Chicken Pox and Birthday Wishes

Okay - mid June - how the heck did that happen? I don't even know where to start. Maybe I won't even bother - I don't really want to remember it, anyway. So skip it. Here we are, and it is finally summer - as in, hot and humid and smelling yucky. But, hey, the mosquitoes aren't too bad yet. And our airconditioning is working (unlike, oh, about 3 weeks ago during a brief heat wave that happened to coincide with Brian's and Rachel's cases of chicken pox). But, no - I'm not going to talk about it. And what's 275 dollars between friends, anyway? Because that's what that airconditioning repairman is - he's my friend. Even if it did take him 4 days to show up, and Brian and Rachel were both prostrate on the couch, each in front of his/her own fan. Fans only move that humid air around, by the way. They make you think you can breathe, but it's an illusion. And they make your sweat feel a little cooler. But that's it. So I love the airconditioning repair guy. And so do my neighbors, because they finally got their fans back.

So now it's summer (let's get back on track here). Summer in these parts is really more an endurance test than a season. I sit here and think, "Okay, I've just got to survive these next 3 months." That's all. 3 months. Of course, if you extrapolate that out to all the years of your life (which I have time to do, as I sit around just surviving), that's one fourth of my life here. One fourth of my life spent hiding inside because it is too disgusting and mosquito-ridden to go outside. Is that any way to live? The only bright spot is the pool. There are no mosquitoes at the pool, and the children are happy at the pool, and we eat popsicles there and generally pretend that summer is still fun. But only at the pool. Because as soon as we step outside its sacred confines, life once again resembles one of those circles in Dante's Inferno, and I think, "Just 3 months..."

Larry, of course, has the right idea. He and Theo are taking off for New Mexico for 2 weeks in July, where they will be hiking at some Boy Scout Reservation and generally roughing it. At least, that's what they tell me. Maybe they'll actually be lounging by some hotel pool in the hot but arid Southwest and making up stories to tell me when they get home about how they ate nothing but beef jerky and dehydrated lizards for 14 days. Larry says the cell phone won't work where they're going. Oh, yeah. Good one. And then they'll come home with whatever plagues they've picked up out there, because Lord knows, we don't want to go an entire calendar month without some weird sickness laying low the entire family. That would be just too boring. The last hiking trip Theo went on, he brought home some sort of stomach flu. That was nice. It's all sort of a blur, mixed up with that heat wave and the broken AC and the chicken pox. Larry was all sympathy for me, of course. He came home from work to find me practically comatose on the couch (I believe I had a pen in my hand and was trying to scratch out a last will and testament on the coffee table) and had the temerity to ask, "Does this mean you're not coming to Anna's flute recital this evening?" That warm, fuzzy feeling from Mother's Day sure doesn't last long, does it?

Was I complaining again? I have to stop that. Things are looking up. Susie is almost done with her chicken pox and we finally managed to celebrate David's birthday (a week late) and we even contrived to throw in some Father's Day festivities to boot. My birthday is in 2 days (ahem), but at this point my sincerest wish is that everyone just leave me alone. In the airconditioning, of course. With a nice box of chocolates and a good book. While Larry and the kids clean the house from top to bottom and throw out all the extra crap they have lying around. Ah, paradise...