What I Have Not Yet Done This Summer

The days are getting shorter. Okay, so on paper, maybe, they’ve just sort of flattened out, but since we’ve already had our solstice (and a great big “hi” to all my Druid readers out there!) as far as I’m concerned, the summer is practically over.

I can already hear time’s winged autumn fashions nipping at my nose, or whatever it is that seasons do as they speed by while I sit, motionless, wondering whether or not it’s actually worth getting up, climbing the stairs, and making all the effort required to change the kitty litter. Since I can perceive, shall we say, the litter box from an entirely separate part of the house, all indications are that it is, indeed, worth the effort. The cats themselves are holding tiny protest signs indicating unhealthy living environments (which, idiots they are, they’ve spelled incorrectly, leaving out the “n”) and the eldest one, Novella (she has a short tail) is trying to call the Humane Society. But since she put it on speed-dial, she can never remember the number off-paw and, using a different phone, keeps misdialing.

 The joke is on her.

Yet here I sit, refusing to move, as if magnetized to the comfort of this chair by the laptop. It’s as if I am the piece of paper where the shopping list is scribbled, the laptop is the magnet shaped like a computer, and the chair is the fridge.

The open computer, I believe, justifies my existence. “I’m working!” I tell myself. I tell this to myself alone because nobody else is asking.

My husband is busy doing actual work—copyediting his latest book—so he’s upstairs and so fully engaged in his own business that he’s not minding mine.

Editors in New York (and wherever else they cluster, hanging upside-down in their black outfits, like bats) go home by three o’clock in the summer, take Friday off, and aren’t exactly throwing huge advances at me anyway, so they aren’t ringing the phone off the hook (even if they were, they’d only reach Novella).

My colleagues have, if evidence is anything to go by, disappeared off the face of the earth: There are only three of us who show up on campus, ever, and usually what we do is sneak out to have a (shhh) cigarette, but even that subversive act is less fun since there is no one to “sneak” in front of, rendering the gesture simply unhealthy, distasteful, and smelly. (Not as smelly as the cat boxes, of course. And we do have good conversations. It’s just that there’s more of a bad-girls-acting-out treat to the whole Virginia Slims Menthol Extra Light Purse Size charade when Others are there to disapprove.)

My non-academic friends are spending the summer trying to figure out how to keep their children from starting to smoke and themselves from drinking before supper, or, in response, from preparing supper about the same time as editors in New York leave their offices. These folks aren’t asking me why I’m not working harder, either. What they’re asking me are questions such as “Do you really think a minimum security facility for juvenile offenders would be all that different from one of those old WASPY boarding schools? How about if it were in Connecticut? Want to come over for supper? We’re eating a little before 3 today.”

In addition, or I suppose “subtraction” might be better, I have not lost weight, begun a serious exercise regime, grown my own organic vegetables (or inorganic vegetables, for that matter), researched a way to introduce more protein and less fat into our household diet, written the book on bad boyfriends that I told the wonderful agent I would write (but everybody’s promised me they’ve got a million stories, a million of ‘em), finished that introduction to Far From The Madding Crowd (not due until the fall), done the absolutely final version of the anthology on sex for The Great Books Foundation (but I did submit the table of contents and materials and thanks to everybody who wrote in with those fabulous suggestions, manyof which I stole), written the introductory materials for the book I’m editing for UPNE, done anything truly different with my hair, or exfoliated my knees (but I haven’t fallen to them in despair yet, either, so I’m way ahead of some previous summers).

OK, Novella just reached the ASPCA. I better go do those boxes.

And how is your summer?

(Illustration derived from a photo by Flickr user Ingorrr)