Summer is over

It is Fourth of July weekend.  Ever since I was a young teen, this has meant that the summer is effectively over.  It is all downhill from here on out. 

This weekend meant that the tan that I had always planned to have would not be a reality.  If you aren’t tanned by the 4th, it just isn’t going to happen.  Of course, now we frown on tanning, but back then, before the age of enlightenment, we used Johnson’s baby oil to enhance the sun’s rays to be able to have a “deep dark tan”.  I am of the Norwegian white variety of human.  I have never had such a tan in my memory.  I suppose that is to my advantage now that I am old and still pale-skinned-perhaps keeping melanoma at bay. My sister who worked as a lifeguard for many summers has to worry about that now that she is getting closer to being old.

If you had any real plans for the summer, if they were not done, or at least planned by the fourth of July, the chances were that they would not happen. Summer days are a very scarce commodity here.  Use them or lose them. The corn in the fields is “knee-high by the fourth of July” . If you want a garden, if it hasn’t been established by the fourth of July, you will be stuck with a plot of weeds. If you have a project planned for the summer, if it has not been started by now, it will not likely be done before the fall arrives.   

The past few days have been glorious.  Warm, sunny, light breezes.  The kind of day that you take for granted living in southern California or Florida.  We can’t afford to take them for granted. 

 The traffic heading north this weekend will be backed up for miles.  No one misses the opportunity for 3 days ‘up north”, and most will try to extend it to 3 1/2 or 4 days by leaving work early today to head north. If you want to find a person to answer a phone in an office today, good luck.  Even those who are in the office will be there only to discuss their plans for the weekend.  Of course, the traffic coming back into the cities on Monday will be horrible as well. It will move much more slowly, as those who are returning home are not in quite so much of a hurry as they were when leaving the city on Friday.

Most people are very busy here in the summer.  Biking, hiking, camping, boating, fishing, gardening; no one wants to “waste” these few short days of warm, sunny weather.  We are for the most part a very industrious state. 

Personally, I would love to just sit on the porch and read.  I have a stack of books calling to me.  My husband has to work this weekend.  Perhaps I can work my way through the stack.

Because summer is over.

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