It’s the middle of July and the only thing I want to see in the high 90’s are fastballs, but the warm summer is hitting its stride (just like the Cubs ) as we approach the All-Star game and the temperature is a near-record 96 degrees.
I’ve started reading three different books in the last week and I’ve put them all down. Between Jack, work, and day-to-day distractions (it’s amazing how quickly laundry, mail and un-returned phone calls can pile up) I don’t seem to be able to focus on anything for more than ten seconds – books, movies, conversations, even sleep exist in a world of fits and starts and seemingly endless beginnings without a single conclusion (it’s a near-miracle I can finish this sentence).
I still have an uncanny ability to amass scraps of paper with notes for current and future projects. Receipts, envelopes, the corners of newspapers are scrawled in barely-legible pen scratchings, occasionally disintegrating in the pockets of jeans tossed into the hamper and jackets hung in closets months ago.
The summer makes me lazy. I know I’m supposed to love it. As a Chicagoan I’m almost obligated to look forward to these balmy (muggy, sticky, sultry) days and nights as if they only come once a decade like some constantly deferred birthday party. But I don’t. I prefer it cooler, rainier, greyer; maybe it’s my eastern European lineage. Not all the time. But if I had my way it would be 58 degrees with passing fronts of enormous clouds, clouds as big as entire states stacked like plumes of chimney smoke.
Tomorrow it’s supposed to “cool off” to 89 degrees.
October can’t get here soon enough.
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