No Fun In The Summertime

There are some months when I spend the entire month wishing for the next month to arrive. Usually it’s because I’m low on funds for one reason or another, and by the time the end of the first week in the month arrives, I’m ready for the end of the month so I can get another paycheck. June has been one of those months.

I’m not entirely sure how June got away from me, but apparently my fervent wishes for it to speed by quickly were answered. The only problem is that according to other humans I know, June is one of those elusive “summer months,” and during “summer months” I should be doing things like swimming and sitting out in the sun at baseball and softball games and drinking margaritas on patios and, in general, doing fun things outside.

I did go to a baseball game, but I’ve done none of those other things. Jamie isn’t playing summer softball yet. Between busy, often-traveling friends and low funds, margaritas on patios have been incredibly difficult to coordinate. The swimming thing wasn’t for lack of trying, but still. I’ve wasted an entire month of summer working 10 hour days and lying in a lump on the sofa when I’m at home. I’ve read some really good books, so at least there’s that, but mostly, I’ve watched too much TV and I’ve wasted too much time.

I wish I had a vacation planned. I wish I were going to the beach. I wish I were traveling this summer for reasons other than work. I wish I had a bigger social network. I wish I had more money. I wish I had more time.

Most of my favorite memories in the world are of our Colorado summers. We spent so much time outside that our hair bleached to white-blonde. We had season passes to the city pool and it seems like we went there every day. I remember going there even when the weather was too cool to swim, teeth chattering in the deep end but refusing to get out even though it was 65 degrees and threatening rain. I spent a lot of time riding horses with my best friend, out near her farm by those big oil drilling things that still remind me of grasshoppers. We went camping in the mountains and caught rainbow trout in Bellaire Lake. We went waterskiing at Carter Lake and to the beach at Boyd Lake. We went up the Big Thompson Canyon to Estes Park, and I remember stopping at the Dam Store for hard candy and I remember seeing the bighorn sheep wild on the sides of the mountains and I remember that Ginny got carsick nearly every time we made the trip and I remember being scared to death of the distance from the road to the river, knowing that they’d raised everything up high after the flood. I remember going to the Corn Roast and to the Larimer County Fair and to Cheyenne Frontier Days.

We rode bikes and we went to the park and we climbed trees and played on construction sites and in sandboxes and in our friends’ backyards. I had some friends on my street who had never been inside my house, because we always, always played outside. We were allowed to play outside until the streetlights came on, and sometimes if we begged just right, we could still play two-square on the street in front of our house after dark. We used that crack in the road as our middle line. I remember seeing my mom upstairs in the kitchen through the open screen door.

I would never dream of wasting an entire day, much less an entire month, working or lounging around inside the house. It seems like there was just so much to do then, and like it was just so much easier to go and do it.