Heating things up.

Doesn't heat usually make molecules speed up and move around more rapidly?  Why is it then that when the weather turns warm, we slow our movement and become sloth-like and lazy?  Well, I know one thing for sure.  You slow down my body, and my mind instantaneously picks up speed.  So there.  Something does in fact speed up in the heat.  Think about it.  Is that true for you?

 When I say my mind picks up speed, I mean it begins firing off to do lists and family activities and party ideas and home makeover projects and fun places to explore.  I think about picking up new hobbies and making new challenges to hold myself accountable to.  So you see, the heat inspires me?  It is only appropriate that I was born on the summer solstice - the first day of summer, longest day of the year, and sometimes Fathers's Day.  I love heat.  I'll sit in a sauna for 25 minutes in the middle of the day in the heat of summer.  (Right, Kelle?)  I'll wear sweatpants and drink hot coffee while sitting outside on my back lanai.  (ie:  this very moment)  I'll turn on the mattress warmer on my bed or the seat warmer in the car because the air conditioner makes me cold.  Good thing for dual climate zones in cars now.  There's a good 10 degree split between me and the driver....always.  (Right, Brooke?)  So you get it.  Heat slows me down just enough to hear myself think and I LOVE it! 

I love summer so much that last summer I declared that I didn't want it to end.  Now, being raised a Northern girl, I can get excited about the change of seasons--the onset of Fall marked by the chill at a Friday night football game--the Winter's first snow--or Spring's first tulip bud, sometimes popping up under a thin blanket of snow.  In Florida, however, if you blink...you might miss it.  Sometimes the grand moment that marks Fall's entrance is merely the act of switching the AC from on to off.  Bam......now it's Fall.  No matter how grand the change may or may not be, I do usually welcome the new chapter.  But not last summer.  I didn't want the picnics or the fireworks or my husbands relaxed work schedule to end.  And you know what?  I think Mother Nature took me seriously because I found myself wondering just when winter will begin and then I realized it was May.  Ha!  Summer did get extended!  And now, less than a week until summer officially begins again, I can almost say I feel like summer never ended, and couldn't be happier about it! 

So, with my body still and my mind at warp speed, I have a good feeling a lot of good things are a brewin'.  A relaxed body is an able body.  When the moment calls, I'm ready.  I feel loose and limber, warmed up and ready.  Not impatient, no.  I'll enjoy this moment of stretching.  I'll breath in deep and breathe out slow, enjoying the relaxed breathing while I can.  I have a feeling that this summer, unlike last, has a finish line....but I'm ready for it.  I know a finish line can also be the starting block for the next chapter. 

 

“And so 

with the sunshine 

and the great bursts 

of leaves growing

 on the trees, 

just as things 

grow in fast movies, 

I had 

that familiar conviction 

that life was beginning 

over again 

with the summer.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby