Chilling out in the Summer

When you're a mother of small children, you go outside with them in the 90+ degree summer and get sweaty and stinky and dirty. If you're staying home for days on end to repeat the process, it's okay to just throw on a hat, some deodorant, and get sweatier, stinkier, and dirtier. It doesn't take long to acclimate under those constant conditions, and before long you're bringing sweatshirts for you and the kids to wear during long trips to the grocery store, and running around in the summer rain counts as showering.

But you get to the point where you could use your leg hair to chirp like a cricket, and you have to shave it so you can wear shorts in public. Your head hair actually HURTS from wearing a hat.

Then you have to leave the house, like, to take a kid to the doctor's office, or run to the store. You HAVE to take a shower. You are a nasty human specimen that should not be allowed even at Walmart. You look and smell like you just returned from a weekend float-trip and never managed to swim or flip your canoe, and then were kidnapped by a family of Bigfoots for a week. (Or would the plural be "Bigfeet"? Maybe it stays singular...a family of Bigfoot...). Sasquatches. Sasquatchi?

So you hop into the shower, knowing you're going to be in there for a bit to right all that's wrong. Perhaps you discover that the hot water heater didn't kick on and there is ABSOLUTELY no hot water. You shave your goosebumps off. You wash your hair twice and condition it, (you have to condition it because it's dry from coloring it and hours in the sun). Fortunately for you, the AC seems to have no problem kicking on while you're in there. You are woman, hear your teeth chatter while you roar, "I can't do a puzzle right now, I'm trying to take a shower!" Grabbing the clean towel hanging up, you realize it's still cold and damp from your husband's shower that morning. The rest are in the laundry, of course, or drying outside from playing in the inflatable baby pool.

To survive, you channel all the insane heat you've absorbed in the last week, and decide to take the kids to the pool that afternoon. Your feel your toenails turn purple under your chipped and faded polish. You hope to stop shivering by then, but figure a day at the pool in the sun should do it. After all, you've managed to shave your legs...it's a shame to waste all that effort on just the doctor's office. You may briefly fantasize about being able to sunbathe and read a book and not actually get in the water to hover within arms-length of them while they splash you and try their best to drown themselves.

You get back from the freezing doctor's office AC (where you sat with a wet head because you had to change a diaper at the last minute and find a randomly-placed shoe instead of using a nice, warm hairdryer) and it starts raining. Seriously. You just got the hormone-free, dye-free, preservative-free, organic, microwaved, canned Spaghettio-looking lunch eaten, and it's raining. And it's only 80 degrees. In case you weren't aware, skinny people can comfortably wear sweatshirts when it's 75. They don't want to go swimming on cloudy, rainy days when it's only 83.

There's a first time for everything, and I've had many bucket-list firsts in my lifetime, but this may be the first time I've ever showered and shaved only to bundle up and make chicken soup in the air conditioning. In June. Thank goodness I don't have to go to the grocery store to get anything!
In my next blog, I may discuss that milestone achievement when one's Norwegian/Irish heritage finally allows them a tan that is dark enough to blend with "nude-colored" undergarments. Thanks for the reads!

~ J.N.