Summer in Michigan is unpredictable. Take Memorial Day Weekend for example. The weather forecasters said we had a thirty percent chance of rain on the Sunday of that weekend. That means that there was a seventy percent chance that it wouldn’t rain. It rained most of the day. I think they may have had that reversed. I was stupid that day. I know what summer in Michigan is like. I grew up here. Still, I planned for ninety-degree temperatures and sunshine. I guess I’m just an optimist.
I had to borrow a sweatshirt from my sister at the lake. I was cold. When the sun did come out a bit later, the temperature rose enough for me to be comfortable in my tee shirt and shorts, but it never got anywhere near ninety degrees. It didn’t stop us from having fun. We did, but there was rain interspersed with periods of wet ground and no rain. Fortunately, the rain wasn’t a hard driving rain. There was a little thunder and the lightning wasn’t particularly visible, but it did get dark for a while. We were lucky.
If I had used my head, I would have taken my raincoat and a pair of slacks with me. If I had, the sun would have come out and the temperature would have soared to the nineties. It’s just the way things seem to work for me – ok, I don’t really think I can influence the weather by taking talismans with me to ward off bad weather. The weather doesn’t work that way either. It’s just that it seems to work that way. In Michigan, it’s best to plan for all possible weather issues, when you plan something, be it for out of doors parties or simply for how the weather can affect your travel plans. I expect that it is like that elsewhere in the world.
The Fourth of July will be on us this week. I’m not sure how the weather will be, but I know that it won’t affect my plans for the holiday – I really don’t have any. This year, the holiday falls in the middle of the week. When that happens, I play things by ear because I usually only get the holiday itself off work – no long holiday weekends. I have no problem with that. It is what it is.
Holidays punctuate my summers, now. Memorial Day at the beginning kicks off the summer, the Fourth of July marks the middle, and Labor Day marks the end. When I was a kid, summer was a one long holiday. Then I grew up. My advice to the kids of today is, “Don’t grow up! Don’t give up your fun times.”
Summers are supposed to be fun. I guess winter has its fun times as well, but that’s not what this blog is talking about. Fun in the sun – that’s what we Americans used to do. Then we got stupid. We give up our fun time and wonder why we are miserable. We have let our jobs and careers take over and consume our lives. What were we thinking?
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