Summer will have its flies

The summer is passing by and I am simply watching it go by. Come to think of it, I like nothing about the summer. Except that it gets Chip out of my hair and on to his bike. Or except the veggies in the backyard produce a bounty and make shopping for vegetables eye-rolling-oh-so Winter ‘08. Or except that the sun lingers and doesn’t go to bed until, much, much later. Or that I can find a cushy parking spot right by the elevator even if I reach work late.

So, what am I exactly complaining about?

That we never take a vacation. When the sun comes to town, the deals go away as they say, ok, really it is as we say, so we go into a self-imposed-expedia-exile. While the world – and owing to the small fact that this old bag-bones has lived in the U.S. for over a decade now, the world solely consists of 50 states and Canada, and those tropical countries where monsoon comes in summer, do not exist beyond the pages of “My First Atlas” – so while the world suns on the lush, palm-fringed, expensive beaches of Barbados and Cabo San Lucas, sipping drinks with little hats on them, I meant the drinks, not people; but maybe people wear hats while drinking drinks with hats too. Which they should especially if they are fair skinned. So while the world sunburns tans we slog away in our temperature-controlled, gray cubes, counting pennies, because, who needs a tan? It simply does not go together with “Fair and Lovely” anyway.

So while “others” clutch surfboards, I clutch the grimy gray mouse, clicking at pictures wishing I was a permanent fixture in this landscape.

*from Denali National Park and Kenai Fjords National Park , Alaska. Visited May 2004, just before Summer started. Sigh.