Summertime is Here

Summertime is here

Filled with searing heat

Sun that all the people call

awful, hot, and bright

Pollen in the air

Mosquitoes everywhere

Sunny times and painful bites

and burned, peeling skin

Sunblock in the air

Sweating everywhere

Hundred-degree weather

Thousand-degree pavement

Summertime is here

Bugs are drawing near

Oh, how we hope to see

Winter drawing near

Precious Air

My father had been feeling short of breath for about a week. Thinking he must have bronchitis or pneumonia, we took him to the hospital to be checked out. They took him in immediately upon hearing he was short of breath. After doing tests, they discovered he had a heart attack.

That night when I went to bed, it took me a while to get to sleep. I kept thinking and worrying. Worse, I would start to doze off, then suddenly feel like I couldn't breathe, causing me to wake and take a gasp of air. It was likely just nerves messing with my mind. Despite telling myself this, I repeated it a few times more before finally getting to sleep.

The following day, I heard that Dad didn't have a very good night. At one point during the night, he suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe, and the doctors had to put him on oxygen. He told us that he had panicked when he found he was unable to breathe. My mother, who had asthma attacks as a child, said that she understood how he felt.

It all makes you realize just how precious air is.

The Geese

When my grandmother was a child, her mother bought some geese. The idea was that she would keep these geese and get money by selling the eggs that they laid.

The geese were rather ill-tempered, and would frequently chase my grandmother and nip at her ankles. She soon began to hate the horrible geese. So she would wait nearby the nests, and when a goose sat own to lay an egg, she would reach through the fence with a stick and poke at the goose, bothering them and giving them no peace.

After a while, the geese weren't providing many eggs. Her mother eventually grew frustrated by this and got rid of the geese, thus ridding my grandmother of the bothersome creatures forever. My grandmother had won the war.

Restless Indecision

I've been feeling rather restless and indecisive lately. I feel like writing, but don't have a chance to when I want to. Then when I have time to write, I feel like staring at the television or playing video games. When I'm sitting at home, I feel like getting out of the house and doing something. When we're going to a doctor's appointment and a shopping trip, all I want is to go home and relax.

Perhaps my real problem lies in the desire to get away from the tedium, the running around, the stress. When I want to go home, what I really want is to escape sitting in a waiting room. When I want to get out of the house, what I really want is to do something fun, hang out with people, and not be bored or burdened with stuff I need to do. My mind wants to escape into a story when everything is happening at once, yet when I have nothing to do, my mind wants to relax and treasure not having stuff to do. But the fact that I need to stop sitting around creeps into my mind, making me feel frustrated from combined guilt and laziness.

Today, as I was questioning myself about what it was that I really wanted, I realized how much I'm looking forward to the day we've planned to go to the theater. It means I'm not running around the house doing various tasks, or sitting around the house with part of myself restless and part of me wanting to be a sloth. It means I'm not walking through the supermarket parking lot in the blazing heat, or watching my parents fill out the umpteenth medical form, or stuck in a long line because of construction being done on a road that doesn't really need construction. The theater means I'm hanging out with friends and family, enjoying myself and watching movies.

And as long as I'm thinking about that, I'd also like to fantasize about going to northern Alaska to escape the summer heat.

Chatty Cathy

After my friend's graduation party, her father stayed there and talked with her and her mother for a while. My friend eventually went to bed around midnight. Her mother and father stayed up a while longer, continuing to sit outside and chat with each other. After a while, they noticed something rather odd.

"Is that the sun over there?" they said in disbelief.

Her mother went into the house to look at the time. Upon coming back, she said, "You don't want to know what time it is."

Naturally, he asked what time it was anyway, to which she replied, "Five a.m."

When my friend's mother came to pick me up for church, she told me this story, then added that perhaps it was the reason she felt like she was losing her voice. Not only can she talk on the phone with my mother for three hours, she can sit outside and chat with a friend all night.