1. The Hoosier state’s livid heat wave. Sweat sticking to the soft forehead of kids playing on the playground. Ice cream on the front porch that melts faster than you can lick and lands on the concrete steps you’re sitting on.
2. The tomatoes in my backyard are ripening. They are in that stage of a yellowish green which will soon give way to a sun-kissed red. My figures smell like their tangy juice after gliding my figures over their smooth surface. Waiting to pick them is like watching and waiting for the sun to rise on the summer solstice.
3. That time I left my sunroof open during a clear blue sunny day. I was inside the bank for 20 minutes when the heavens decided to let the floodgates open and pour down a warm wet rain that saturated my car’s interior. There was a rainbow peeking out from the clouds and it was sunny the rest of the day.
4. Laying in a hammock between the shade of two trees is one of the most calming actions you can take in a claim to self-care and relaxation. I defiantly suggest bringing with you a good book and a bowl of ice cream.
5. The County Fair: culture hub of the Midwest. If you’re looking for what farmer do for summer fun, this is where you go. Booths that sell lemon shake-ups, elephant ears, and fried tenderloins scatter the grounds. If you walk over to the pig and cattle barn you’ll find young boys and girls chilling out by their animals or washing their pigs for the Friday night auction. I know the people over in the goat barn.
6. 9:20 pm drives home through the suburban area of midwestern no-where. The July that I write this is the last July I’ll have in school.
7. The year 2014, age 17, the year where I spent the entire month of July in the state of Florida. My family bought a house five minutes away from the gates of Disney and we spent our whole damn summer painting, scrapping, tiling and completing other vast renovations. All in over-heated, humid, sticky, swampy Florida. It’s a vacation rental now. My body acclimated to the climate so much that, when I came back to Indiana, wearing a jacket and socks in the 80-degree weather was a must.
8. Mosquito bites. Period.
9. We bought a kayak. It is one of those blow-up kinds that have the potential to easily pop but you don’t think about that while out in the middle of the water. Best investments of this summer. To test the 11’ kayak out, we took it over to my friend’s house and tried to use it within the constraints of their 17’x8’ pool.
10. I listed the county fair but did I mention the fair’s Queen Contest? This year, 21 contestants lined up in the hot rusty indoor arena, to win the judges heart and become the next Miss Johnson county. People were walking around with t-shirts that supported one of the contestants which said: “Good Enough to Scoop Poop, Good Enough to be Your Queen”, with a little a clip-art photo of a pig wearing a tiara.
11. You can find me during this Queen Contest with a couple of my fair time acquaintances up in the bleacher “trash talking” (as my friend put it) about the dresses, the hair, and each girl’s queenly or not so queenly wave. We bet on who will win. None of us win.
12. The Zinnia seeds that I planted back in May are finally blooming. According to Wikipedia, these flowers are “a genus of plants of the sunflower tribe within the daisy family. They are native to scrub and dry grassland in an area stretching from the Southwestern United States to South America, with a center of diversity in Mexico.”
13. Every
14. Day
15. Seems
16. To
17. Drag
18. On
19. Longer
20. and Longer…
21. My first kiss happened on a July 20th. It was a fabulous kiss. We were cutting strawberries in my kitchen and he leaned over an grabbed my cheeks with is wet, fruity fingers. He did that cute thing where he held a strawberry between his teeth and had me lean in and eat it, then kissed me more.
22. Mentioning strawberries, we had some in our garden when I was a kid, 2009 maybe? I ate them until my figures turn red and my stomach turned spoiled from all the natural sugar. I remember making jam out of them. My mom chopping them up and making a sort of jellied concoction to put into a ball jar and freeze so we’d have fresh preserves all summer.
23. That time my photo of old picture frames went viral on Tumblr happened on July 23, 2016. 1,444 notes. My one and only claim to social media fame.
24. Bored. So bored that you just lay on your bed and look up at the ceiling fan, trying to count how many times it circulates. Congratulations younger me, you hit your summer break’s bedrock boredom faze. It only goes up from here.
25. Actually being homeschooled, you don’t get a summer break. Not really. Learning world history from the adventurous outdoors of my backyard playground was never the best, but then again it was better than hitting bedrock boredom. At least I was learning something.
26. Light filters through the crack between the umbrella and the house, between the wood planks on the table, between the curtain and the window, between my eyelids and the morning.
27. This might have happened in August but I’ll list it here anyway. I rode an elephant once. It was my biggest dare, my greatest achievement, the masked truth I’d use in two truths and a lie. It happened at our Indiana State fare. I’m proud to say I still have the sticker which pictured the said elephant I rode with the world printed in bold I RODE AN ELEPHANT which they gave me after I dismounted. I satisfyingly wore it the rest of the day.
28. One summer my mom, brother, and I ventured out into the wild west into the states of Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. On the last leg home, we tiredly sang “Back Home Again In Indiana” right as we crossed over the Wabash River. The moonlight glissaded on its surface and we were happy to be home.
29 Basel leaves have this scent that penetrates the whole garden and invites you, and the beetles, in to eat their leaves. The beetles prefer them raw. I prefer them with cheese, tomato sauce, and homemade pizza dough.
30. My birthday is in October, however, the year I was to turn 12 I wanted a warm summer birthday party so bad that we decided to celebrate my birth in July instead. I had an ice cream party where all my friends came. A three-layer ice cream cake from Cold Stone graced the table. It was frozen, so frozen that my dad had to get out the electric turkey knife to be able to cut through it. I cried. I’ve had all my birthday parties in October since then.
31. July. Ironically yet sincerely my least favorite month of the year.
Megan Elaine 