My Summer Dream

This is where I want to be for the next two months, a folding chair permanently placed on my deck. Add beer and a bathing suit. Summer is the time of year when I lose all desire to be productive. For some people, they are excited to clear out and deep clean their baseboards. I really don't see the point, since I don't want to be inside long enough to know if I even have baseboards. I want to read, go hiking, go to the zoo, eat Otter pops and make use of my front porch. Perhaps I have never grown out of the idea that summer is a time to kick back and have no responsibilities.

When school ends, my kids spend lazy afternoons lying on the deck, sprinklers cooling their sunburned backs with no concern of how we will pay for groceries or who will deal with the stack of bills piling up next to the sink. They fill up squirt guns and get lost in blanket forts. I want that life. Sadly, when I had that life, I was wishing for the life I have now. I wanted to be a grown up and able to buy anything I wanted. Able to drive to my friend's house for the entire day and never do chores. It's the beauty of being young, you don't realize that once you are old enough to live that dream, you become too old and jaded to do it. I buy what we need so the bank account doesn't go into the red before payday. My friends have jobs and kids and responsibilities which makes jumping in my car at 10:00 am on a Wednesday and heading to their place a silly endeavor. No one would be home and I need to do laundry. Those fucking chores. The ones my parents promised that one day I would have to do in greater quantity. Not me, I thought. My room will be a shit hole and I don't care how bad the tub gets when I grow up, I am never cleaning it. It changes really quick when you are making a mortgage payment and realize that that kind of behavior could land you on an episode of Hoarders.

But what about this summer livin' gig? I'm dying for some of that. I want to read long, beautiful novels and never put on a bra. I want eat watermelon with my hands and ride my bike until it's too dark to see my own front door. I want to enjoy the way the heat  makes me sleepy and take a nap in the shade atop my pink striped beach towel. I don't want to worry about payroll, deadlines, becoming someone important, making dinner, mowing the lawn or putting gas in the car. I want a fifteen hour day spent in complete summer bliss, burning the shit out of my shoulders, my only concern being the amount of days until I have to put on a backpack again and learn something.