Cowden

My sister in-law lives in Chicago, and year after year, for six months out of the year, she is subjected to the kind of weather that unites an entire people in cred-building misery. A few years ago she decided that she was too tired to be a hater, and she embarked on the official Make Winter Fun! campaign, buying cute coats, those retro muff-thingies for your hands and making the choice to stay positive.

I've been thinking a lot about her and her efforts to find silver linings as we live daily with voodoo jungle heat that threatens to scramble our brains into little eggy bits. I've been hoping to employ the same positive attitude in the face of June acting suspiciously like August, but I feel like my little bucket of cheer just keeps getting kicked over. We bought a little plastic pool at Target where we managed about two minutes of relief before we are set upon by every mosquito in the tri-state area. We went to the zoo, my child's face, in the shade, turning the color of her popsicle by 10 AM. In the meantime, my parents continue to send me photos daily from their Maui vacation, the ocean managing to sandwich itself into every pic. Mainly we've been staying inside and watching Surf's Up on TiVo, and I am becoming murderously jealous of cartoon surfing penguins.

One happy result of our staying in most of the weekend was the unexpected visit from a man and his family who were in town for reunion. His mother had been born in our house, and various family members lived here for over fifty years, so the house obviously held many memories for him. We didn't let them get past the entry, because I couldn't bear to have them leave knowing that the McSlobsteins had taken up roost. His wife sent us pictures, but even cooler, we got a song he wrote about the house, too. Our house has its own song! Take that Garden of the Month!