August 4, 2015

August 4^th? How is it already August? This summer has gone by faster than that high-speed internet I hear tell about. Is it because I’m getting older? I understand that the older one gets the quicker time passes. Yikes! My young friends with school age children are already purchasing school supplies, dropping freshmen off at college, or having their boys outfitted for high school football uniforms.

Summer is nearly over. In my case that might be a good thing. This has been a summer of excess; too much of a good thing. Excessive travel, food, drink, and fun. In keeping with the adage, “All good things must end,” I have put a halt to my excesses. In keeping with my life’s pattern of “there is no such thing as balance,” I have gone from one extreme to the other. I’ve gone from sipping tequila all day under a beach umbrella to abstaining completely from alcohol, from partaking of every morsel of food offered to eating a strict diet with no sugar, grains or dairy, from lazy mornings over cups of coffee laden with cream to rising at 6:00 a.m. to write, from late nights to early evenings, from gadding about to staying home.

I have seen the results of my summer excesses (and the number on the scale) and put a halt to it. But, I have no regrets or apologies. Summer is supposed to be fun. I have merely had the adult version of my childhood summers.

Remember staying outside until way after the street lights came on to illuminate the neighborhood at 100-yard intervals? Chasing fireflies and maybe even catching some in a rinsed out jelly jar? Your mother insisting you wash your filthy feet before climbing into bed because you’d gone barefoot all day on the hot streets and sidewalks and neighbors’ lawns? Sleepovers and slumber parties? Wrapping houses with rolls of toilet paper pilfered from home? Cookouts and eating big slices of watermelon with the juice dripping off of your elbows? Chasing down the ice cream truck to spend a few quarters you got as your allowance? Spending all day at the neighborhood swimming pool and coming home sunburned and smelling of chlorine? Summer vacations to visit grandparents, or to Six Flags, or to the beach with all of your cousins? And speaking of the beach – that feeling you’d get lying in bed after spending all day on a rented rubber raft, that feeling of still bobbing in the ocean? Doughnuts for breakfast, and not just on Saturdays? Sleeping as late as you wanted, or as late as your mother would let you?

Yes, I have enjoyed the excesses of summer just as I did as a child. I have thirty days to recover, as the excesses of autumn will begin soon. And that my friends is another story!