Summer Lovin' Happened So Fast

You know what amazed me this week?

That I was able to write this post about the advent of fall with a pleasant tone and an air of nonchalance.

"Autumn? Oh yes. Come September, it happens. After all, I live in Minnesota. C'est la vie."

In reality, I'm more like the lone (cough, idiotic, cough) female in a horror movie who has agreed to separate from the group to see if anything is amiss at the rustic cabin where the group is stranded who then discovers a bloody stump in the wood chipper.

"FAAAAALLLLLL! AHHHHHH! IT'S FAAAAALLLLL!"

Lest I misrepresent, I do love fall, The Season. I just don't love fall, This Year. It's come much too quickly, and I resent its arrival.

Every June I have a recurring nightmare. I go to bed, giddy with plans of a bright tomorrow full of sunshine and swimming, and when I wake up, school buses are making the rounds and everyone is wearing sweatshirts. "School is starting today! Didn't you hear?" So I groggily stumble to the corner curb, with a backpack the size of a small Volkswagen bug, trying desperately to conjure up a few pleasant summer memories. But there are none, for apparently, I've slept the entire summer away.

That, my friends, is horrifying.

Yet that's almost exactly how I feel this year. Logically, I know we had 12 weeks off school. I can look through My Pictures folder and see hundreds of pictures of fun trips and outings. I sport suntan lines where my swimsuit once was.

But when I walked into school with Natalie this past Tuesday, I couldn't shake the cold panic, the feeling that I must be living a nightmare. "Weren't we JUST here? Didn't we JUST do this? Can it really be fall already? What happened to my summer?"

The only remedy for this situation, as I see it, is to have a Summer Review here on the blog. Maybe if I tell you a few stories and share some of my favorite memories, the brightness of Summer 2008 will have more sheen.

So get ready for next week. It will be like watching a slide show from your favorite aunt's Hawaii vacation.

Oh. Wait.

Maybe that's your nightmare.

Bwhahahahahaha.