Summertime Blues

I doubt I'll ever get used to the Chicagoland weather. Last week were we all complaining about how there was so much rain that we doubted we'd ever see summer - today it's 95 degrees and we're still in June. Although it's often either too cold or too hot here (rarely just right), I have noticed a few similarities.

1. You have to make a run from your car into the stores. Too slow in winter and you'll get frostbite, too slow in summer and you'll get burnt.

2. Spend as little time as possible outdoors. Fortunately the other end of heating is air conditioning. There's rarely a day when you don't need one or the other.

3. Never go out without a hat. A thick woolly one with ear pieces in the winter, a wide brimmed one in the summer.

4. The garden is a nightmare all year round. Inches of snow to clear in the winter, grass to mow in the summer. To make matters even worse, I currently have tiny maple trees growing in my gutters thanks to the billions of seeds that have blown off the tree in front of our house.

Still, I'm not really complaining. Coming from a land where its often grey and rainy, I'll take living in technicolor any day of the year.