I can't believe it!

To paraphrase my beloved Jane Austen - “For what do we live, but to make sport for (our friends and those we know), and laugh at them in our turn?” Quite right, Mr. Bennet. Since I have become a mother, and have all this time on my hands to make a fool of myself (ha ha ha), I am sure I am regularly making excellent sport for my friends and those who know me. (Actually, I don’t need all that much time to look like a jerk. When you have two babies literally hanging off you, are chronically sleep deprived and usually hungry, opportunities for being ridiculous come fast and furious.) As for laughing at them in my turn… Well, Fall is here, and with the change of season comes that same comment: “I can’t believe the summer is over!” All I can think is, “Really? You can’t? Will you believe me when I tell you Winter comes next? Or will you exclaim – NO! I can’t believe it? ”

How long will it be until those who insist on talking about the weather, despite my attempts to steer the conversation to more nourishing topics, realize the autumn comes every year, without fail? It’s not a difficult concept; the air gets cooler, the leaves change color and the children go to school. Every year… I think it’s just something to say when the brain is empty, kind of like – Oh, twins! Double trouble! and other idiotic statements.

There are still a few summer days of canine left in the year. Along with the I-can’t-believe-it contingent travel the Gee-it’s-hot-and-other-unnecessary-observations club. I went to a lunch with my DH and the boys the other day, and we sat next to a big bunch of people on the restaurant’s verandah. One of the older men, I think he was about 70, commented – “Hey. Those are some big boys you got there. I bet you can’t believe they got so big so fast.” I replied politely – “Yes, they are almost a year old already. I keep quoting Andrew Marvell

“But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.”

When I look next, they’ll be in school.”

If you had seen the blank, confused looks on the faces that ringed the table! Don’t older people read poetry? My grandmother was always quoting tracts of the stuff. But I should have realized they would not have a clue. A few minutes before, I overheard one of them asking another if it was hot enough for them. When I am asked that, especially when standing around at a barbeque, or in line at a ball park, or other notoriously roasting hot location, I am sooo tempted to reply – “Actually, until my nail polish melts off my toenails, trickles through my sandals, and drips onto the liquid tarmac, it’s just not hot enough for me.” But I usually restrain myself. I don’t want to get a ticket for jay talking.

Today was hot, in the nineties, and we went to a friends' daughter’s second birthday party. The party was outside and the subject of the weather was bandied about freely.

“Hot enough for ya?” was a favorite to win, with the close second - “Well, it’s not the heat, but the humidity.” Then, there were those who spent some happy moments congratulating each other on living where we do, because this has been a moderate summer, as far as heat waves are concerned. I am ashamed to admit, I too fell victim to the weather speak when I went into the house to prevent my babies from being broiled in the sun. I sighed – “Oh, it’s much cooler in here.” Duh. That lovely, chilly breeze that met me when I entered our friends' lovely home was the air conditioning.