It's not really summer per se that I hate, it's all of the baggage that summer connotes. It's not just the bathing suit issue but it's shorts and picnics and reruns and sun. Let me elaborate.
It started early.
Let's begin with the sun.
I grew up on Lake Michigan so you would think that I was a beach bunny. NOT! I had (and still do) the palest skin you can imagine. Just sticking my arm out the car window would result in third degree burns. I was so pale that my brother called me Casper (for the Friendly Ghost). Thanks, Bro. So while other people are swanning about in bathing suits and sleeveless dresses and shorts, I was wearing long sleeves and trousers. Add that to the fact that I am now a woman of a certain age, I don't want those upper arms flapping around anyway, so sleeveless tops are out. And I hate to say this, but the sun doesn't match how I feel when I wake up in the morning, either, which is crabby. I am not a morning person and seeing that old sun there every single morning just doesn't match my mood and makes me feel even crabbier. I am more of a rainy day kind of gal. But then if it rains too much, I bitch about that too.
Heat.
I don't like heat, and summer brings the heat. I don't like to be sweaty and now that I am of a certain age, my idea of a fun summer is sitting in front of a fan.
Power mowers and power washers.
Summer invites people to get out into their yards and cut the lawn, weed wack, power wash, and hell, why not build a deck while you are at it? Anything so you can make some noise, guys, right? And why not do it at 8am when I am trying to continue my beauty sleep? Or why not get out the old weed wacker after I have had a hard day of retirement, when I am ready to sit out on the deck with Hubby and enjoy Happy Hour? We even had one neighbor who power washed his car IN THE RAIN!
Picnics, which are also a big part of summer, are another thing I came to loathe.
There were just too many of them. My mother was obsessed with picnics. She must not have had a very exciting life because her idea of a good time was eating outside. We even had a picnic table in the driveway. We had one of those homes where the garage was in the back of the house, so to put the car in the garage, you would drive down a driveway next to the house to get to the garage. Well, our picnic table sat on the driveway in the back. Every sunny day in summer, we had to haul all of the food out to the picnic table and then haul it all back in again when we were finished. And if that wasn't bad enough, every Sunday after church if the weather was nice, we would have to go to the lake for a picnic. More hauling.
My sister managed to get out of some of this by sitting in the car listening to the ball game on the radio. I would have joined her, but I didn't like sports either. I would have rather stayed home and watched "Louisiana Hayride" on TV. Anything but this.
Speaking of watching TV.
Another thing I hated about summer was the TV reruns.
Of course, as a woman of a certain age, I grew up when there were only three TV channels. The networks started their new programming every fall. Now as you know, I am a TV addict and that started very early. I could recite every TV program on all three channels starting at 7pm all the way up to the late night talk shows for every day of the week. And I was only seven! Back then, there were only so many network shows and once they aired the new ones, in summer they showed them again. So by the time summer rolled around, I had already seen all of the TV shows I wanted to see, so I couldn't wait until fall when there would be new ones.
Now that I am a woman of a certain age and I can choose from 100's of channels, reruns are not a problem but summer programming is. In summer, the networks cart out new shows to test whether or not they are worth bringing back in the fall and most of them are duds.
Sunday drives
Though as a little girl I was plagued with Sunday drives most of the year, they were even more frequent in summer. My mother didn't drive so the Sunday drive was a big deal for her. Like I said, she must not have had a very exciting life. My Dad would drive, she would be sitting next to him up front oohing and ah-ing over other people's houses, and I would be bored out of my mind in the backseat, not to mention being nauseous from the food I had just eaten at that picnic I just endured.
Now as a woman of a certain, I don't mind going for a bit of a ride but I just can't find the time. I am retired after all.
You feel guilty if you don't go outside.
I'm not really an outside person. I can appreciate the beauty of nature but I prefer seeing it from the car or out my window while I am watching TV. But in summer, especially around here, where it rains 9 months out of the year, when the sun comes out (and that's usually only in summer), you are made to feel guilty if you don't hop off your butt and run outside to catch the rays.
So as a woman of a certain age, summers can be an annoyance...but then I start remembering some happy childhood summers and am reminded how quickly the time has passed and that I should be grateful that I am still here for another summer when so many people are now gone.
And I am.
Oh, geez, the guy across the street is power-washing again!
Thanks for reading!
See you Friday
for my review of
"Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"
and
The Week in Reviews
(What to See or Read and What to Avoid)
and the latest on
"My 1001 Movies I Must See Before
I Die Project."
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