July 13th… Not happy we’re half way through Summer ALREADY!!

Seems like just yesterday that we were shivering our butts off, wishing the snow would melt and the sun would warm the air to a comfortable “Let’s go to the old swimming hole” temperature……… and now look, in about four months, we’ll be right back in that possible snow scenario all over again. WHERE is our lives going?…… If you’re now 10 - 15 years old……..summer break is a lifetime long. You just can’t wait for this boring summer stuff to end and allow you to get back to your friends and school and fun stuff. You just know your friends are sitting around the house looking just as bored as you…wearing out the Wii and sleeping just to make it through the lousy day. Come on fall!!!! Let school begin again!!!!!!!!!! If you’re 20 - 30 you don’t even notice the seasons change as they continue to come and go……“who cares, we’ve got better things to do!” Just let me finish the day’s work and get home to a cold one and the wife and kids….uh…make that the creek bank and a fishing rod….and remember that cold one…..uh….forget the rod, bring the beer! Let’s party!!

But, when you’re 50 or over……summer is like a weeks vacation… with the kids. It goes so fast because you’re busy doing what someone else wants or shit that needs done and summer ends up as a glimpse of what we all want forever, yet seldom get to enjoy as it whisks past like a thief in the night. All I know is that I remember fall….as it gets colder and the leaves disappear and days get too short to finish what I never seem to get done. Then I remember the snow, asshole deep to a ten foot Indian. (I can say that without ACLU repercussions because my mother was part Injun, hence, so am I.) Then there’s remembering how the snow melted for one day and next, our receipt of another two foot supply and on and on throughout spring (which lasted two days) and then dove directly into summer. This SUCKS! We love life and it’s becoming way too short for comfort. We have nothing we really have to do except finish the barn before cold weather and can’t even seem to get that done! Why do I feel like I’ll be nailing boards in sub-zero weather….thinking about the summer weather that shot past us like a BB from a cannon! WHO SAW IT COMING    OR   GOING?

Today looks like rain. That would be because I got my butt stung yesterday…..got pissed off…..quit working on the barn with bees swarming all over…..killed the hell out of every living bee just at dusk, planning to resume my work this morning. Yeah…I understand how to get it to rain now!

Years ago, in Pennsylvania, as I was growing up…… at the tender age of 12 years old, I, like my parents, was branded as “The Rain Makers”. This name was bestowed upon our family because we had a camping lot along the Juniata river, in central Pa. Every time we went there to spend the weekend it would rain! If we planned to stay for a week……..it rained for a week. Neighboring campers used to hate seeing us pull in and some even went so far as to go home at the sight of us arriving. Now, for my folks, this is back in the age bracket where the week was a fleeting few lousy, pain in the ass hours of sun ups and sun downs, before it would be over and we would go home. For me…… the age group I was in, allowed me to plan a flood strategy, bait farming plan and a boat fluid control plan as I sat in the middle of the river in a row boat, fishing, in the driving rain. I caught a lot of fish in those days………hell, no one else was there or on the water. Mom and dad were huddled in the camper, so I had the entire Juniata river all to myself from the Allegany Mountains where it originated, all the way to the bay in Maryland. All I had to do was keep the rain bailed out of the boat so it didn’t sink. (it did keep the fish alive longer as they swam around in the bottom of the boat. this though came about as a result of my "Boat fluid control plan", of which I mentioned earlier)

Oh, if life would just slow down a little or Vick and I could discover a way to regain that juvenile disregard for time and it’s slow motion effect, we wouldn’t ever have to worry about being rich! Shucks, We both are rich as long as we have each other anyway! Even while time does pass us by.