Is It Summer Yet?

We haven't had much of a summer here in Ontario this year...the weather has been sulky and petulant most of the time, refusing to warm up and threatening rain a lot. There have been some up sides to this; as much as I adore a sauna in my backyard, I'm a teensy bit relieved that I don't have to scrape the cat up off the breezeway floor any time soon.

But I love summer....I LOVE it, and will be sorry if we don't get a good, sweaty, baking, melty couple of weeks this year. Of course, it could happen later rather than sooner....I has occurred to me that while I tend to think of summer as June, July and August, in reality, the past few years we have had summer more rightly sliding into September and October. I remember two years ago at Thanksgiving (which is in October in Canada) my mother refused to put a turkey in the oven because it was 30 frigging degrees outside, and, in her words, "that is just ridiculous". (That's 30 Celsius. Which is "really very hot" in Fahrenheit.) We had Domino's pizza for Thanksgiving dinner, which my kids and my niece and nephew declared the best Thanksgiving ever.
The Mister's birthday and our wedding anniversary is in September, so I have an occasion by which to mark each year, and it's almost always too hot to make the Mister a birthday cake. (I make it anyway, just in case you think I would miss making a fuss over the Mister, and also, pass any opportunity whatsoever to have some cake.) September can be sweltering.

I'm hoping this summer turns itself around, so that we can still do a few things that require nice weather. For example, a trip to the beach is miserable and soul-destroying in the rain, and a picnic in the drizzle will make you wonder if you could ever be happy again. I've tried to eat ice cream on a patio wearing a sweater and jeans, and it's hopelessly woeful. And picking blueberries in the rain feels as though one has been conscripted into a chain gang. Really not memories you want to make.

One good thing about this cool weather, however, is that we have only had our air conditioner on for one day this year. (Usually by this point we would be up to a week or so.) Also, no water restrictions, and, due to the inclement weather, my beer-on-the-patio-after-work consumption has been well within acceptable limits. So there's that to be thankful for.