Summer Simmer

That’s it, I take back all the nasty words I said about winter. I regret loathing sleet down my neck. What I wouldn’t do for a big lump of snow out the door right now. I live in NC and it’s 98 with humidity.

I WISH I could have a nice cool summer.

And i am not alone in this wish. Portland Oregon was 100 the other day! I thought Portland was like San Francisco…”the coldest winter I ever spent was my summer in San Francisco” Dorothy Parker(?).

We seem to have a blatant case of ‘Double Vision’ Foreigner style. “Feeling down n dirty feeling kinda mean, I’ve been from one to another extreme.”

We’ve got winter’s so cold down south your nose hairs freeze as hard as needles…I heard of one lady who sneezed and pierce her nose in 16 places–from the inside out.

Then these summers…sweltering, sultry, sticky, surly, simmering slop. Think beads of sweat hitting the pavement and ricocheting as rancid mist, that really helps the humidity problem (and I may have just helped you skip the next meal or two. No need to thank me, it’s part of my job.

WHY why why of Lord? Blame it on the sixties with the hairspray cans and Right Guard aerosol searing a hole in the ozone, sure, but it’s really:

THE DREADED SUNSPOT CYCLE.

The last mini-ice-age (Like what, people walked around with poodle cut miniature wooly mammoths?) there were very few sunspots. If the folks were smart enough back in the middle-ages to look at the sun’s reflection and count spots, maybe they should have mentioned it to all their new Viking friends who were buying timeshare condos in Greenland for vacations.

Anyway, if the oil spills in the gulf with adjoining giant methane gas cloud, or the bubble growing at the bottom of Lake Yellowstone not to mention the entire chain of mountains from Mt. St Helen’s north and south don’t all blow us to kingdom come, we will all have the downturn in sun spots to angst over. Yup, turns out while we are sweltering this summer the sunspots are slowing down to nil and then we will all have a great deal of time (like 40 years) to CHILL OUT.

So I guess it boils down to, “be careful what you wish for.”