Picture This

OK, Picture this: It's three a.m.-ish. It's raining and thundering, a real honest-to-goodness midwest storm. I, personally, love a good rainstorm. I mean, really love a good storm. I sleep like a baby. Until, of course, the dog realizes that it's storming. Not just storming, but thundering.
And Everyone knows, any dog over 50 pounds hates a thunderstorm. And so, my 95-ish pound lap dog pushes open the bedroom door with his nose, nails clicking across the old wooden floors, and sits beside my bed and pants. And pants. After a few minutes of panting, he begins to whine. More like a cry , really. And when that doesn't work, he edges closer, and eventually gets up the nerve to stick his nose into my armpit, and rub it around and whine like a baby.
All creatures know a mom when they see one, I think. My dog, the Malamute, see-He's My dog. And he knows it. He knows I'm the one here who gives comfort, and leftovers, and the occasional early morning car ride. So he whines, and nuzzles, and eventually, like my kids when they were babies, he finally manages to wake me. And he's rewarded with the one thing that calms a 95-ish pound baby: a silent ear scratch.
He gets his scratch, and even though the storm doesn't subside immediately, he soon sinks to the floor, nails sliding across the ancient wood. I'm rewarded with a sigh, a sound I've come to realize means he's calmed down enough to not need to be babied anymore tonight. And then, after a little comfort from mom, he sleeps. All he needed was to know that someone was looking out for him. Someone in charge of the pack, in charge of the family.
Like a 70's cross-stitched sampler, I realize, an old mom doesn't die, she just gets new babies.

In General

In General, I loathe summer. I am, for the most part, much like my Alaskan Malamute, who spends three months of the year laying right on top of the vents the air conditioning comes out of. If you try to make him move, he just lays there and stares at you. He doesn't even eat in the summer, or at least not much. If I could sleep through summer, I would. So I just get cranky and grill things so as not heat up the kitchen while making dinner.
I very much prefer Autumn, or even winter. I know, I'm crazy, but hey, I try to live with it.
So, it is with great adulation that I woke this morning to a day of only 70 degrees and possible rain. And my Mal is actually moving today. And since it's been so hot here that you can actually feel your skin burning in the sun, our dear Mal is blowing his coat for the third time this year. (They're not supposed to do that. When a Mal blows his coat, it's like it rains fur-great chunks of it, everywhere, and they walk around looking like someone combed them by sticking a moving fan blade in their fur and running it backwards up their backs. Not pretty-got it? )
Since I have to endure two more months of summer before I get real lasting relief from the heat, I thought I'd make a list of things about summer I do like, in hopes of psyching myself into liking summer...

1. Strawberries
2. Garage Sales
3. Long Days
4. Evenings on our back deck
5. Grilled whatever for dinner ( !No planning! Just throw a slab of something on the grill... )
6. Saturday road trips to antique/junk shops
7. No school for my dd (great girl, love having her home)
8. Home Improvement projects actually getting done (December in Northern IL = frozen paint)
9. Occasional walks through local state parks
10. Local small city-fairs

Of course, if I made a list of things I don't like about summer, it'd be a much longer list, involving Japanese beetles eating my entire backyard, bees, sweat, bees, heat...Well, you get the idea. But I'm ignoring all of that. Really. Trying to, anyway.