Today is the longest day of the year, the first official day of summer, and the freaking hottest day of the year so far. Thanks Mother Nature, I suppose it was too much to ask for you to hold off on the 100 degree weather until this weekend when I get my AC installed huh? Or maybe wait until I wasn’t planning to spend the height of the afternoon outside in the bleacher seats of Yankee Stadium. No? Awesome. Still, even with the prospect of dying from heat stroke, I can’t help but be excited about summer. Truth be told, I always get a little excited about changes in season. The first flowers of spring, the lengthening of days, the first leaves changing colors, the first snow, it never fails to wake me up a little. Nature shakes off the old and tries on a new look, so it seems only right to do the same, to start again.

Awhile back I told Roo, apropos of nothing, that this summer would be the beginning of big things for us. I can’t decide if that was a prediction based on hope, determination, or something entirely different. I just said it and somehow, we both decided to believe it. So when we sat on the waterfront near our hometown, soaking in the sun and tossing back beers, Roo seemed justified  in mentioning that it was already mid-June and nothing had really changed. She was still working three part-time jobs instead of one full-time one. I was dicking around my apartment and the gym all day instead of working. My writing has been sporadic and not very good. Her mother is still driving her crazy as usual. And we were both still single. That last one only really bothered her since I’m kind of indifferent to the whole dating thing at the moment (it might be nice, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to make an effort). Faith in my declaration was flagging. And why shouldn’t it? For all intents and purposes, it was the height of summer! The summer where everything was supposed to change! Why had nothing changed?

So when I casually glanced at my calendar this morning to see, marked in three different languages, that today was the official beginning of summer, I immediately texted Roo. I enjoy being right. I’m stubborn and I argue and as my father says, I probably should have been a lawyer. So I was pretty damn triumphant to see that I could still be proved right. This could still be the summer that changed everything. And speak of the devil, Roo just called to say she’s in town so I gotta run!

xoxo

Cat