Monday, March 08, 2004

Update!

I missed a few days along in there, then when I went to post about them I got sidetracked on my paean to the hope of summer. So, this weekend just past I spent a whole wonderful day at a nearby lake. Rode my bike several lesiurely miles, ate horrible hot dogs hand-charred over a fire I started (my favorite--arson, that is), the constant drone and thump of a Boy Scout Jamboree going on across the lake...by dark there was a haze of campfire smoke literally covering the park from the ground to the top of the trees...all I could think about was the movie One Crazy Summer, and I knew I absolutely mustn't do anything requiring first aid...
So, I had a great time, got to watch a white and a blue egret fishing, drank a lot of beer outdoors in the sun on a beautiful day, and basically wish you could have been there, especially if you're under a few feet of snow.

Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of...early pre-spring

So, I'm so impatient for summer that I have been wearing nothing but sandals, shorts and sarong tops for two weeks, and this is Texas, but it's still early March and I'm freezing most of the time. I'm just soooooooooo tired of wearing winter clothes, and yes, I know how spoiled I am, and I know a lot of the nation is still under feet of snow and the sun is out for the last three days and I'm sitting here in beach clothes "freezing to death" in 59 degree weather in the sun. I know that.
Two things: there's a reason I live in Texas, and the privelige of wearing a sweater in May is not it. Also, I currently live in mid-coastal Texas, near Houston, where the mean annual daily humidity is something like 798% or near. Lemme 'splain that fur y'all. Y'all know "dry heat" is good and "wet heat" is bad, so you should be able to intuit that "dry cold" is intolerable and "wet cold" is the lowest circle of hell. Oh, yeah, and it rains almost every day in the winter. We get these nice, sunny, cool days around here and everybody goes around in sweaters and sandals, reminding each other, "This is nice. This is about perfect. I wish it could stay like this. You know (everyone joins in in a sing-song chorus) August is coming, in August we're gonna be wishing for days like this!" Every time I hear it I grit my teeth and renew my vow to become a pirate and terrorise the equatorial seas. I hate cold, and I can't wait for August. I pray every year for a repeat of the Austin summer when it was over 104 degrees every single day for over 35 days. I am so completely stealing a boat and turning to a life of piracy.