you store it you lock it you keep the key
ENDLESS FREAKING SUMMER
There will be none of the standard Oh No Summer Is Passing Me By/Gather Rosebuds While Ye May angsting from me, because I am full to the brim with iconic summer experiences. I can count on one hand the number of non-work days that have NOT involved the playground, the pool, the ice-cream truck, the backyard bbq, the picnic lunch, the zoo. Nora has now logged countless hours in her bathing suit and with her face in a watermelon slice like some Norman Rockwell propaganda child.* LT has stood on back porches with a beer in his hand and watched meat cook. I have worn my big sunhat and my new bathing suit and I have stupid circular tan lines on my feet from my summer maryjanes. It has been nice, and certainly Nora is having a blast being a crazy little city mouse/playground bum, battling the park district daycamp kids for premium sprinkler space, but I am starting to jones for a dark air-conditioned bar or a dank basement full of disgruntled pale punk rockers. Time to start scouting out suitable live shows, saving my pennies for canned beer, and cultivating that unhealthy glow.
*(Except would Norman Rockwell ever have painted a Chinese person? Maybe, if said Chinese person were depicted tossing chopsticks into the trash at the fork store, or saluting the flag with big tears of gratitude rolling out of exaggeratedly epicanthic eyes. I know the cool thing now is to be all daring and revisionist and suggest that N.R. was actually this rebellious liberal realist, but I am still solidly in the “painter of creepy Dickensian grotesqueries” camp.)
I also resent the fact that some idiots in my neighborhood chose to keep the 4th of July patriotism going with firecrackers and bottle rockets until three o'clock in the morning, necessitating the use of both knockout drugs (Benadryl) and my horrible rattling window air conditioner to keep the family asleep. Even with such hardcore help I still had a small naked person (“Pajamas are a tool of The Man”—Nora Smartypants) freaking out at my bedside several times during the night. I was not a very sympathetic maternal figure after the second return to bed, and then I ended up leaving for work without seeing Ms. Thing again, which led to a very stupid and circular anxiety fugue that Something Bad Would Happen and then “get back to bed NOW” would be my parting words. It makes me angry when my brain chases its tail like this, imagining various Tragic Scenarios with no point or purpose. The condition is not so severe or interfering that I feel an urgent need to visit a shrink—although like every good American, I always suspect that while I may not feel exactly bad, I could probably feel better. I don't even know what a shrink would tell me. “Stop being an idiot?” “Relax, don't do it?” “Carry a gin and tonic in a to-go cup, gulp when anxious?” Hmm, I like that last one.
BY POPULAR DEMAND (HONEST)
A message is coming through on the Shaft messaging system!
“There's some bad shit going down, girl. Forces of evil and whatnot. We need you to get out of the tub and get to work.”
Not a problem, Shaft. Word to your mother!
Suited up and ready for battle. If you don't actually have a red cape, you can use some giveaway software-company red polo shirt from your dad's closet.
Glance askance at the no-goodniks.
Then use the Preschoolian Shriek Of Doom until they cringe like the cowards they are.
Whew. Time to climb back in the Supermobile and chillax for a spell. Your faithful manservant can do the driving.
—mimi smartypants: stronger than a silent e.