Bitching About Summer

I simply cannot think of a better title for this post. It is July - in Kansas - and it is so hot and humid that doing anything outdoors is cruel and unusual punishment. The air conditioner in my truck stopped functioning. I have to drive everywhere with the windows down. I do not arrive anywhere looking good nor do I arrive in a good mood. In fact, I look eccentric, crazy. I suspect I look like a fat homeless woman off her medication. My hair sifts full of gravel dust, so you know, wherever I go I look absolutely fabulous.

Then there is the chiggers. Those evil bastards get through the best defense. It only takes two or three to make you scratch yourself in public. You can imagine how it looks to be old, hot, sweaty, wild haired and scratching yourself. I simply cannot imagine why no one has asked me for a date.

There is some good news. The barn is full of newly baled hay for Ms. Ginger the Wonder Horse to eat this winter when it is blowing ice and snow out of Nebraska - when it is 15 degrees and I am happy again.

The Flint Hills are verdant and fragrant beneath the blazing sun ripening the summer's bounty of tall grasses, wild flowers, fattening calves, and crops. I measure the passing summer days in the rising corn stalks in the neighbor's fields. Lightning bugs drift magically through the hot black nights. I would love to take midnight walks but the fear of rattlesnakes keeps me in. I save night wandering for the winter.

Thunder in the long night is comforting as a heart beat from the west. Lightning spectacularly adorns the sky in blasting ephemeral patterns and blesses these summer months with living beauty.

Whenever my new house is built - if ever - I will spend the summer nights sleeping in a screened porch on all but the most unbearably hot and humid nights. I expect that will improve my disposition considerably but it will not stop me from bitching. It is the one area I qualify as an expert.