With What Remains

Oh sweet summer. You are blessed.

I have awkward tans in the most obvious places. Ice cream and fruit are summer staples. I am nearly always in some form of perspiration. Sometimes I have to drive my car with one finger on my steering wheel and another finger on my stick shift. I haven't worn socks since early May. Rain in the summer is better than anything else. People don't look down on you if you come home from work/school and put on workout clothes just because its more comfortable. There is a strange itchiness to to everything and nothing all at once.

But summer is coming to a close now. I can feel it in my bones. And I am avoiding doing anything responsible if I can help it.

Sometimes I don't wash my face before bed. For a solid month, I haven't been able to coax my body out of bed before 7:00am. I have been cooking my oatmeal in the office because I am always running late. I never want to sleep, as if staying up until all indecent hours of the morning will make the summer last longer. I want to hike any mountainous surface and yet I just want to stay home and fall asleep on the couch every afternoon. I want to be social but I also want everyone to leave me alone so that I may have some solitude.

I struggle with my summer shoulder angels, one quietly suggests responsibility and the other battles for lackadaisicalness. The shoulder angel I know I should listen to wants me to go to bed early, to rise early to run and to study my scriptures, but the other angel is so loud in his mediocre slothfulness. He revels in the fact that I have done NOTHING this summer. The 10K that was never run, the things that were never written, the clothes that never got sewed, the hikes that didn't happen, the books that didn't get read, and the dates that were never even an option. He has very nearly convinced me that I don't need to trouble myself with doing anything worthwhile until school starts on August 29th. Two more weeks of nothingness cannot be horrible when I am staring into the face of the everythingness that is about to commence.

And I haven't yet made up my mind as to which shoulder angel will determine this impasse with the minuscule remaining dregs of my summer.