summer

The spring that wasn’t. (And the cake that was.)

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The winter of 2022-23 was colder and snowier than usual. DF didn’t mind the snowy part, since up to five days a week he used a senior-discount weekday pass at Alyeska Resort. Since I’m not into downhill skiing (or cross-country, for that matter), I declined to accompany him but was glad he was having such a good time.

I did not have a good time this winter. It was hard to stay positive through gloomy day after gloomy day, and super-easy to berate myself about that: You have a partner who tells you daily how much he loves you, and wonderful family and friends. To say nothing of a comfortable home, good food and a flex-schedule job you can do in your PJs. Why do you let the bad outweigh the good?

My mood has improved, because I finally was able to look deeply at what was really bothering me. Turns out it wasn’t just lack of daylight, but a combination of several other factors. Having been in therapy before, I was finally able to isolate those issues and look plainly at them. But this is an ongoing process, i.e., some days it was easier to eat my feelings than examine them. Which of course led to weight gain and additional dismay and also exacerbated a physical condition, which led to even more dismay/discomfort.

(Physical condition has been diagnosed. Won’t bore you with the details except to say that it is not life-threatening but will require physical therapy. On the bright side, that gives me something to blog about later on.)

But I knew none of this stuff mattered because spring was on the way! May and June are my favorite months here, and the nearly nonstop sun is a tonic that fixes just about everything.

Except that spring is still on the way. Maybe it got lost. Maybe it’s messing with us. Maybe it will show up in July. Whatever the reason, I’ve been referring to last month and this one “the spring that wasn’t.”

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Giveaway: $15 Starbucks gift card.

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It’s darned hot in the Lower 48 right now. Anyone up for a cold drink? I’m giving away a $15 Starbucks gift card.

What you use it for is up to you, of course. Maybe a mango dragonfruit lemonade, or a caramel ribbon crunch Frappucino, or a chocolate cream cold brew.

Those all sound like desserts to me, but hey, whatever floats your boat. And cools you down. It’s punishingly hot down in the States, and in Hawaii, so let me buy you a Starbucks beverage.

Maybe you’ll go for an iced Americano, an iced toasted vanilla oatmilk shaken espresso, an iced cinnamon dolce latte or an iced caramel macchiato.

Whew. Complicated! 

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Giveaway: Starbucks gift card and reusable straws.

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It’s brutally hot in the Lower 48 right now and I so wish that I could send some of the Alaska coolth down to guys. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. But I can offer up a brief respite, courtesy of a Starbucks gift card and some reusable straws.

Whoever wins this can purchase $15 worth of their favorite cold beverages: stuff like Blended Strawberry Lemonade, Pink Drink, Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew, Iced Chocolate Almond Milk Shaken Espresso, Iced Peach Green Tea Lemonade, Iced Guava Passionfruit or even a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino.

That last one sounds more like a dessert than a drink, which is where those reusable straws come in. They’re not just reusable straws – they’re reusable spoon straws. You can scoop up the thick cold drinks or the bits of fruit/cookie crumbles that might otherwise get stuck in the straw.

My niece recently became a Pampered Chef consultant and I attended a virtual party out of a sense of auntly duty. But I have to say that some of that stuff looks pretty awesome, and I wound up buying one item as a Christmas gift and one item for me* along with the spoon straws. #SupportingTheFamilyEconomy

It’s a set of four (see illustration), so you and up to three family members/friends can all feel eco-friendly together. The little cleaning brush helps you sluice out those cookie bits, and the carrying bag (not pictured) keeps it all together.

The Starbucks gift card is a good match, I think. While I’m not a coffee drinker, I have to say that Starbucks has at times saved me from melting down during summer travels/conferences. Usually I ask the barista, “What cold drink would you recommend to your mom if she were very overheated and not a fan of coffee, or even mocha?” And they always surprise me with something that I might never have chosen on my own. 

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Giveaway: $10 Starbucks card.

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Baby, it’s hot outside. The summer has been/is still quite brutal in many parts of the Lower 48. While I can’t change the weather, I can offer a palliative.

Could anyone use a $10 Starbucks card?

Even a non-coffee-drinking weirdo like me has to admit that Starbucks has some mighty tasty and refreshing cold beverages. I can go years without setting foot in a Starbucks shop, but when I’m on the road in the summer and positively wilting from the heat, the familiar mermaid logo is rather like a siren’s call. Come on in! We have ice! And iced drinks!

 

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Grateful for sun and berries.

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I’ve been sick for several days now, apparently with the same virus that laid DF low last week. We share everything, including headache, sore throat and general malaise.

Since I’m not often ill, it always comes as a shock just how boring it can be to lie around all the time: too tired to hold a book up in bed or, when in a recliner, too brain-fogged to read seriously.

(Have watched the hell out of videos on MyPoints.com, though. If I’m gonna be sick, I might as well earn points.)

The weather outside has been as glum as my reasoning: gray skies, temps in the 40s, sideways-spitting rain. Blech. It was the kind of late-summer (read: early fall) weather that made naps mandatory yet not terribly successful. I kept dropping off and then popping awake; when I did sleep, my dreams were weird (baking a series of cakes? decorating and living in one of New York’s smallest apartments?) and made the sleep unsatisfying.

Today the sun came out and DF suggested a turn around the yard. The fresh air would do housebound-for-days me some good.

Was he ever right.

 

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Drinking from the hose, eating from the dirt.

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Saturday at my niece’s house was warm and clear, weather perfect for lounging on her newly painted deck and enjoying the scents of clover and sun-heated greenery. At one point we visited the tent-like structure that acts as her greenhouse, where we found tomato and squash plants languid from thirst.

She dragged out the pocket hose and soaked all the pots. A bit languid myself by then, I requisitioned the nozzle and shot it directly into my mouth. The icy blast refreshed in a way that a glass from the sink might not have.

No matter how old you get, drinking from the hose is absurdly satisfying. That is, unless it’s a really old hose that tastes like melting plastic.

This one didn’t. All I got was the flavor of Anchorage H2O, which is better than any city water has a right to be. (Fun fact: It comes from a glacier.) The experience catapulted me back to my childhood, when playing outdoors was so important that you’d sometimes drink from the hose rather than waste time going inside.

 

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My dog days, in summer.

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For 10 days I took care of my niece’s dog so she could make a trip out of state. By the end of the first day I remembered why I don’t want pets: Because it means being responsible for another living creature, all the time.

As someone who’s lucky that her socks match* when she leaves the house, being unable to leave the house without first dealing with the dog was a challenge.

It was a lot like having a toddler around. Whenever I couldn’t see him or hear him I had an immediate reaction of, “Uh-oh – what’s he into now?”

As of the first day: the trash, the recycling bin and something on the counter.

 

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Summer, voting and a chance to win free stuff.

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thI just got back from voting in the primary election, a civic duty made pleasant by the beauty of the weather: blue skies after many days of rain, big puffy clouds and a slight breeze that stirred the faint but unmistakable fragrance of decaying vegetation.

Yes, summer is on the wane. Wildflowers and gardens alike are dying back – hence the smell of plant life sinking gradually to earth. Birch leaves are falling like golden rain in my BFF’s back yard. Most of the fireweed has spawned out, although a few defiant pinky-lavender blossoms still show up here and there.

The sun’s angle and intensity have both changed noticeably. As I noted in the linked article, “August sun compared to June sun is like a social kiss: close enough to get its point across but far enough away to feel like display rather than true affection.”

 

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What summer tastes like.

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GetAttachmentThumbnailThis vegetable plate represents summer in our yard and greenhouse. The red tomato slices are Czech’s Bush, the oddly colored ones are a Siberian variety called Black Prince, the cucumber is called Space Saver and the garish beets are Detroit Dark Red, pickled in a bonehead-simple recipe of vinegar, sugar, water, cinnamon and cloves.

In making that plate I flashed back to the covered-dish suppers of my youth. Each table in the church basement had a cut-glass dish of pickles, olives and pickled beets (or something quite like it). The suppers tended to happen in fall and winter, so freshly sliced tomatoes and cukes weren’t on the menu.

After an unusually sunny June and July, we’ve been treated to near-constant clouds and rain. “State fair weather,” we call it. Great for the rhubarb and raspberries and other outdoor crops. Not so much for the greenhouse tomatoes, which are bursting with fruit but ripening more slowly than we’d like.

 

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Heat wave, Anchorage-style.

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th-2It’s 77 degrees here and I’m melting, melting…

Which is a little embarrassing to admit. Although I grew up in a hot-and-humid area and also sweltered through the occasional 100-degree heat wave in Seattle* my blood has done got thin.

Like many other Alaskans, I perceive temps in the 60s as warm enough, thanks. When it his 70 I start fanning myself. Now that it’s closer to 80 than 70, I’m panting like a black dog in the noonday sun.

Right now I’m pet-sitting a black dog (Rottweiler/black Lab mix), a furry solar collector whose solution is simple: When he’s not in the house, he spends his time underneath the deck attached to the greenhouse DF built. 

I’m the wrong size – and the wrong flexibility factor – to follow him under there, so I cope by staying out of the direct sun and drinking lots of water and iced tea. It’s supposed to be in the mid- to high 70s all week.

 

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