Summertime - and the storms are awesome

Well I certainly hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day yesterday, that your roof is still intact, and that the dog has stopped quivering under the bed.

Ah, yes. Summer is here, and the smell of hamburgers and hot dogs is wafting through the yard, along with the remaining whiff of gunpowder and sparkler butt-ends.

Isn’t it funny how Ma Nature makes you forget the less pleasant parts of our lives, and it’s a good thing She does, because we’d all have to book into therapy immediately.

You know I just love winter, but I would have to confess that this past winter was a bit of a doozy, and even I was anxious to see the back end of it.

And so we slipped ever so gently into spring and reveled in the warming breezes and blue sky, only to slip not so gently into the realization that spring means quite a bit of ruckus with its awe inspiring storms and horrible, horrible, tornadoes.

That’s just something I can’t get used to. Coming from a very temperate climate, I’m not used to these gargantuan excesses when it comes to the seasons. Sydney suffers in a way for it by not showing off the glorious differences – snow, autumn leaves – you know, all the pretty stuff.

But then Sydney doesn’t suffer from, well, snow, a lot of autumnal color, tornadoes, or hulking great baseball sized hail type storms – well, not too often anyhow.

So in a way I’m glad to see the end of spring to say hello to summer.

I can feel M.N. tapping me on the shoulder, whispering “remember?”

Ah yes, summer. More beautiful blue days, trees in full leaf, birds, and squirrels and other critters abounding.

And green grass. Gone is the snow, gone is the brown die-off of the lawn, and now that we’ve re-sodded, hello to the greenness of the yard. Except for the bits in which the odd fungus has decided to nestle. They’re a little on the brown side, and my lovely Handy Dandy is liberally sprinkling heaven knows what to kill the mold.

And with green grass, howdy Mother Nature, come the teeny tiny critters.

I took advantage of the gorgeous days last weekend, and wrestled with the lawn chair lounger thingie for about 10 minutes to get it into the correct position, so that I could don a sarong and lie there with a good book and absorb a goodly quantity of Vitamin D.

Well all I can say is I hope the mozzies, flies, chiggers and other wee bities are positively nauseous with the mixture of my blood and Vitamin D.

I think I could spray pure turpentine on me and the little buggers would still get me. This I find extremely irksome, as I was pretty much immune to things which nipped in Australia. I found they tended to go to the fair skinned, preferably English people Down Under, but obviously the North American variety is getting revenge on behalf of their northern hemispherian cousins and are chomping very happily on Aussie flesh.

I am here as living proof to tell you that they are crafty. I am itching in places where it would be extremely bad manners to scratch in public.

I even managed to scratch one bite so hard through my clothing this week that I’ve ended up with bruises. It’s a very good thing I don’t have to go to the doctor and drop items of clothing, as Sir would be had up for spousal abuse. The people at the office are wondering if I’m suffering from a silent form of Tourette’s syndrome – I seem to be having the Twist, but not the Shout. I’m so dotted with Calamine Lotion that I appear to have negative small pox.

Mother Nature’s now making me remember in a bit of a hurry.

You have the Mascara Melt. This occurs on the days which get so hot and humid that the gunk holding your eyelashes in a gracious curve just says “ah nuts” and slides off in a display of surrender. Mingled with the eye shadow and liner, you end up looking like you’ve gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson, ears intact nonetheless.

The nights without a breath of wind, the windows again firmly clamped shut. 

The air conditioning bill. 

The dry cleaner’s gone into a pit of despair – no dry cleaning needed now it’s warm. And I join the pit as I iron my non-iron shirts, as my mascara runs down to my ankles, oozing over the fly bites.

Oh, and with the oncoming summer, hark back to the lowly gas prices we had through winter. And don’t for a moment believe they’ll drop back to that level ever again. Hark back to the cheap milk, the abounding cost-efficient produce.

What the hell happened? It seems that all of a sudden it’s become fair game to hike up the price of everything because the sun’s been out for a month or two? 

But nevertheless, happy Fourth of July. Wear long sleeves, lots of DEET, ride your bike and grow your own tomatoes.

Sigh. Roll on Thanksgiving. I’ll take the ice.