"To my hot forehead..." ~ Jane Eyre

Summertime means listening to Latin jazz and pursing your lips as the tartness of the lime juice of a mojito rushes over your tongue until the sweetness of the rum and sugar ease your lips back to a faint smile, because no one frowns when drinking a mojito. Summertime means mojiotos on the rooftops of New York City bars and restaurants, cooling down as the smell of crushed mint permeates the hot and humid city air that you love to hate. Summertime means enjoying that moment when you enter a cold subway car after perspiring on a subway platform that might as well be a Turkish bath. Summertime means reading Gourmet magazine outside in the yard, anxious to try another Middle Eastern lamb recipe where grill marks on your meal are essential. Summertime means sipping cold beer with your boyfriend as you watch baseball together and argue the entire time about which New York team is better as you make bets on every inning. Summertime means an entire day at Nickerson Beach inhaling the unique sent of salt and sunblock as you nap on the shore. Summertime means fishing off the shore line and catching blue fish despite feelings of guilt. Summertime means Lobster Night Tuesdays at Louie's in Port Washington where you get a pound and a half of lobster served with clam chowder, corn, and dessert included and eat at one of the tables set up on the dock.

Summertime means a thin New York Times on Sundays, iced americanos from Starbucks (no water, just ice) , two showers a day, sprays from Bath and Body Works carried at all times (like Tropical Colada and Peach), pedicures every week and a half at Willis Nails, getting your nephew into shark swimmy trunks and playing in his kiddie pool, making homemade sangria, tying your hair back in ponytails by noontime, a constant stock of wheat beers in the fridge, avoiding the bees in your backyard despite the fact that you are so grateful to them because you love honey, making the curried chicken salad recipe that your best friend made you two summers ago when you were down and now eating it in bliss, wearing sundresses and long cotton skirts to keep cool, having way to many flip flops but buying them constantly because they are so cheap, going to see Shakespeare in Central Park, visits to Coney Island in Brooklyn, carrying cloth-based handbags during the day, reading at the beach, in the yard, or on the subway after visits to a frigid Barnes and Noble where there are so many good bargain books on sale, sleeping next to your boyfriend covered by one sheet that gets tossed away in the middle of the night, wearing no foundation but wearing bronzer, throwing away the pits of peaches and plums, making homemade mango lassis in your blender, tending to the flowers you planted in your backyard.