Summer of my Discontent

I despise August. I really don't like heat much, and so by August (especially this summer), I'm really sick of it. I'm longing for cool days, chilly nights, a brisk northwest breeze to knock leaves off the trees, a hint of snow in the air, and dusk at about 4:30.

I must have the opposite of SAD. It's in the cool, dark evenings of fall and winter that I feel most invigorated and happiest.

Of course, my summer discontent isn't helped by the fact that all my children were born in either March or April, which means I spent lots of Augusts feeling queasy.

For several years after my last child was born, I would physically react to the sound of crickets chirping in August; I'd feel a sense of dread, almost depression.

Finally I realized I'd been classically conditioned to feel ill at the sound of crickets because of all those awful first-trimesters that were spent in the doldrums of August.

Today is shaping up to be another in a series of relentlessly sunny, hot, dry August days.

Good Lord, I can't wait for November.