What the F---? It's August Already?
Here in Minnesota (motto: What Kind of Crazy Ass weather Is This?), the residents, or at least the resident known as me, value the summer season like a salvaged chest of Spanish doubloons. I revel in the warmth of a waning summer day, and I genuinely believe there is no place quite as pleasant as Minnesota in summer.
But summer has an irritating way of not lasting all that damned long: three months, tops, of glorious weather, and then begins the descent into fall, that harbinger season that teases you with warm days interspersed with cool, wet, unpleasant ones. Then, BAM!, it's winter, and Minnesota winters SUCK ASS.
So here I am, face to face with the disheartening reality that my coveted summer is 2/3 over. Perhaps most maddening is that I didn't do all the wonderful things I planned on doing this summer. No camping trips, no canoe trips, no late nights with friends sitting around a campfire, drinking beer and forgetting just for an evening that we have bills and jobs and relationships and any of the other multitudinous concerns of daily life.
Granted, I've had a fine summer, complete with grilling out, many rounds of golf, sitting on the deck late in the afternoon reading until swarms of insects arrive, intent on completely exsanguinating me. I really have nothing to complain about when I really think about it, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't find at least something to complain about.
So, how shall I approach this, the final month of true summer for 2002? There's a wedding to attend next week which will require a lengthy commute to Madison, Wis., and I've swindled a friend of mine to go with me to alleviate the boredom. She seems actually excited about going, which just makes no sense whatsoever, until you take into account that the last wedding I went to ended in the arrest of two groomsmen, and the wedding before that I busted my chin open on the dance floor doing "the worm" and required seven stitches. So, she's going mostly to see something bizarre happen to me. What a friend.
I still intend to go camping, and the same goes for a canoe trip or two, but my summer weekends are numbered, and they are all the more fleeting with each passing year. Perhaps I should stop trying to plan things to do and just do things as they present themselves. That's probably best.
Still, where the hell did my summer go?
It went the way of Catalina Cruz. Catalina Cruz is hot. Cataline Cruz has big breasts. Catalina Cruz is smoking. Catalina Cruz makes me happy.
Thank You, Big Boy. Thank You
About a year ago, I read the book "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris. Hysterical stuff throughout, but one chapter in particular had me convulsing and uncontrollably in tears. This was drop-your-shorts-and-defecate funny; side-splitting-pee-on-your-uncle funny; vomit-on-the-carpet-and-eat-it-with-chopsticks funny. In other words, it was funny. And I found it online, and I read it again, and it's STILL roll-naked-on-a-floor-covered-in-tacks funny. And it made me laugh despite my August woes.
Remember, this is dry-hump-the-couch-cushions funny.
Posted by Ryan at August 5, 2002 03:00 PM
Stumble It!
