Poppy doesn't seem to have the same spring in his step. And there's something really ugly in the grass that sticks to me. You should see all the fuss when I get back from my walk and come bounding in for my treat hearing Meme say "what a mess you are" and she has to pick me up, put me on the counter and start combing out all these bristly things that get stuck in my soft white fur. But that doesn't stop me from jumping on the grass and burrowing my nose into all sorts of good smells.
The big fear of swine flu seems to have died down now even though people are still getting it, but the media got tired of that story and moved back to politics and the economy. They just can't seem to stop talking about that. Doesn't matter what channel you put on, it's everywhere. And I'm getting tired of it. I've taken to just jumping off the bed in the morning because Meme and Poppy get their coffee and put on the TV with all these heads blabbering about who knows what and who really cares? Everyone already has their opinion on everything anyway so they can talk all they want and nobody really changes their minds so what's the point really? Meme keeps pausing the TV so she can rant on about this or that and Poppy says why does she let herself get so aggravated and so it goes on and on. I just go nap on my bed away from all the clamour.
Finally this morning Meme just said she's had it. She turned off the TV. Can you imagine? Silence in the house ... peaceful gentile silence that wanders through the rooms and allows the soft sounds of birds singing outside to filter into our house. I can even hear the breeze blowing the palms outside. I can warn everyone when the UPS truck rattles down the road. There's a very different sound to the UPS truck ... Meme always knows when it's near and sometimes runs down the front walk to flag him and give him a package to return to some store she bought something from. I never understand why someone would go through all the trouble of ordering something just to send it back again. Just busy work from my point of view.
Have you noticed how I can babble on about absolutely nothing? I can just go on and on, words tumbling out, with no direction and no purpose. That's sort of how I see all this TV stuff ... just a bunch of nothing going nowhere, round and round in circles always coming back to the same old stuff. It's exhausting and wears on my nerves.
Time to enjoy the summer. Time to get outside and head for some playtime, get away from the TV and the babble and the pundits who just love hearing themselves talk. Time to get back to family and ball games, making sand castles on the beach, and ball runs. Ever make a ball run? They're great. Pile up a whole lot of sand, make tunnels, put the ball on the top and let it run down the mountain and though the tunnels.
It's summer, it's time to play. If it's a nice sunny day, take your dog on a long walk. Leave the iPod at home and just listen to the sounds of summer. Walk on a beach and listen to the laughter of children. Hear the seagulls battling it out for any food they can find. Feel the comfort of watching the waves break against the shore. It's summertime. I'm talking and Meme's writing all this down and it's still nice and quiet in here, just a pure golden silence except for the clicking of the keys, the sound of a hammer fixing something across the lake, a bird singing a really happy song and the palm fronds moving ever so quietly just outside our window.
Summer ... time to ease up and just let it wash over you making you just so happy to be alive.
'Til next time ...
Molly
