We know summer approacheth. We know that before too much longer, we will be hanging up those tights and baring those knees. But this year, Mother Nature is making fine sport with us by giving us a day of warmth, followed by a week of chill and damp.
Just in case we “near the beach” dwellers should want to rush the season, clouds the consistency of mashed potatoes keep rolling in from the ocean.
I have decided that Mother Nature might be having her midlife crisis. She must no longer be the young, supple nymph she once was. Can it be that she, too, is dreading the lightweight toga weather and plans to keep the chill level up just as long as she jolly well can?
I am a little weary of dragging in wood for fires, adding another comforter and de-linting my sweaters, but these chores pale when I consider sliding this body of pearlike shape and road map thighs into shorts or a swimsuit, in broad daylight.
So, for me as for many, it is the season of renewal, rebirth and retreat from the refrigerator. It’s time to trim. It’s get-back-to-the-weight-I-was-10-years-ago-in-10-days-time.
This is the trade-off of not living in a state where winter lasts until late May. They get to keep those baggy woolens on longer. Here, spring flowers are blooming and spring break is upon us.
I can probably avoid the beach since the water temperature is arctic, but well-meaning friends are beginning to offer their pools and spas, and I am getting panicky.
I have considered my options, and they are manifold and horrible. There is the 2,000 calories-a-day option. Can’t do it. I get hungry, and end up eating the last stale crackers in the box at midnight. There is the chocolate-diet-drink option. That leaves me ravenous by 9:30 a.m.
I could take one of the current diet supplement pills; however, they contain stimulants, which give me lots of energy and the disposition of a harpy.
There are the commercial weight loss clinics, which want several hundred of my dollars plus the cost of their frozen foods. Perhaps the no-carbohydrates, no-sugar diet. That plan prompts me to buy wildly expensive cuts of meat, rare cheese and canned asparagus, which I deserve since I can’t have one lousy cookie.
Oh sure. I exercise, but just as I was managing to drag out of bed early enough for that, some fool launched daylight savings time. For me, “springing ahead” is more like being catapulted into a brick wall.
I will eventually relish the long evenings, but that time is a host of triple-shot coffees away.
I am still fantasizing about being a bear in hibernation. Now there’s an animal that appreciates a season of stored-up fat. Where did we humans go wrong?
Jean Gillette is a freelance writer looking for knee-length bathing suits. Contact her at [email protected].
