It's not as late as I think it is

Maybe it's the strange weather this year, or maybe it's that, in previous years, it always felt like summer went by in a blink, but this year I find myself surprised every time I look at the calendar. The grass outside is already dormant and brown, the flowers are past their prime, the heat is on, and the drought conditions, but it's not August yet.

During the peak of the heat wave we were lucky enough to be enjoying a previously planned week-long vacation, but while we were there are dogs were stuck in our house with the dog sitter, who had express permission to actually use our A/C, except that, one day after the hottest day thus far, it broke. We came home to a house that was 90 degrees and humid, and that makes a body sluggish. Plus any time we return from a vacation I find myself woefully unprepared for real life. So far I have yet to get up and run—it's been too hot even at 7am anyhow—and we're only just getting to the laundry today, five days after our return.

Some lazing is good. I'd call it summer hibernation, if we didn't have to save that term for our mid-winter ennui. And actually, it's different from that funk, because it's not a lack of interest, it's a lack of impetus. We're reading, we're dancing in the sprinklers, we're playing games, we're taking afternoon naps. I think, though, that it's time to pull our heads out of the sand—or towels, as the case may be—and get back to something, if I could just remember what that something is.