Summertime, and the living is... hmm

Summer, it may surprise you to learn, is my least favorite season of the year. I suggest that it may be surprising because I’m a teacher, and most teachers get a vacation during their summer months. If you didn’t know, let me tell you a secret: teachers love summer vacation. It has been posited by many among the learned and wise that teachers crave summer vacation more than students do, but I’ll leave such musings to the philosophers. Never mind that teachers usually go to training during their summer months and tend to spend a surprising amount of time during the summer preparing for the year ahead – a vacation is a vacation, and most teachers like it.

And to be sure, I do love the vacation part. I love my job, but time off from a job is sweet. However, there are things I do not like about summer. I don’t tend to enjoy being in the heat. I’m a cold weather fan, which makes life mostly uncomfortable in the great state of Arkansas. We’re in a temperate climate, but it’s a warm temperate. Icky, sweaty, nasty, and humid, the weeks crawl by. Another aspect of summer life is bugs. I live for the winter time when all the bugs have died and gone to their well-deserved eternal torment in the pits of Gehenna. During their summer bacchanals, I find myself covered in welts and constantly sweeping all manner of vermin out of my home. It’s bad enough that I have to walk around in the heat without having to also be careful about yawning to widely for fear of passing grasshoppers.

But my greatest complaint (and yes, I am aware that this entire post is nothing more than a wordy airing of grievances, but it’s where my mind is) about the summer months is mowing. That complaint extends to spring and fall, but only partially in those cases. In the summer, it’s all mowing, all the time. If could pave over my entire yard, I would do it. But the neighbors might complain. As would my family. So, a yard it will be. And I’ll be out there cutting the grass, week after week.

I’d rather be revising, to be honest.
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-J. E. Ayers