A Working Girl's Summertime Blues

Summer has arrived. Perhaps not according to the calendar and its obsession with solstices, but Memorial Day has come and gone, and the mercury has soared into the 90s. It seems to me that it must be summer.

It's harder to tell now when summer comes and when it goes. That clear demarcation of summer - the last day of school and a few months later, the first day of school - is no longer mine. I no longer have the luxury of a final bell followed by a walk down to the Dairy Queen for a dipped cone or a day of cramming a year's worth of stuff into my parent's car followed by a 17 hour drive back home. The first morning without an alarm clock or the need to be anywhere never comes anymore. No, summer is not the same when there is no break, no man-made delineation of seasons. It's hard when everyday is a 9 to 6 with no deference to the rising mercury, the jingle of the ice cream truck, or the allure of the pool. A week of vacation and a holiday here and there does not make a summer.

So I grasp at summer however I can, trying to keep it from slipping through the air conditioning vents of the office where I sit all day and lament its passing. I take my lunch outside in the Circle, sweating through the heat and humidity of midday DC, defiantly refusing to move into the shade. I savor the sloppiness of perfectly ripe peaches purchased from a farmer's market. I fight off mosquitos and wasps to have my hamburger and corn-on-the-cob on the patio. And I pray to win the lottery, which I unfortunately always forget to play, with the hope of taking back my summer.