I’m dreading the summer. I don’t do well in hot weather. I start to wilt, and I get nauseous and dizzy, and then I get extra self-conscious about how I look, and smell. Cricket doesn’t mind the heat at all. She loves the extra vibrancy of smells during the summer, especially any rotting carcasses she can find, by the side of the road, or up in the woods behind our building.
“I didn’t roll in anything, yet!”
Most of the summer I end up wearing a jacket outdoors, to keep my arms from going up in smoke, and I still have to put sun block on my arms in case my jacket is too weak to protect me. Every once in a while I forget what the sun can do to me, and end up with sun poisoning on the backs of my hands, because I washed off the sun block by mistake before getting into the car to drive.
And then there are my allergies, which seem to have super powers, and see my allergy medication as a puny little enemy to be ignored. For months at a time it feels like I swallowed fly paper, through my nose.
I really do love all of the colors of late spring, and all of the flowers and trees I can’t identify, like the pink one, and the red one, and the purple one, etc, but each blossom tries to fly up my nose, and every blade of grass, as soon as it meets the lawn mower, lands in my eye. My Mom, who has similar allergies to mine, has more fortitude, and manages to pretend that she can still see and breathe while she digs and plants and weeds to her heart’s content in the heat of the day; meanwhile I’m resting like an invalid in front of my air conditioner.
Cricket stole my spot in front of the air-conditioner.
Summer is obviously not my season. I end up feeling like a steamed dumpling, even indoors, because of the humidity. Cricket still begs for long walks, and really, it makes sense; I can’t even imagine how much more fragrant the bird poop must be when it hits 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Where’s the poop?”
Cricket has no wardrobe changes as the seasons change. Her coat seems to keep her cool enough in summer, and warm enough in winter, so that any attempt on my part to try to dress her up is met with a hardy “fnuh!” That’s Cricket’s favorite curse word. I can’t even begin to translate it from dog into human, because I don’t have enough of the right kind of words in my vocabulary to do it justice.
I tend to wear the same basic clothes in June as I wear in January, just with shorter sleeves. People seem to think I should be willing to wear shorts in public as the weather warms up, but I refuse. I stick with my jeans and trousers and if anyone has a problem with that, all I can say to that is, Fnuh!
rachelmankowitz 