Happiness Is

Today is one of those perfect days. The sun is out and it isn’t super hot like it has been so the dark clouds around us might yield rain, something we haven’t had in a week or so. My water bill and my vegetables will be most appreciative. Whenever I’m finished working in the yard, I always reward myself with flower arrangements. It feels completely decadent to have a house full of cut flowers. My perennial garden is amazing and we are blessed with monarch butterflies as well as honeybees. There is a working farm nearby and I wonder if they are keeping bees which would rock to find local honey. A few weeks ago, we were discussing the lovely alchemy of keeping bees and wouldn’t it be an interesting thing to do. Deadly in her case because she’s very allergic, but in theory it would be so very Zen. Handling bees you must absolutely be in the moment. I have a hard time being in the moment so tasks and jobs feel mysterious and sacred to me. Bees and butterflies are two signs of a healthy garden. I’m not sure I could stand the bliss if I had frogs, too. Poor frogs are dying off all over the world. We did see huge frogs at Angkor Wat in the reflecting pool and heard them at night and in the early morning at our hotel outside of the city.

Tending the garden, yard and flowers never fails to make me smile; even when it’s hot dry and dusty. This year’s beds aren’t as lush and varied as last year’s when we had a wet and temperate summer. But I am a little concerned about the front flower bed, everything bloomed way too early and is now dormant. I’m wrestling with setting more things out, annuals and such. I do have zinnias (the most cheerful flower, according to Oldest Friend) which will bloom in a week or so but otherwise the terraced bed looks a little woebegone and sad. Even the 4 O’Clocks are being stubborn and refusing to grow and bloom. Much to be joyful about today despite my worries.

My step-mother’s granddaughter (my--what--step-niece?) is an amazing artist and keeps a lovely blog, today she listed pictures of things that make her happy. This being a perfect day it was easy to find things that make me happy. Here are eleven (I like prime numbers) as they occurred to me.


Summer days when it’s not blazing hot, dry and windy so the back porch is “Command Central”


My flowers

The Girl is making chicken and polenta for dinner tonight and C from next door is coming over, maybe with her new beau who isn’t terribly handsome but he adores her and thinks she is the most amazing woman on the planet.

My Oil d’Provence (an infusion of my own herbs d’Provence in olive oil) was a huge success.

Tending the vegetable garden and worrying over the delicate tomato plants which were set out a little late and on a very hot day. Finding big sweet carrots, sweet peas, three habanera peppers, four cucumber blossoms and the golden beets which will be ready any day now. I’m boiling them and serving them on their greens cold with a pungent blue cheese and pine nuts. I. Can’t. Wait. I have fantasized about this beet salad for a year.

Getting to spend the whole day with TG.

Honey bees.

Butterflies.

The dog hasn’t turned over the trash can or escaped from the backyard today.

Wally let me take a picture of him.

"There Is Never Enough Time To Do All The Nothing You Want"

image here

“What I heard then was the melody of children at play.” Nabokov

I love summer. Lovelovelovelove Summer. I love how the sun comes up around five and it isn’t dark until nine at night. I like the sound of the cicadas. I remember the crickets and frogs from Texas, a sound rare here. The trees are lush and green; flowers are in full bloom and it is blissfully hot. Everything looks healthy and robust. I like the way wind sounds as it brushes the cottonwood leaves. It’s my favorite time of the year and yet only lasts twelve short weeks. Last summer I discovered rising early every summer day away from the hospital allowed me time to accomplish more “nothing”. Too bad this summer is the exception. Not only am I accomplishing absolutely nothing but I’m sleeping in like a teenager. I did manage to knock back the weeds, deadhead the flowers and plant a few more things after we returned from our vacation. But that was with help and only because the yard, garden and flowerbeds were in rough shape after two weeks of neglect. But suddenly, I’m seized with a complete lack of interest in doing anything other than lying in the sun on the lounge chair and reading. Mind you last summer I did this, too but only after my chores and projects were accomplished. My summer work ethic has flown far far away. I hope it’s landed and someone is putting it to good use.

I think my generation is the second generation to enjoy summer, free of gritty hard work. I grew up in the suburbs so it wasn‘t like I had to work on a farm, either. Always the suburbs, the halcyon place of comfort and ease. Especially during the summer: no school, a few chores and plenty of time to wander the wild spaces just on the other side of the fence or swim in the local pool, cruise the neighborhood on my bike, or lounge around the boat dock. The only thing I had to worry about was going to the swimming pool, getting a ride to the library, which trashy reruns was I going to watch and if I was eating dinner at my friend’s house or my house. My father’s generation worked from a young age, either odd jobs in town or on the farm. When I am sentimental about my childhood it is summer I remember. Not winter, spring or back-to-school autumns. Playing hide and seek in the Big Thicket just on the other side of our yard in SE Texas; when it was safe to let your seven year old out of your line of sight, untethered by a cell phone with GPS, barefooted no less. My child’s memory thinks we wandered miles from home but if I were to return to this place I would find it much more compact and nearby. That is, if it were there to explore. The Big Thicket is almost completely gone except for a few acres the Indians managed to hold away from the developers. That wild space in summer taught me the names of flowers and that I must be immune from poison ivy and oak because it was rampant in the piney woods. I stopped wandering around barefooted after a snake bite (in our front yard) when I was eight. But it’s still an act of God’s grace in action OF (oldest friend) and I didn’t turn over a rock and awaken a dozing rattle snake in New Mexico. Blessed be, not even a scorpion sting, only a honey bee sting. Perhaps I had my due with a venomous snake bite? I was almost a teenager when we moved back to Texas and a creek ran close to our home with a marshy bit of woods but I was too old for that and preferred just walking the neighborhood streets with a friend or two. This, and one of my good friends had a pool in her backyard Wandering the creek was for little kids. But once my incarceration at the lake began, I would wander around the fields near our land. I hated going to the lake with my parents; it was made bearable if a friend came along. My two best friends’ parents were convinced their daughters were taking advantage of my parents. Years later, I explained to one of my friends’ mom (the friend with the pool) that T didn’t eat much and it kept me from driving my mother insane. One would think, that my love affair with summer would have made weekends at the lake even sweeter. Or that a lake was way better than a swimming pool. Not so much.

There was plenty of nothing to do that first summer at the lake. For me at least. I certainly wasn’t going to build a retaining wall or help pour cement for the boat dock. Or move dirt from one pile to the other. I was way way too busy being miserable to help with the work. I think by August we had a television in the trailer. If I remember correctly it a miniscule black and white set with a terrible antenna. Maybe. We did have a radio but my father had me convinced the only station it would get was an AM Country station. What, being SO FAR from the city and all. I think I was in my thirties when I figured out he had lied to me so I wouldn’t bother touching the radio to find another more suitable station. That first summer at the lake, I read War And Peace. I was thirteen and I read Tolstoy. That’s freakin’ bored. And I wrote probably the most anachronistic historical romance ever written by a young girl. I found a copy of it when we moved to The Fabulous House In The Suburbs. I very systematically ripped the spiral notebook into tiny pieces, a time consuming task which offered up plenty of time for me to wince and throw up a little in my mouth as I read each astoundingly bad word. Dad foolishly tried to get me interested in fishing. Again. A few years before, he tried to take the family fishing. I was not having any part of it and so noisy no one was catching fish until he rigged my line and for forty years (yes, 40 not 4) I thought I had caught that fish. “Catching” the fish probably only kept me quiet for an hour or so but that’s better than nothing. So he thought maybe I was a grown up enough to enjoy down time, sitting in a boat at dawn staring at the water and a small piece of nylon string. Because, yeah, that is way way more interesting than watching a snowy version of the Match Game or reading Tolstoy at the decent hour of ll:30 in the morning. And to my credit, I tried but I stopped trying because I did have a few minutes of mature, empathetic clarity, and felt sorry for Dad because it seemed like all he did was untangle my line. Is it any wonder the second and third summer we had a lake place, my parents let me stay with my sister in Southern California for a few weeks? I’m sure their ears stopped ringing from the complaints, sighs and whining after about ten days of being blissfully teenager angst free. I never asked them what they did while I was gone that month: I probably don’t want to know.

One of the best summer’s ever was the summer of ‘82. My hours as a nurses' assistant at the hospital had been reduced and I was living with my best friend, her boyfriend and Jack. That July, BF-boyfriend and I camped our way to the Texas coast, with stops in Austin and San Antonio. BF couldn’t go; she was starting her career as a nurse that summer. It was also the summer I read Lolita with Jack. We took turns reading it out loud to each other. This came about because I had been reading Tess Of The d’Urbervilles and was so depressed by it, my three housemates took it away from me, sick of my tears and rants about the injustice of it all. I‘m not sure why Jack thought Humbert Humbert‘s fantasies of a young girl were going to make it all better. I wish I could ask him. That summer was the beginning of Jack’s untimely and premature march towards a senseless and completely preventable death. Because he is gone, the memories are a little sweeter and more precious. I’m thankful the two most painful episodes in my life happened in the summer months because I know they were made more bearable by the simplicity and generosity of the season. Besides that, the painful stuff always seemed to happen just before school started again and the new school year made everything new in one episode and the other episode just gave me courage to start a new life one autumn.

Hamburger Gravy

What a glorious spring day! After taking a sleepy Beav to school and working out at the gym, I managed to get Wally out of bed and into the yard this morning and we turned some mulch and raked up multiple bags of needles from the stupid evergreens. I hate, loathe and despise evergreens. They are messy and the acid in the needles is a threat to my lovely lawn and make my ornamental rocks look messy. The only thing I hate more than evergreens (aside from a few politicians and a couple of political commentators) are aspen trees. Aspen trees are stupid unless you live at about 7-8 thousand feet and then they are large enough to tower and quake like…you know…aspen trees. Otherwise at just under a mile elevation, they are small and look like trash trees. Besides looking like trash trees they become trash trees and throw out suckers through out the yard and your neighbors yard and your neighbor‘s neighbor‘s yard. Twenty years ago I was waging war on our next door neighbors‘ aspens and threatened to water kill them with Calcium carbonate. (OMG I didn‘t do it!!!). Give me a big oak tree, a messy cottonwood or a larch any day of the week. Because of my nemesis’ evergreens my yard work warm up was an imaginary tantrum, complete with foot stomping, swearing and genral bitching about the tasks. But as I moved from raking to gathering, the sun warm on my back and defrosting my late winter blood. I could feel the seratonin swell in my blood stream and I didn’t mind it so much. It felt good to be moving and outside without a coat or even a sweater this morning. Once Wally was awake and outside for a few minutes he was actually almost enthusiastic as he started the poop scooping. I was amazed how fast we knocked out the winter clean up and sort of disappointed we didn’t have more to do. When Wally bounced up to me and asked what else there was to do and I was tempted to hand him clippers and tell him to trim the dead stuff from the perennials. But it’s too early for that sort of thing and the tender green stuff peeking out from beneath the spent leaves would suffer when we have our next--and inevitable--snow storm. This evening when I asked Wally to be home at a decent hour his response was: “Sure! we Have stuff to do in the yard tomorrow!” (All I can say is God works in mysterious ways because I have a heck of a time getting this one excited about anything and in view of his enthusiasm I‘m inviting stuff for us to do tomorrow)

After we finished working in the yard and I had retrieved Beav from school I spent an hour or so sitting in a lawn chair, face to the sun, listening to a This American Life pod cast I didn’t finish at the gym earlier today. Heaven.

Until I had to go inside and fix dinner. Yuk to the twelfth power of five thousand and eight.

Fortunately I had planned a quiche for tonight which is the only thing I like to make besides reservations (ba-dum bump) It’s quick, simple and can be cheap. And we need cheap because we are having a “hamburger gravy” week at June’s house. Hamburger Gravy is something we would eat when I was growing up and I referred to it as “Depression Food” because it was sort of greasy and gray and pathetic. Everyone loved it but me. In fact, the other night The Girl and I were having our usual: “What do you want for dinner…“ conversation and I quipped out of the blue and from a long forgotten memory:
“Not Hamburger Gravy. “
“Oh God, I know what you are talking about and don’t worry, I hate that stuff.” was her rocket fast answer. We had a good laugh over the fact her family had their gravy over potatoes and we had it over white bread. (TG’s family was deemed “fancier” in this instance) When I remembered this particular “delicacy” it made me wonder if we didn’t have it when Mom was running a little short just before payday because someone needed shoes or glasses or the dentist. I kind of like this turn of phrase: “Hamburger Gravy Week” and I think it will become part of the family lexicon (along with “too many hands”, “hairplane” and putting a “y” at the end of each kids’ name). Someone asks for a new pair of jeans or a video game? All I have to do is look them dead in the eye and sagely intone: “Dude, Hamburger Gravy Week.” and the inquisitor will know their desire/request will have to wait a few days or longer unless they are naked, ill or starving; something that wouldn‘t happen unless it was Ditchwater Gravy Week.


Gravy isn’t all together a bad thing, it’s usually associated with an abundance of something (like meat drippings and fat) or an additional or superfluous but treasured something or extra money which makes the whole saying extra appealing to me, what with my love for all that is ironic or satirical.

Today really was a gravy day, with the warm sun and youthful enthusiasm for a stupid task coupled with a warm night with windows open, a full moon and one more precious day off:

It’s all gravy.

Last Call

The lingering party guests are milling about; conversation wanes as they look one to the other and glance down at watches; calculating and planning their exits. It’s late and time to leave until everyone reconvenes for next year’s celebration. Most will be welcomed back to the celebration in my flower beds and garden; unfortunately, some of my garden guests were unruly or troublemakers. Like this thing: It’s The Four O’clock That Ate The Flower Bed.


I was a little horrified to take it out because it’s so huge and came from a tiny seed...and I have never grown anything so huge from a tiny seed... Anyhow, The Girl cut it down with the big lopping thingies used for tree branches but she couldn’t dig out the root because it has adhered to the stone wall. Hopefully it won’t return and repeatedly require being cut back. I want to put something smaller in that spot. I must admit it made me smile or laugh whenever I pulled into the drive way. Yesterday, before TG made the first cut I was reminded of this book. The scene I recalled, Beloved was sitting on the porch in a diaphanous white dress, the rest of the family stunned at how large she had become. Sethe sacrificed her family as she cared for Beloved. Beloved soon expands and grows as she existentially consumes the family and the delicate infrastructure is destroyed. Fortunately, the 4 O’clock didn‘t do this to my family; we’re actually doing ok despite a weird summer and my propensity to piss off Ward and create waves and drama. My weird leap to a novel I haven’t read in seventeen years was probably owing to the delicate and old fashioned blossoms which remind me of Victorian tea gowns.

The other unruly guests were the sun flowers. They weren’t specifically the unruly ones; in fact they were statuesque and elegant and they created nice shade. However, their hanger ons followed them. The naughty birds and despicable squirrels knocked the blossoms off and left a big mess and rotting stalks. Sadly, the sunflowers won’t be asked back because of their rowdy entourage. To add insult to injury they haughtily refused to turn to the north and never faced the rest of the garden’s guests.

How lucky we were the squirrels and birds were distracted by the sunflowers and didn’t notice the yummy vegtables. I think we were able to rabbit proof our garden with the ugly chicken wire and making sure the fence was without big chinks or holes. One morning in early June I was surveying my patch and I saw a large hole neatly excavated into my onion berm. I ran over to the garden saying something like: “Oh no you did int!!” and reached for a hoe a la Farmer McGregor; like I actually possessed the courage to bludgeon a rabbit to death. Ewww, that would be messy and cruel. I just wanted to scare it into leaving the yard. They aren’t afraid of the dog because he’s a bit challenged mentally and physically. The rabbit had left the scene of the crime without consuming all of the onions and we managed to fix the fence. The enclosure came about because Kip loves tomatoes and we didn’t want to lose our entire crop to the greedy dog. We were very fortunate our crop wasn’t a victim of Blight which destroyed tomatoes on the east coast. It was certainly wet enough this summer.

Indian summer is proving to be a textbook example of what Indian summer is supposed to be. Every day has been dry and temperate beginning with early morning ground fog and mist burning off by lunchtime. Today we went for a walk in one of the many large and older parks near downtown. Surprisingly, the trees aren’t beginning to turn there but some are almost completely golden as you go to the east of the city. The sun has shifted to a different place and I am driving to work in half light. I knew this would happen; summer would not stay forever. In some ways I’m glad for this; I would not want the Ground Hog Day syndrome; perpetually nursing Beav after he had his wisdom teeth out with the odd but not unheard of Fentanyl reaction of inconsolable crying; repetititively calming my oldest son after his father told him he was no longer welcome at Alexis house; nor do I want to constantly revisit the tumultuous emotions of a child leaving home for the military. Hell, I don’t ever want to do any of those things again. But always, everyday the backdrop to these changes and these emotions was summer. The Girl told one of our friends this summer possessed the “best weather I have ever experienced!” I had to agree with her; we had a summer which mimicked a July in Seattle. The upheaval would have been unbearable in triple digit heat. Indian summer is God’s gift to me before I am handed the short days of winter. I remember when Wally was about two; I called A, tears in my voice because it was 4:45 and I had to turn on lights because it was so dark outside. Now it is a ritual for me to note the time lights are necessary afterDecember 21st as a way to usher in hope for summer.

A few weeks ago, I pondered the whole back-to-school feeling this time of year gives many of us. I think this man says it best. The desire to grasp onto September is great but if I hold onto September Wally would never finish in Georgia or come home to us for a few days in December. For the first time I can ever remember I am looking forward to Winter.

Midsummer Report Card

Landing into the middle of my life-post vacation--last week put blogging into the back seat. I even knew what I wanted to write about but real life, my real work pressed upon me and I didn't sit down to the computer until today. I Being away from here made me realize how much I missed working in our yard and garden. Coming home to four foot tall tomato bushes and chard ready for harvest was particularly sweet. Hopefully, the huge tomato bushes aren't a lot of faulderah of greenery without the benefit of fruit. Summer has been rainy and on the cool side and even the foothills are still sporting their May greenery--a pleasant change--usually in July things are looking hot and limp like your well-heeled Alabama aunt on a Sunday afternoon in June. Working in the dirt in the mornings this past month has definitely taken the edge off my brittle personality. I feel invigorated and cleansed after long days of nursing. Everyday I am home, I find an excuse to work outside or just be outside. Ironically, the dark rainy days buoyed my spirits, too. Probably the novelty of it all. I loved working in the cool damp of the early mornings this June.

Last month the sky was tinged with light before five but this morning I noticed predawn is now later. insert audible and dramatic sigh here Fortunately, after next week, it won't be necessary to race to the south bed before the sun starts it's twelve hour march across my flowers. The Girl is so terribly ingenious, with help from our landscaper, she is installing an irrigation system to the flower beds and veg gardens. No more moving hoses around, making sure it isn't tangled or kinked, maneuvering around a dog prone to wandering, downspouts, and stepping stones.

I have learned a great deal from my first garden. The most important thing I have discovered is a new passion. In the nuts and bolts department of gardening, I've learned Bee Balm aka Burgamot will take over the world given half a chance; Verbena and lavender are well behaved Submissives and crave too much light and very little. My delicate Trollius has proven to be a finicky Madwoman of the attic so I've taken a great chance and moved her this morning to a shadier spot in the front yard. The only reason I haven't killed my yellow pet is because our summer has been temperate and wet. And who knew something named "Bachelor Button" would not relish full on sun. I was thinking: bachelor farmer. When the truth of the matter they resemble these fellows. (my plants have all taken on the persona of Victorian stereotypes, haven't they? I'm truly obsessed!)

I successfully transplanted zinnias to a bare spot in the veg garden. The Bee Balm has also been relocated to a spot where he can continue to spread his wings and take over a troublesome spot. Oldest Friend quipped that 80% of gardening is moving plants. Fortunately, I won't be moving that many plants but since I planted invasives I see digging, dividing and moving in my future. The goal is to commit Drive By Yarrow Drops in the middle of the night. The Girl tells me I have a green thumb but I'm not sure about this. I think it's forgiving weather patterns, dumb luck and passion. It was a humbling gift to enjoy the lovely chard which began as a seed in my window. I planted seeds on our snow day in mid April as a tonic against relentless winter.

So the question I'm pondering today is this: Does a passion for something constitute a gift? Does it matter if I am "gifted" if the act gives me this much joy?

I know you are all waiting with "baited breath" for my musings and sudden epiphany but a big question like this must germinate like my chard.

Meanwhile, it's time to don my large brimmed hat and make the weed rounds. Saturday is promising to be cooler and damp so moving the other Trollius plants and wane Batchelor Button will have to wait until then and I won't have to be in the yard by 0-gosh-thirty.

I Gots Nuthin'. Whats you got?

Kipper doesn't always make the best decisions. Fortunately, what he lacks in intellect he makes up with enthusiasm. Goof-dog insisted on carrying his moose like this. Walking down the stairs was a foolhardy choice and fortunately didn't end in a trip to the vet. Like my dog, I make foolhardy decisions. Most recently I decided to blog every Thursday. You know, exercise my writing muscles, create a habit. But this week the well ran dry and I have nothing to say.

I Got Nothing.

I could blather on about how much I enjoyed Milk and experiencing what it was like to be a gay man in the 1970's. I was seventeen when he was killed and I vaguely remember his assassination as just another news item. But it didn't really mean anything to me, in part because I was seventeen, but largely because I was living in the Bible Belt and most of my peers sided with Anita Bryant and thought those dirty homos were going to Hell. Actually, if I think too hard about Bryant's opinions and how much they threatened to shape my own, I throw up a little in my mouth and cringe for my classmates who knew in 1978 they were gay but didn't dare come out. I didn't have a clue I was queer and even when I ran into a teacher at a gay bar my senior year, it didn't register I should be shocked, upset or outraged. I was completely oblivious to gay people until I was in college and came out for the first time. And I was happily oblivious to discrimination. I suppose it was easier for me in Lubbock Texas because I'm categorized (grrrrr...) as a Femme. So I can "pass" as straight. The whole dichotomy of femme/butch makes my head hurt so I need to change the subject.

Is the gym eating my brain? I've been accused of becoming a gym rat and up until a few weeks ago, I used every excuse in the book to NOT exercise. Hell, I even went to work on my day off to avoid the gym! Now I look forward to my exercise routine and wish I had the energy to go after work in the evenings. But it isn't like I stare blankly into space, feeling the burn when I'm exercising. I listen to uplifting podcasts while I row or walk. I still think riding an exercise bike is a glimpse of Hell. B-O-R-I-N-G. Especially at my gym, where Fox News is the television station of choice. But I love to row. I crave rowing. I remember years ago when I was visiting a dear friend in Kailua Hawai'i and being amazed at the strength it must have taken for the Crew teams to skim those long boats over the rough water. Picturing Kailua as I row lulls me into a peaceful state. It could be the gym...

The economy would be easy to blame but I've chosen to ignore the meltdown and just live my life; go to work, pay my bills, have some fun. TG's industry is changing; health care is changing and how we do what we do now, will be vastly different in ten years. And this isn't a bad thing because I will be forced to grow and change. Like this picture of my chunk of photo optic glass, everything is changed but the end result remains the same.

My life's work isn't eating my brain either. In fact, the mix of patients we have has been interesting and each possess an interesting or poignant story. I wish I could tell them, they would individually make for an interesting blog. It has been a welcome relief to be able to actually manage and care for my patients without feeling as if any minute I was going to miss a crucial detail and fail at keeping them safe. Nor are they aren't a bunch of addicts who ran out of Oxycontin and just need a legally sanctioned fix. We are seeing a lot of abdominal pain. People hurting in their core and usually without a readily identified cause. We take X rays and CT scans and MRIs and ultrasounds and come up with nothing. Like my imagination, they got nothin'. My therapist once told me belly pain equals the fear for survival. It can also be a way the body deals with emotional/sexual/physical abuses. One of our young physicians and I discussed this and how we do a terrible job of screening for these things. Dwelling on their pain makes my heart hurt.

I blame group malaise for all of this belly pain. Everyone on the planet needs to take a day off from the news. Everyone. No one reads the news or listens to the news or looks at the news. And then we all need to breath deeply. Collectively for 17 seconds, concentrating on what is right in our world and in our lives I think the malaise would lift and the economy would begin to improve. The belly pain would resolve without a milligram of Dilaudid IV push. Breathing does so much more to increase the vibration of the soul than opioids.

Tomorrow is the first day of spring. Sometimes we have snow, sometimes we have sun. It looks like sun tomorrow. Frankly,I'm the only person in the US who wasn't upset about the time change. It's chilly here in the evenings but it's light outside so I don't have the dual burden of cold and dark. Just cold. And we are back on the the clock in Kipper's belly so he doesn't start asking for dinner at 5:00.

Flowers are gracing the kitchen table. A birthday present a couple of weeks ago that are now celebrating the equinox. Coincedently we are having dinner with the Divine Ms. A on Saturday. The weather promises to be nice enough to start out on her lovely patio in her garden. Spring is better than Christmas because it's about flowers and lengthening days. Spring means summer--sweet lazy summer--is just around the corner. The promise of summer exchanges limp brain cells for flowers and promises.