August

Our grass is dead, but that's okay: so is everyone else's. The signs around town have us justified--no outdoor watering permitted--and the temperature has hovered around 100 since the calendar flipped to August. Where are we, Arizona? No, the humidity's a dead give away, and the football team's uniforms are wrong now, but I suppose once things start bursting into flame, given the parched conditions, we can pretend to be in California.

Too bad there's no In-N-Out Burger. Or beach.

The fires are on my list of million and twelve reasons that CA is a better place to visit than to live, but everything's a trade off. And given that it's been a year since I've seen the ocean, and given that tomorrow's forecast is for 102 individual degrees, and given that school starts on Tuesday and I've got so much to do that I can feel the stress in my chest even now at 8 o'clock on this Saturday morning, I'm pretty sure that a day in the sand and the salty breezes listening to the crash of the waves--is there any better sound?--'til the sun sets, and the sweatshirts come out, and the bonfire (the good kind of fire) lights, and I stay and stay and sit some more would cure what ails me, even if there were the faintest smell of smoke in that cool California night air.