IN THE SIMULATED SUMMERTIME

Dear Ice Cold Beer:

Thank you for being my friend tonight.  No, truly, I mean it.

When I close the blinds and sit in my living room, it's summer.  My living room is beach themed, complete with a couch the color of sand, sheer curtains the color of cirrus clouds, and light drapes the color of the sky on a brilliant summer day.

A lighthouse-themed clock chimes the hour with twelve different foghorns from twelve different lighthouses around the country, some sounding their horns with the ocean noise or the seagulls as accompaniment. Two dried starfish decorate either side of the clock, and above is a small wooden oar painted with a sailboat motif.

I have ocean photos framed on the walls, seashells on end tables, and a basket stuffed full of beach rocks.  The summer palm stump I rescued from Wal-Mart for $11 (and fully expected to toss at the end of the season) is thriving in my front room, experiencing its own Charlie Brown-like transformation into a wonderful, lush palm bush.

The heat is cranking, and it's summer inside my house.  I am eating nachos and drinking ice cold beer.  You, my dear friend, you, my ice cold beer, are the ultimate taste of summer right now.  (I'm out of margarita mix and I'm too lazy to make a gin and tonic with a twist of lime.)  So thank you, Beer, for being my summer buddy tonight on this near-blizzard bastard of an evening.

I hear it's going to be worse in the morning,but, like Rhett Butler, right now I just don't give a damn.  Summer is here.  Summer lives on in my living room as I enjoy a Stephanie Plum read-a-thon while I sit in my cut-off short-sleeved tie-dyed t-shirt (made last summer for shits and giggles on my birthday).

Thank you for being my Valentine, dear Ice Cold Beer, and for reminding me that there really is summer -- somewhere, sometime, somehow -- and for convincing me we'll make it.  Eventually.  Until then, I'm back to my simulated beach and back to my beach reading.

All my love,

The Snow Angel