Shrek-Green Tongues & Other Signs of Summer

Last week as I extracted a slide-closure bag (why splurge on name-brands when it comes to bags of that variety?) packed with pancakes from my pocketbook, I had my “eureka” moment. It’s official. Summer is here.

How so? Who has time to make pancakes before school during the academic year? Especially in our house---with the twin-insistent requests for chocolate chips before they can even make it to their destination within the in-griddle batter circles. Plus the fact that we had enough time to generate such voluminous numbers of flapjacks to the point where bag-fulls would be leftover? Morning maintenance is less-demanding. The clock is no longer such an evil dictator.

But why pancakes in the purse? Two words: Canadian Geese. The avian panhandlers strategically work the man-made, mall parking lot “pond” alongside our local Panera Bread. I’m quite certain the pancake-pilfering birds know it’s summer as well…the throngs of post-Tae Kwon Do practitioners---limeades in one hand----tossing the breakfast bounty waterward with the other. You can’t tell me Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout June, July and August aren’t circled in red in those organized goose Filofaxes.

Another “sign?” The ever-present sheet in our front yard. Not an invitation to love-struck youths to get romantically recumbent, it’s my lazy mama version of a perpetual picnic set-up. Somehow I can rationalize the fast food mid-day meal a bit easier if it’s eaten outdoors.

Which brings me to sign #3: The summer block-buster Happy Meal prizes. Last year, “Pixar’s Cars” (which is exactly what our kids call it—nice work branding) provided the plaything fodder alongside our twin sets of McNuggets, apple dippers and chocolate milks. This year, we’ve timed our intended but oft-exceeded once-a-week visits to insure we procure Gingy, Dronkey, and Puss-in-Boots. Whether we actually see Shrek the Third is irrelevant. (Sorry, Dreamworks.) At five-and-a-half, our twins’ screenwriting ability (a.k.a. imagination) inspired by the character toys saves us the astronomical full-family admission.

When the heat and humidity get too bad---and in Richmond, Virginia, they will---I can look forward to HBO (paid for with that would-be movie ticket money) re-airing “Pixar’s Cars”, and a return to the playthings of summers past.

This fall, our duo heads off to kindergarten. All day long, five days a week. So whether it happens via pancakes or picnics, popsicles or “Pixar’s Cars”, we’re going to savor this summer. Summer lovin’, let’s have us a blast…and be glad there are no Rizzo and Kenickie Happy Meal toys at this stage of the game.