No fear for cold

For someone who says she hates summer, I am certainly head over heels for it today.

For today, all day, it is hot enough to languish in the sun. To wear shorts and hang load after load of laundry. To lay out a blanket and call it a picnic.

Asher comes in, in the early morning, declaring he's a "naked baby" (again; this is fairly common), and we don't mind. Because it's hot. He's three weeks toilet trained, now, so he and his underwear are good friends. The little nautical striped briefs go everywhere. He uses them as a holster. As a tool belt. As a power ranger thingy-whatever-that-is. Legos stick out from the sides and a plastic blue toy he uses as a phone. He is a naked baby, all day, no fear for cold.

Last summer, when the heat was so bad, bearing down on us like hell in humidity, there was no escape. No yard/garden to run willy-nilly in. Nowhere to run but up to the north woods. We were encased, pent up like animals in heat, so exhausted from sun we dare not open a curtain.

But this year, we fling the windows wide, airing out a long winter. We spend all day outside (OK, some of the day outside; there was still Wii-playing and video-watching). We get out the hose and let the kids have a run through it; her clothes dripping wet, she drops them on the spot and up on the line they go. We picnic in the back garden, hot dogs spilling into grass. 

I know too soon this will be over, and last week will return next week, when mist came in through the windows and I sat in this very chair contemplating my collection of scarfs instead of sweating under the sun. Today I guzzle cold water for I know next week I'll be nursing hot tea. Probably. Maybe.

Or it could stay like this forever.

This week, the country feels magical. Everyone is giggly; I can hear it on the road and from the houses. Grown adults eat popsicles in the street. The radio announcers thank their American guests, sure this weather can only come from the New World. We chat over the fence to our neighbours, the woman at the till remarks at the luck.

So sunny, so warm, so much summer for such an island as Ireland.

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Linking up with Heather of the EO and Just Write.