Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Summer and Bummer...they rhyme

     I will be the first to admit that I have a history of being seduced by pretty words and promises, only to be betrayed, my hopes and dreams dashed, my feelings stomped all over...and then more pretty words and promises, forgiving and forgetting, always hopeful, in a repeated cycle for far too long.
     This is how I am feeling about summer, that seemingly delightful season of sunshine and laughter, of carefree days and sultry nights, vacations and swimming pools and gardens, huge 4th of July celebrations with all the extended family and it's swarms of kids and cousins. Summer has, hitherto, been my favorite season, hands down.  The smell of heated earth and asphalt and swamp coolers.,,Beautifully frightening thunderstorms, the smell of lighting and rain, the boom of thunder...waking up with the sun already shining, and a box fan blowing...road trips, gardens, tanned skin and lightened hair, flip flops and sunglasses...heightened creativity and moods....(More manic in the summer, more depressive in the winter)...a bright and shining beacon to look towards in the depth of cold, dreary winter...pretty words and promises that held true until..
    Somewhere in the vicinity of 6 years ago, we bought a house on 4 acres of land. It was an older home, a little shabby around the edges, but with so much character and potential! The land was largely wild, overgrown with prickly pear and mesquite bushes, and we had visions of large gardens and swimming pools...summer was well under way when we moved in, and that year, I made prickly pear jelly/syrup. Not caring to run into a rattlesnake unprepared, I put on heavy gloves and boots, and grabbed some tongues and my two sons...one with a gun and one with a baseball bat...and I harvested those prickly pear fruits with only a few stabs to the finger.  It was a long process of declawing them, cooking them, mashing them, straining them, gelling them, and by the time I was done, there was a wild pink mess in the kitchen and a precious few jars of (beautiful delicious) jelly/syrup.

     This is me, having a blast on the John Deere, clearing this space for the donkeys, Cooter and Cletus.



This is the house........


That was probably the last great summer we had. 

The following spring, when it was time to plant the huge garden I had envisioned, the cold hard truth struck me in the tiller.  Our big beautiful piece of land was right on top of a whole lot of caliche. Rocks. Rocks, rocks, rocks, and more rocks.  So we purchased an above ground pool instead of gardening. But the wind blew, carried the cover off to who knows where, and filled the pool up with dirt. Emptied, washed, and about to be refilled, the wind blew again, and completely wrecked the pool. The following summer, the sky fell, the economy did it's thing, and there was no work for us. We ended up homeless and bunking with relatives in Texas.  The summer after that, nothing much happened, and I mean NOTHING, other than a weekend roadtrip to Phoenix. Let me tell you...Phoenix a little far from Texas to be going in a weekend! There was always next summer, though, and I remained happy and hopeful. Then the next summer came. We moved. It took up most of the summer. The "industry" had opened back up, and The Big Chief resumed work (after a stint of very enjoyable but not well paid farm labor). He was working millions of hours and then having to commute an hour. So we moved in order to be closer to "the yard", and so that he wouldn't have the commute, and could be home more. Except, right after we moved, the oilfield boom opened up around Midland/Odessa/Pecos, and he started having to stay out more and more and more, and now he lives at a man camp near Pecos most of the time. So, that worked out well. We considered moving AGAIN, to that area, but so did everybody else and housing was near impossible to find. The FOLLOWING summer, Joey died,




and now this summer, my daddy died, as did the A/C in our newly purchased home, which makes the summer heat markedly less appealing, and some other unsavory stuff going on, the Chief gone all the time...in spite of my scheming and planning.....THIS SUMMER IS NOT FUN!!!
 
     So you can see how summer has lost it's shininess, and how in the middle of this one, i'm not even thinking that probably there will be next summer, which is bound to be more fun. I'm thinking that I am DONE with summer's empty promises, and I am on the cusp of realigning my loyalties. I'm thinking that fall will make a good Favorite Season.


6 comments:

  1. Awwws.. <3 Well.. Fall is a good pick.. PLUS, it's a lot sooner to arrive than NEXT summer is?! *hugs* Love you.

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  2. Oh Val. You quack (I mean crack) me up! I feel like my summer has been rhyming with bummer too... lots of different reasons than yours though. I need a vacation so bad... but want to move in to our house badder. (Is badder a word?) Hugs and love to u my ducky friend. ~ Dori ~

    P.S. guess what I just discovered? Ducky rhymes with lucky! Maybe that will be your next title!!!!

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    1. I am so glad that you quacked up! My girls said that this was a depressing post, which was not my intention in the least!! I can imagine how ready you are to move into your house!!!!! (Badder is a word, now!!) Ducky DOES rhyme with lucky! How lucky ducky am I to have such ducky friends? :) Love you!

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