sometimes i wonder what i'm gonna do/but there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

A little food inspiration via Fashion Toast.

This happens to me at some point every summer,
Something about extreme heat makes me extra panicky...

We drive around in gas-guzzling cars. We're all obese. We eat Cheetos. We buy a lot of crap. We have hateful, spiteful politicians who make absolutely no progress. We have too much stuff to throw away, bags inside bags inside the box inside the bag. We have skewed priorities. We have journalists that hack into phones of murder victims. We have people that care an inordinate amount about the Casey Anthony trial. We have Christian fundamentalist terrorists who shoot kids at summer camp. Etc.

I don't want to spend my summers slugging from one air-conditioned building to the next. I want to hike in Wyoming, I want to bike the Palo Duro Canyon, I want to be able to walk outside at 2 in the afternoon...

At some point, I want to throw in the towel. Fall face down in the Walmart parking lot and melt into the black asphalt.

I think to fight this desire, I wake up at 5:30am and sleepwalk to a 6am spin class or make a beeline to the Y after work to run and run and run in place on the elliptical, because I've just absolutely, positively got to move.

If I keep moving, it can't get to me.

I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive.

I run away from Oklahoma. Run, run, run to Iceland or Costa Rica or straight into the ocean. Sandy desert and grass fires receding behind me as I finally reach that last patch of proverbial green clover.

Sometimes, around 8pm and absolutely not a second earlier, I'll roam the interconnected Oklahoma City neighborhoods, hop on my rickety bike or lace-up my running shoes, for the reassurance that a ton of people are out and about as well: walking their dogs or running or holding hands or rollerblading.

It's a comforting communion. To know that, in some small way, other people are feeling the oppression of the heat too. We're finding shared relief in the freedom of the sunset.

I come home with a mood much-improved, and happily chug a bottle of water.