summertime.

I haven't posted in weeks!  I feel like such a bad blog mama.  Truth is, when summer rolls around, I become allergic to my computer.  I prefer to dive into books on the deck than sit inside, mindlessly scrolling through endless online shopping sites and gossip blogs.  Summer is for yoga outside, for sprinting into the lake, for scandalizing strangers while cycling in a skirt.

I barely have a real job right now.  In fact, I'm on a payroll for about eight hours a week as I show students around UBC's Okanagan campus and do administrative work for my boss.  The rest of the time, I'm basically acting as my mom's personal assistant.  I bike around and buy fresh produce from local fruit stands, stuffing beets and carrots and cherries into my backpack greedily.  I do errands with my grandma, carrying bottles of local cider to the car for her and giggling about how disorganized we both are.  I'm re-doing the deck, too, in a project that reminds me of a summer I spent scraping and painting a very wealthy man's enormous, enormous, enormous deck, stairs, railings, and dock with my best friend.

I'm happy.  I'm probably spending too much time in the sun, but I usually remember to wear sunscreen.  My friends and I wander downtown, drink homemade ice tea, laugh about all the boys we know (or wish we knew).  We all wear stacks of bracelets and too-short cutoffs, even on days when the sky is cloudy and grey.  Summer is togetherness, is beaming sunshine on my shoulders and forearms, is the thoughtfulness of novels and crosswords instead of my computer screen.  On a perfect July night, I sometimes feel like I might live forever.

photo cred: nicole!