First Day of Summer

Out with Spring! Time for iced-tea & air conditioning! Springtime in Utah is usually hot enough to be considered summer. But it's the still the end of a season! Time to heat up!

This morning someone asked me my favorite summer memory as a kid. It goes like this:

It's sort of a lot of memories but one activity. It went on for years. My mom would let us know around 7:30 pm that we were going to pack up and go to the drive-in. We all knew that meant we should get on our pj's and start cooking popcorn. She would do this weird 'popcorn in a pan' thing and then we'd stuff it into layered paper sacks. The butter wouldn't seep through and we'd have two huge grocery bags of popcorn - one for the front seat and one for the back. Wonderful! She'd load us into the Ford Fairmont and, lucky for me, I got the front seat every time. My brothers are twins and are a couple of years younger. They always fell asleep during the first show. But I was smarter than them. I knew this was My time with My mom. I would do anything to stay awake and just sit there with her. She would give me "sneak" sips of her Pepsi and I would eat enough popcorn to make me sick for days. I don't remember a single movie we ever saw - just the time we spent preparing for those double features that mostly just included me sitting with her and hoping to be just like her one day.

Summer is all about those spontaneous moments. Waking up and saying "let's plant five trees today" or Cristy ordering pasta salad from the pub and driving us up to the canyon for an impromtu dinner date. Today is the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. What can I squeeze in to make it memorable? I mean, should we all be doing something "else" today since we have more daylight? What do I typically stop doing when the sun goes down? Maybe I'll be gardening and think "oh, if only I had another 38 seconds to pull those last few weeds". Or "you know, I should call my good friend because there's still a few more minutes of sunshine today". Either way, it's all downhill from here people. Days will be shorter and shorter and pretty soon we'll be counting down to Christmas.

But wait! There are so many wonderful things that come before Christmas! Our housewarming party, a river rafting trip! Equality Utah's Allies Dinner and the wedding of our dearest friends! There is much to be done and the sunshine is running out!

But if you're already over that hump and counting, (as am I) there are still One hundred and Eight seven days until Christmas :)