The cool weather and rain of the past few days was a relief. Next week looks poised to show off Chicago at its summertime best: partly cloudy skies through Wednesday, followed by full sunshine on Thursday, and temperatures in the low- to mid- 70s. Ahhhhh.
But next weekend, the forecast includes daily highs in the mid to upper ’80s. Bwaaaahhh!
It’s the bottom half of August, and I’m on my last nerve with summer. Now, I’m immensely grateful to live where I do, within a few miles of nature’s greatest air conditioner, Lake Michigan. I regularly remind myself, and Angelic Daughter too, that we are stupendously lucky to live here, and even luckier to have made it this deep into the summer enduring only a few days in the ’90s. I look at the summer temperature maps that show most of Texas, Arizona, central California, Nevada, and Utah blazing deep red, with long stretches of triple digit temperatures lasting weeks at a time and think, how do they stand it? And why do people keep moving to those places? News flash, folks: SUMMERS WON’T GET COOLER AND THERE IS NO WATER THERE.
Something I knew would happen, but was afraid to name out loud, has now been named: a columnist in the New York Times floated the idea (disapprovingly, thank God) of building a water pipeline from the Great Lakes to parched, wantonly water-wasting, food producing places like California’s Central Valley. The writer notes that we depend on California for a quarter of our food supply, even as growers there pump groundwater dry and drain rivers down to trickles. Hence the coming food crisis is our own collective damn fault.
Even so, I feel compelled to be blunt toward you, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Texas: you want our water? Then you damn well better come live through our winters.
While I’m acutely aware of my good fortune, living through a relatively mild summer compared to sunbelt and Great Plains places, I know Chicagoland isn’t exempt from heat waves and droughts. I’m grateful that my handy brother installed a rain barrel by my front patio garden as a birthday present for me.
For the rest of August, I’m keeping my eyes on the calendar and coaching myself to just get through it, you can do it! What’s a few 89 degree days when you know September is coming, followed by glorious, gracious, golden October and the comforting gray of November. Maybe this year, La Nina will even bring a snowier winter and a few more cold spells (I can dream, can’t I?) before imposing a dryer, hotter summer in 2025.
But in this latter half of August, it hard to fake cheerfulness about mowing the lawn and trimming back invasive shrubs (“great exercise! It feels so good to sweat! Yay!) NOPE.
This final stretch of summer finds me slumped in a chair doomscrolling and slurping sugary frozen things that I should not be eating (not to mention foamy or bubbly liquid things that I should not be drinking) rather than merrily weeding my flowerbeds or harvesting my very late producing vegetable garden. The heat and humidity turn me into a sluggish slob, rationalizing putting off yard maintenance tasks until things are cooler and drier, as the weeds grow more aggressive and the stealth zucchinis grow to monumental proportions under cover of their mother plant’s huge leaves.
Meh. Feh! I can’t think straight, I can’t find a way to be productive. I can’t muster the energy or the will to work out. It feels like I just can’t get anything done in late August. The only thing I seem capable of doing is giving myself permission to just let it all go–the yard work, the working out, even any kind of discipline at all, including dietary discipline (it’s hot! I deserve ice cold beer and ice cream sandwiches!) I’ll get around to chores when the sky is blue and the air is crisp!
Meantime, you may find me on my fainting “couch” (my TV chair right next to my bedroom’s window air conditioner), or sleeping through mornings, or napping through afternoons when the idea of chores just makes me groan. Wiping off the kitchen counter and setting the dishwasher to run late at night are about all I’ve got in me. Laundry and yard work can wait.
The stick vacuum suddenly won’t charge anymore. The weed-infested grass outside and the dust and cobwebs inside cause me to turn away and collapse into a recliner, planning to wake up when the temperature is consistently below 70 degrees.
Until then, I remain,
your aw-quit-yer-whining-and-get-that-shaggy-lawn-mowed, drippy-sweaty-soaked-curls-and-fogged-glasses, cursing-the-mosquitoes-and-the-no-seeums-that-turn-my-arms-and-ankles-into-itching-scab-farms,
Ridiculouswoman
Drain the Great Lakes? Yikes, like that would solve anything. How about, maybe it’s fifty years past the time when we should have made a few changes and we need to step it up: less means more for everyone. Amazon, WalMart, ect have their place but let’s face it I don’t believe we were born to shop (just my opinion). We are do for a cool down too, but then up to the nineties. Enjoy your summer break from yard work, house chores!
Thanks! I took advantage of a lake breeze and cooler temps to mow the lawns this morning – I set the mower lower by an inch hoping tgat neans Ivwon’t have to mow again until the heat passes after the weekend!