{{javachik}}

Break a leg, java.

Aww, java, this is so hard. You look after yourself. Cut yourself some slack when needed.
 
Summer memories: sitting in the sun on lawn chairs with my best friend, listening to Radar Love (the cover) on the radio and watching the cars go by.
 
Long rambly walks through our woods, playing in the creek.
 
"fishing" in our pond with bits of bread on sticks and buckets. The fish were tame anyway, and got fed a lot. We never caught anything with this method.

Where did you grow up, Liese? Was it Indiana?

Ohio. Northeastern Ohio, thus my love of losing sports teams and current disapprobation of LeBron.

Mine was not an idyllic anything as a child, but I remember some wicked sunburns in the summertime.

One of my favorite summer memories occurred when I was 35. Lying in the grass in the back garden of a summer house some friends had given me, 50km north of Copenhagen. The yard was tree lined, so when I looked up, the sky was framed in green. No noise, but for the bugs in the forest. Perfect temperature. That was the very first time in my life that I knew what it felt like to be perfectly at peace.

I'll never forget it.

And while my office is far, far from Kilikoj, it's pretty darned peaceful around here today. After weeks of vicious heat, it's gloriously cool(ish) and damp in DC. MUCH, much needed rain, intermittently. There is any interesting band playing dreamy music, featuring violin, right across the street.

Heaven.

Though I must prepare for a doggy lama workshop at 4 this afternoon. Polite in the Park...alas, as I predicted in the WPost, the folks who should come, won't. But, still, I'll enjoy the endeavor, even if no one comes!

Vibing hope-life-gets-better-for-you-soon thought javachick's way.

I remember some wicked sunburns in the summertime.

Hell, yeah. I got the worst of Mom's Irish skin (my sister got at least some of Dad's Swedish easily-tanning skin), so the sunburns in the beginning of every summer were horrible. But, you had to get a good burn to lay a foundation for the rest of the summer tan. It wasn't until I was in college before we got the warnings about how I drastically increased my chance for skin cancer by doing that. I remember the nasty case of sun poisoning I got in 1986 when I went to Bradford Beach in Milwaukee without any sunblock (couldn't afford the $3 bottle until payday). Also, the blisters after falling asleep on the pontoon boat we rented when we were on our family vacation in '78 in KentLakes resort area in Kentucky. I fell asleep on my back and fried my front, my sister fell asleep on her stomach and fried her back.

I fell asleep on my back and fried my front, my sister fell asleep on her stomach and fried her back.

You needed somebody on the radio to tell you to turn over every half hour.

Growing up in South Florida we were always big on the notion of laying down a "base tan" in March before we did any serious laying in the sun. All of it very bad for our skin.

I fell asleep in a rowboat and got sun poisoning when I was 8, I think.

Tubes of Unguentine. Looks like you can still buy it, but it's clearly out of favor.

I got another really bad burn in Kansas at 14. I remember peeling the tops of my thighs off is sheeets . whitefonted for the serious squick.

You needed somebody on the radio to tell you to turn over every half hour.

At home we used kitchen timers, but being on vacation and in the middle of the reservoir, no one had a watch let alone a clock.

My sister's back burn was so severe that whenever she'd get a tan in subsequent summers, the freckles would appear everywhere except where her straps were during that burn. It wasn't until 15 years later when she was on her first Caribbean cruise and got tons of sun that those strap marks finally went away.