August is Just Fine by Me

Autumn is my favorite season, but I'm starting to cheat on it with August a little bit.

I'll quit, I promise!  I could never leave my first love.  In its absence, however, I'm tempted by the misguided concept of "loving the one your with".  How unfair the seduction this first week of the month has been.  

Each day this week I have spent my lunch break reading in my car with the windows down, in order to simply touch my skin to this most perfect weather for as long as possible before returning to the manufactured air so poisonously pumped through the office corridors. I've found I have just enough time to finish one chapter of reading leaving a few minutes remaining to close my eyes and mind-travel.

Monday was a little humid, but with it was brought a sultry tropical breeze. When I closed my eyes I could practically smell the coconut oil and hear the palm leaves swish against one another. As the hallucination of swishing palm branches distracted me from reality, another balmy breeze caught me by surprise, salt of the sea most definitely in the air. I left reality for a moment let out a horribly audible sigh. Startling my own eyes open, I noticed a woman from a neighboring office shuffling down the sidewalk and stopping to look wildly around to see who was breathing so violently at her. Shoo shoo, office lady. I'm on a pretend vacation and you are not on the companion ticket.

The next day the air was more as one would expect here in Michigan. Lake-y. But, being tens of miles from the nearest sizable body of water, I guessed this could be attributed to the wormy puddles that had collected in the parking lot due to the previous evening's rain shower. Nonetheless, I had five minutes of daydreaming left and so my eyes closed, unwilled.  Imagined lake shore air immediately impeded by the strong scent of the Chinese restaurant up the block. Mmm... fried food. I can still work with this.  Let's call it a summer carnival on the shore instead until the clock changes to that unwanted hour and it's time to turn off my imagination and earn my keep once again.

And, so each afternoon has gone. Each productive morning interrupted by an unscheduled lunchtime rendezvous. The return walk to the office building feeling more and more like a death march with each lazy step. Oh, world, how do we do it?

I'm not usually one to stray.  Affairs seem exhaustively pointless to me. I do love the fall.  It's my sworn companion for life.  But, for today, August is just fine by me.