A Summer Stagnant

Twenty-eleven: the first summer in eight years that does not find me packing up artifacts of my existence and trekking off to a new abode. Until 2007, I flitted between home and college, appropriately, like a teenage moth. In 2008, I moved in with my boyfriend, haphazardly, and over the span of months, accumulating things in his apartment - shampoo, underwear, a lamp - until I lived there. In 2009, there were bugs and nightmares. In 2010, a quibbling landlord and a lawyer. Finally, in this summer, poised to be the hottest on record in DC, I am not going anywhere. I will define the separation between one year and the next - in my job, relationship, life - by something other than cardboard boxes and packing tape. In 2011, I'll mark the passage of time with tan lines, new growth on the kitchen avocado tree, and Netflix Instant episodes of Star Trek: Next Generation. Commander Riker is hot.

The air conditioner is broken, sort of. Something about the compressor. Cooking and drying laundry are out of the question, either way. George, my dog-cat, is standing on the table in front of the new occillating fan from Home Depot, shouting at everyone, presumably because he is hot. As we are all hot. Milo, the tiny binkie cat, is sprawled on the hardwood floor, watching for the beetles and lightning bugs that come in under the front door.


Last week I picked roadside raspberries with my mom. 2011 is halfway toward being a better year.