Dog Days of Summer

The cat is stretched out on the blade of the ceiling fan, revolving in lazy circles in the breeze, one paw hanging over the side like a rudder.

Below, the dog is sprawled in the recliner with an ice pack on his forehead, sipping iced tea through a bendy straw. He’s a black Lab. He’ll dive quite happily into a frost-covered lake on a crisp fall morning, but when the temperature hits 80, he goes into hibernation and requires hourly rations of crushed ice and chicken flavored sports drinks. I don’t want to say he’s spoiled, but I have the only refrigerator with a doggie door. I won’t mention his other favorite snack food, but there’s also a doggie door on the litterbox.

Meanwhile, at my computer, sweat has dripped down my chest, spattered on the keyboard like afternoon in a rainforest, and shorted out the machine. A parched mosquito with a sweatband handed me an IOU for a nibble on a body part to be named later. Outside, earthworms have brought in power drills to make holes in the topsoil on my car.

The teenagers poured themselves through the doorway, swooned into a restless pile of melted flesh and weary boredom and announced, “It’s hot.” Hot is a two syllable word with the second half drowning in perspiration and misery.

These are the same kids that were clustered around the thermostat last winter begging to turn up the heat so their fingers would thaw enough to work video game controllers.

Back then I was the "bad parent" because I just said NO to indoor fire barrels. Now I'm the bad guy because I don't allow freezer burn as a weapon in the battle against sweat. These guys hated it when Spring brought plagues of honeysuckle and rosebuds and Autumn swept in hordes of muscadines. They've got a whine for all seasons.

So now it’s hot. Why didn’t I noticed it before? It amazes me how that fact escaped Reuters, CNN, Fox News, and the local paparazzi. Our smalltown presses don’t miss any news flash from ice cream truck fraud to elevator overpopulation.

I decided to give him a call.

“Jay, the teenagers say it’s hot.”

I heard a noise like a straw passing the speed limit sign in Margaritaville. “I’ll get right on that story as soon as I finish my, um, column.”

“See that you do. Somebody has to alert people to turn on their window fans. You could be the Paul Revere of our times. One if it’s spring, two if it’s summer.”

“Right. In the meantime teach those kids to appreciate the important things in life. Like those little first aid packs that get cold when you bust the bubble inside.”

I hung up. I would cook supper, but I’ve been waiting until the temperature dropped. We haven't eaten since that day in March when a UPS truck delivered a load of chocolate covered pretzels to the wrong address.

With an oven that goes from Warm to Controlled Burn in less than ten seconds, I don’t like to stoke the flames just for the simple act of eating. During the summer, we boost the economy by dining out at any local establishment that boasts a working air conditioner.

I’ve eaten so much pizza lately, my navel has turned into a slice of pepperoni. I’ve had so many tacos, I’ve begun to judge local cattle by their weight in ground beef. And I’ve been eyeing the no-expiration-date sausage dogs at the local 7-11 store.

Meanwhile I'm counting down the days until school starts. Both boys take classes at the community college across town. Let the dean of Robotics decide what the temperature will be. In the meantime, the Labrador has a dandy diversion planned. He's packed the car for the beach. I have just enough time to grab a towel before he backs down the driveway.

And I can tell by the way his ears are waving in the breeze. that he's got the air conditioner turned on to chili dog.

Seek and Enjoy

Spring is a glorious time of days filled with sparkling sunshine, blooming flowers, and flooded basements. I can tell it’s spring at my house when the sewer backs up and the toilet overflows like a baby with a double mouthful of strained peas. The plumber marks his annual trip out to my house on his calendar right next to “Order New Mercedes.”

About the only thing I hate worse than the first flush of spring is the annual Easter egg hunt at Dad’s farm. This year, Easter comes at the first of April, so it’s possible that the two events may coincide like a slingshot-launched rock and a plate glass window, only in this case the thing that gets launched is a good deal less desirable as a projectile than a rock.

I’m just as helpless at the egg hunt as I am in cases of explosive plumbing malfunctions. And to make matters worse, now that Easter is rolling around like the last jelly bean in the bowl, I’m running out of ways to disguise my nonconformity. It’s like trying to disguise one of the white keys on a jazz piano. I’m seek-challenged. I couldn’t find the spots on a ladybug without a field guide and labeled specimen. If it were up to me, all the hidden eggs would find a home in the wild.

I can hide eggs with no trouble. I’m the one that thought of putting the cracked one under the seat of the car when we were kids. It’s still there. I’m anticipating an ugly phone call from Dad any day. Reminder to self: Sign up for caller ID.

But when it comes to finding eggs, I can scramble all day and come up with nothing but an empty basket. Especially now that I’m at the stage of life where every morning starts off with a hunt. As I get older—I won’t say mature as that can lead to lawsuits from the false advertising people—I couldn’t find a lost thought with an All Points Bulletin and a Vulcan mind meld. I haven’t been able to locate my belly button since the baby was born, and I wouldn’t recognize my own knees in a police lineup. Note to self: Order college graduation announcements for the baby.

When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny used to hide “pity eggs” out in plain sight to make sure I could find them. He could have dyed them neon colors, dotted them with iridescent sequins, and implanted them with a tracking device that emitted a sound that would shatter Plexiglass, and I would still wander from shrub to shrub saying, “Am I hot? Give me a hint.”

Last weekend, while rearranging furniture in an attempt to find my glasses, I discovered a plastic candy-filled egg in one of the nooks in my desk. Inside was a tiny candy bar huddled in a faded wrapper.

The kids acted like it was a moon rock. “Look! It’s one of last year’s Easter Eggs that we never found!”

That does it. I’m through with egg hunts. It won’t bother me if I never see my navel again, but if my chocolate detector is lost, I’ve got nothing left to dye for.

Potted Payback

A full moon is nothing compared to the first full day of sunshine after a winter full of sullen snowflakes to make people act crazy. The first day I looked to the heavens and felt the sunshine warm my face with magic fingers, I knew it was time to murder more houseplants.

If Christmastime is the season of Poinsettia Slaughter, then March brings Geranium Massacre Madness. Garden shops are teeming with folks loading up their carts with future victims. Satellites overhead are busy transmitting my picture to plant nurseries across the country: Armed and dangerous. Spotted with peat moss and a trowel. Before nightfall my mug shot will be hanging over the succulents at Home Depot stores everywhere.

I still have three house plant survivors from the Flora Trail of Tears that so many African Violets and Swedish Ivy cuttings have taken over the years, across my kitchen counter to the waste bin outside my back door. The road is difficult and tortuously long, but I have faith enough to keep widening the road and beginning beautification projects along its borders.

Just now I’m rubbing my hands together and gazing lovingly at two jade plants and an aloe, ripe for repotting. I think my neighbors phoned in a tip to CSI. Helicopters hover over my house. SWAT teams are rappelling down the chimney. Hostage negotiators are ringing my cell phone. “Back away from the potting soil and nobody will get hurt.”

With sunshine streaming in between the blinds, I lock the door and carefully spread newspapers across the table. Is it a bad omen that I have selected the obituary page for this project? I turn the paper over to government news. Somehow that seems more fitting for the spreading of manure.

My sons, both avid participants in Role Playing games, roll their dice to determine my luck. Hmm, Critical Fail. Yeah, but naysayers told Christopher Columbus to turn left at Nova Scotia, too. If he had listened, we wouldn’t be sucking the cream filling out of cannolis today. Sometimes you just have to stick to the North Star and make sure you have the right ratio of dirt to fertilizer.

Thirty minutes later the deed is done. I fling open the back door and announce, “The transplant was a success!”

Then I trip over the old pots on the back step and land with an overly large crash in the trash can by the door. Picking peat moss out of my hair and feeling a bruise the size of a dieffenbachia on my backside, I realize something important.

The Trail of Tears has claimed another victim.

Oprah Envy

I don’t hate Oprah because she’s worth more money than major studios rake in by making movies about attractive, charmingly incompetent pirates. I don’t even hate her because she has a house big enough that if she weren’t speaking to her husband, supposing she’d found a nice model for a good price on Ro-Day-O Drive, he wouldn’t know for six months. Or because she can speed dial any number of people who can prevent her from ever having a bad hair day.

I hate her because she can afford to gain weight.

There are three sections in my closet. To the right are clothes that I have worn within recent history—which includes the eras that boasted Edith and Archie Bunker, Sonny and Cher, and the Beatles. With enough time and dedication to the study of fat content on spaghetti sauce labels and ice cream wrappers, I might wear these clothes again. I might also don a tricorn hat and sail with Johnny Depp on his next voyage, but that's beside the point.

The middle section of the closet is devoted to clothes I can wear right now. This section contains a pair of faded blue jeans, the black top my niece gave me with a buckle that’s guaranteed to draw the eyesight of innocent bystanders away from unsightly ripples in the terrain, and six pairs of stretchy pants.

The section to the left holds selections for days of bloat, hormone fluctuation, and random binges of drinking whole milk. My fat clothes.

My budget allows me these three small sections, although there are days when the power bill, car payment, and rent deadline band together like wayward musketeers to encourage me to sell the buckle shirt on eBay. I dream of a day when there’s enough money left after the cable bundle that I feel comfortable throwing out the bra with the broken wire.

I imagine Oprah’s closets. She probably has whole rooms devoted to different sizes of clothing. If she has an off day and, say, indulges in salad dressing or puts a dab of sour cream on her potato, she goes to the blue closet and pulls out a clever chiffon that skims the hips, conceals arm pendulums, and erases under eye circles.

Last week I went for a walk on the wild side, the closest thing I have to a workout plan, and plunged a chip deep into the salsa at the Mexican restaurant. Without a single thought for future wardrobe planning, I ate the whole thing without sharing a crumb with anyone else, including my lap. Today my jeans wouldn’t zip, my blouse wouldn’t button, and my Victorias threatened to spill their secret.

My life will never be like Oprah’s. Maybe I’ll try for Jerry Springer’s. If my clothes have a story to tell, let them tell it to somebody who will make the most of it.